§ Mr. Manuelasked the Prime Minister if he will set out in the OFFICIAL REPORT details of the effect on public expenditure of the alternative measures to those announced by the Government on 16th January, details of which have been sent to him.
§ The Prime MinisterIf my hon. Friend has in mind the measures proposed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod) on 17th January, 1968, the information he wants is set out in the table below. I should add that the right hon. Gentleman's proposals were not all 351W specific and certain assumptions have had to be made in order to quantify them. The assumptions too are set out below.
Effect in 1969–70 £ million 1. Cuts in the Civil Service Assume a cut of 5 per cent. 30 2. Increase in school meal charges Assume an increase of 1s. 0d. from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. 20 3. Abandon the Industrial Expansion Bill (a) Industrial investmentschemes—no estimate of expenditure can be made, since it will depend on progress of schemes to be approved by the House of Commons — (b) Other provisions in the Bill 10–15 4. Abandon transport measures now before the House Abandoning the new grants to public passenger transport would save £20 million; but if the new freight charges were dropped, Exchequer revenue would drop by £33 million. Net dis-saving -13 5. Abandonment of S.E.T. and Regional Employment Premium The effect of abolishing S.E.T., S.E.T. additional payments and R.E.P. would be a net loss to the Exchequer of about £200 million -200 6. Encourage rent rebates on the lines of the recent G.L.C. announcements These schemes do not provide any public expenditure saving. They are concessions to poorer tenants, which are usually met by a re-distribution of housing subsidies — 7. Abolish the Land Commission (i) Cost of purchase of land would probably be more than offset by loss of levy — (ii) Saving on staff costs 3 Net total -145 to -150 or, say, to allow for uncertainties in the calculations -100 to -150