§ Mr. Lawsonasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer, further to his answer, Official Report, 19 February, column 36, whether he will publish estimates of the repayment schedule of foreign debt over the period up to 1982; and whether the degree of debt repayment assumed in the economic projections in the latest public expenditure White Paper is sufficient to meet the timing and scale of current repayment obligations in full.
§ Mr. Joel Barnett, pursuant to the reply [Official Report, 12 March 1979; Vol. 964, c. 75], gave the following information:
Schedules of capital and interest payments on outstanding foreign currency debt are published quarterly in the Bank of England Bulletin. It is the Government's policy to make net repayment of debt year by year, by combining repayment of maturing debt with some new borrowing to spread the hump of maturities occurring over the next few years. This policy was taken into account in framing the economic assumptions in the Public Expenditure White Paper.