Mr. Tom Ellisasked the Secretary of State for Industry what valuation in terms 249W of capital invested per employee is placed on manufacturing industry in England, Scotland and Wales, respectively.
§ Mr. MeacherI regret that information of the kind requested is not available in respect of England, Scotland and Wales. For the United Kingdom as a whole, estimates could be made available for gross and net capital stock at current replacement cost, 1970 replacement cost and historic cost. They are calculated by the "perpetual inventory" method which involves making assumptions about the average lives of different assets and applying them to past data on fixed capital formation. There are wide margins of error in this method, and separate country and regional estimates would involve making a further set of assumptions, which would give very unreliable results. The method is designed primarily to estimate capital consumption in the national accounts and the figures therefore relate only to replaceable fixed assets and exclude land and, of course, working capital.