§ Sir D. Gloverasked the President of the Board of Trade (1) how long after the receipt of the complete information obtained through the Census of Distribution for 1966 are the correlated answers being used; and how long after that Departments may be expected to act on the information so received;
(2) to how many firms the Census of Distribution for 1966 was sent; and when sufficient replies are expected to be received to enable the work of correlation and study to take place.
§ Mr. DarlingThe statistics derived from the Census of Distribution are used as soon as they are available and thereafter until the next Census is taken and beyond.
Forms were sent to about 74,000 organisations out of an estimated 460,000 within the scope of the Census. About two-thirds have been returned to 68W the Census Office and the bulk is expected to be in by about the end of this year. The provisional results will be published in December. It is hoped to publish the main volume of the final report about mid-1968 and the second and final volume later that year. Some of the statistics will be available for use in Government Departments before publication.
§ Sir S. Summersasked the President of the Board of Trade for what purpose the answers to the following parts of the Census of Distribution for 1966 are used, namely, cost of new building work or other constructional work, or of land and existing buildings acquired or disposed of, cost of, or the proceeds of vehicles bought or sold, cost of, or proceeds of plant, machinery and other capital equipment bought or sold, and the operating cost of C and B licence vehicles.
§ Mr. DarlingThe information derived from the Census of Distribution on capital expenditure and other subjects is one of the sources for the social accounts of the United Kingdom and is used as a bench mark for short period statistics, which provide measures of the demands on the country's economic resources. The component figures (on construction work, vehicles, etc.) are used in addition for studying and forecasting the differing trends in the demand for the output of the industries concerned.
The information on transport costs will be used to show how important transport is as an element of cost for retailers; and to provide information about the use of the country's transport resources and the inter-relationships between the transport and other industries.
§ Sir S. Summersasked the President of the Board of Trade what is the estimated cost of designing, issuing and correlating the Census of Distribution for 1966.
§ Mr. DarlingAbout £380,000.