§ Mr. Gouldasked the Secretary of State for Employment what is the ratio of employers' national insurance contributions to the unit cost of labour for each of the years since 1970.
§ Mr. GoldingThe information available in this Department comes from labour cost surveys conducted every few years. For manufacturing industries the most recent information relates to the year 1973, when employers' national insurance contributions formed 4.9 per cent, of their total labour costs. The full results of this survey were published in the issues of the Department of EmploymentGazette for September and October 1975. Similar surveys were made in 1968 and 1964, when the comparable percentages were 4.4 and 3.6 respectively. The results of a further survey, relating to the year 1975, will be published in due course.
Labour cost surveys have also been conducted in a number of other industries and services. Insurance and banking were covered in 1964, 1968 and 1974 and national insurance contributions represented 2.5, 3.2 and 4.3 per cent, of employers' total labour costs in the three years, respectively. The distributive trades 599W were covered only in 1974, and the comparable percentage was 6.3.