§ Mrs. Beckettasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will publish in the Official Report an outline of the considerations which led to the ratio of contributors to pensioners published in the Government Actuary's contribution to "Population, Pension Costs and Pensioners' Incomes" being revised to 2.3 in 1984–85 and 1.8 in 2025–26 from the figures of 2.4 in 1985–86 and 2.1 in 2025–26, as given in the 1982 Review.
§ Mr. WhitneyThe difference between the two sets of estimates is almost entirely due to the revision of projections of the number of people over pension age to reflect a fall in mortality rates which took place between the mid-1979 official projections used in the report of the Government Actuary on the long-term financial estimates for the national insurance fund published in 1982, and the mid-1981 official projections used in "Population, Pension Costs and Pensioners' Insurances" published in 1984 (see paragraph 4 of that report).