§ Mr. Ron Thomasasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) in assessing the employment creation effects of the recently announced reductions in personal taxation, what adjustment was made for the increase in consumers' expenditure on imports of finished and semi-finished manufactured goods;
(2) what would be the estimated increase in employment arising from the recently announced reductions in personal taxation if the import penetration of finished and semi-finished manufactured goods were reduced by a half.
§ Mr. Denzil DaviesAs my right hon. Friend said in his statement on 26th October, the measures he was then announcing could produce an increase in
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§ Mr. Denzil DaviesEstimates of regional gross domestic product are given in the table below for 1975, the latest year for which figures are available. Identifiable public expenditure is shown for the financial year 1975–76, the closest period for comparison, for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. No estimates of identifiable public expenditure are available separately for the regions of England.
employment of 30,000 in the first quarter of 1978 and 170,000 in the first quarter of 1979 compared with what otherwise would have happened. These estimates were produced with the aid of the Treasury economic model which takes full account of the fact that the increase in consumers' expenditure would lead partly to a rise in imports and partly to a rise in domestic output. An estimate of the effect on employment if the increase in imports were reduced by half could be produced only at the cost of disproportionate time and effort.