§ Mr. Hayhoeasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what information he has available from international sources, regarding the proportion of national income per head of the population that was spent by the Member States of the European Economic Community taken as a whole and by the United Kingdom on social services in 1958, and in the latest year for which he has comparative statistics available.
§ Mr. DeanI regret that the information asked for in the Question is not available.Basic Statistics, published by the Statistical Office of the European 307W Communities, give the following information with the proviso—which should not be overlooked—that figures for non-European Economic Community countries are not strictly comparable since they do not cover the same fields:
Social Security expenditure as percentage of gross national product at market prices 1958 1966 Germany … 14.1 15.1 France … 11.9 14.0 Italy … 10.6 14.6 Netherlands … 11.2 16.2 Belgium … 12.3 14.8 Luxembourg … 13.3 16.1 United Kingdom … — 12.7 The I.L.O. figure for the United Kingdom in the year 1958–59 was 10.7.