§ Sir J. Langford-Holtasked the Secretary of State for Employment whether he will give full details of the methods used to calculate the rate of inflation and the cost of living indices.
§ Mr. GoldingA popular account of the methods used to calculate the retail prices index is given in an article "The Unstatistical Reader's Guide to the Retail Prices Index" in the October 1975 issue of theDepartment of Employment Gazette. A fuller account is given in the booklet "Method of Construction and 399W Calculation of the Index of Retail Prices" which is currently being revised to take into account later developments, for example, in the latest report of the Retail Prices Index Advisory Committee entitled "Housing costs, weighting and other matters affecting the retail prices index", (Cmnd. 5906, 1975), and recent technical changes to the index described in an article on page 148 of the February 1978 issue of the Department of Employment Gazette.