§ Mr. Austin Mitchellasked the Secretary of State for Trade what changes would have to be made to the computer programmes to enable the volume and unit value information for a particular country to be extracted from the trade returns; and how many man-hours would have to be spent and at what approximate cost to enable this to be done.
§ Mr. EyreThe provision of reliable information on volume and unit value of United Kingdom's trade with particular countries would be a complex task involving both computer and manual resources. The work would involve, among other things, consideration of the methodology of deriving such estimates to ensure that they were both accurate and consistent with the existing aggregate statistics, as well as requiring extensive computer programming. Estimating the likely costs involved is a considerable task, and one which I regret I cannot undertake at the moment.
UNITED KINGDOM TRADE WITH EEC(6) AND THE REST OF THE WORLD (First quarter to Third quarter 1979) £million OTS basis Exports fob Imports cif Crude balance (a) Total trade 0–9 less crude oil(1) and Division 66(2) EEC(6) 8,591 12,494 -3,903 Rest of the World 17,945 18,062 -117 (b) Manufactures less Division 66(2) EEC(6) 6,759 9,834 -3,075 Rest of the World 14,844 10,927 +3,918 (1) Crude oil defined as SITC (Rev 2) Group 333. (2) Full details of trade in precious stones are not available, but they form about 80 per cent. of Division 66 (non-metallic mineral manufactures) trade with EEC(8). (3) These figures have been taken from the September edition of "Overseas Trade Statistics of the United Kingdom" and include all the previously unrecorded import information.
§ Mr. Austin Mitchellasked the Secretary of State for Trade if he will publish in theOfficial Reporta table showing the relative export price of British manufactures and the United Kingdom share of (a) world trade and (b) trade with non-