§ 32. Mr. CranTo ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what plans he has to improve the methods for assessing the performance of the United Kingdom computing service industry in comparison with overseas competitors.
§ Mr. ButcherI do not seek to assess the performance of the private sector. The Department does, however, collect and publish information about the billings of the computing services sector (including its billings to overseas clients). These arrangements have recently been strengthened to improve the quality of the figures. This 143W information is published in the relevant Business Monitor. The Government also support the efforts of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to establish a framework which will enable international comparisons of this kind of information to be made.