§ 54. Mr. Osborneasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will give the complete data on which the calculation that the purchasing power of the £ is today 16s. 4d. as against 20s. in 1945 is based.
§ Sir S. CrippsAny estimate of the change in the purchasing power of the £ between two dates is necessarily based on the movement of some price index. The most appropriate index is one covering the whole of consumers' expenditure such as that published annually in the National Income White Paper. The latest figure in this series relates to 1948. Provisional100W estimates for later months have been obtained by linking it to the Interim Index of Retail Prices published by the Ministry of Labour.
The actual calculations for measuring the change in the purchasing power of the £ between 1945 and today are set out below.
— Index of Prices of Consumers' Expenditure (1938=100) Purchasing Power of the £ (1945 = 100) Year 1945 153* 100 Year 1948 180* 85 September, 1949 (before devaluation) 186.7† 82‡ * From the National Income White Paper. † The average for 1948 of the Interim Index of Retail Prices was 107.7. For September, 1949 it was 111.7. The 1948 figure in the index from the National Income White Paper, brought up to date is thus 180 × 111.7./107.7. ‡ 82 = 153/186.7 × 100