§ Mr. Meacherasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what has been the level of public expenditure each year since 1960; and what has been the percentage increase each year in (a) current prices and (b) real prices.
§ Mr. Lawson[pursuant to his reply, 28 July 19831: The definition of public expenditure has changed over the past 20 years. A major change was introduced in the public expenditure white paper published in January 1977 (Cmnd. 6721) when Government grants and loans to nationalised industries rather than their capital expenditure was included in public expenditure. The full external finance of nationalised industries was included in the next public expenditure white paper (Cmnd. 7049) with the addition of the market and overseas borrowing of the nationalised industries. Since then, the treatment of most other, but not all, public corporations has been brought onto this basis. The figures for market and overseas borrowing of the public corporations treated in this way are not available prior to 1974–75.
The figures requested are available from 1963-64 as follows:
729W
Public Expenditure Planning Total Cash£b Percentage change on year earlier Cost terms £b* Percentage change on year earlier (1) (2) (3) (4) 1978–79 65.7 15.8 100.4 4.7 1979–80 76.9 17.0 100.3 -0.1 1980–81 92.8 20.6 102.4 2.1 1981–82 104.7 12.8 104.7 2.2 1982–83 113.0 8.0 105.5 0.8 1983–84 (plans in Cmnd 8789) 119.6 5.8 105.9 0.4 * Cash figure in column 1 deflated by GDP deflator