§ Mr. Markhamasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury on what methods the costs of printing Parliamentary publications are assessed; how the charge to the public of the report of the Joint Committee on the Collecting Charities Bill conforms to this assessment; and whether he will consider reducing the price of this and comparable publications so as to make them more accessible to the general public?
§ Captain WallaceThe present system of pricing Government publications is so designed that the total cost of printing the copies for sale to the public (that is to say exclusive of the cost of compiling the material and the cost of official copies) is recovered from the proceeds of sale without any appreciable profit or loss to the taxpayer.
The charge to the public for the report of the Joint Committee on the Collecting Charities Bill conforms to the scale fixed under this system. It is undesirable to vary the pricing scale in favour of particular documents, and I do not think that departure from the normal practice would be justified in this case.