§ Mr. Freudasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what have been the annual sums spent on promoting the sale of premium bonds in each of the last three years; and if he will express these figures in percentage terms of his expenditure on promoting index-linked retirement bonds, excluding costs of launching the issue.
§ Mr. LawsonThe amount spent on promoting each of these securities for each of the last three complete financial years was as follows:
compares with table 1 of Cmnd. 7746, which shows expenditure on programmes to be £1,040 million in 1980–81; and if he will provide an analysis as to what shortfall has been arranged for individual programmes in each of the years 1979–80 and 1980–81.
Mr. Bitten[pursuant to his reply, 20 November 1979, c. 158]: There was a printing error in theOfficial Report of 12 November, column 423. The last sentence of that column in the reply to the right hon. Member should have read:
For1980–81 it is assumed that tighter expenditure plans will result in lower shortfall than assumed in the previous Government's plans published in Cmnd. 7439.The bound volume of theOfficial Report will contain the corrected text. It was this error that lead to the first two parts of the question. On the final point, no analysis of shortfall by individual programmes is available. This will have to await the outturn figures for the years in question.