§ Mr. Bruce-Gardyneasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what has been the percentage increase in supplementary benefits and in average industrial earnings, respectively, over the past 10 and five years, respectively.
§ Mrs. Chalker[pursuant to her repty, 29 October 1979, c.438]: As my hon. Friend will note from paragraph 3.29 of the Supplementary Benefits Commission's annual report for 1978, the Department has recently changed its method of comparing benefit rates with earnings.
Information on which to make comparisons on the new basis is not available for years prior to 1970 but I invite my hon. Friend to study tables 3.3 to 3.6 of the same report, which contain considerable detail about the relative movements of supplementary benefit rates and average earnings in recent years.
I would, however, take this opportunity to correct an error which has come to light in part (d) of table 3.6. The entries in columns (2) and (3) for July 1974 should be £43.50 and 62.6(69.3) respectively.