§ Mr. Nicholas Wintertonasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if his Department is satisfied that the sterling M3 definition of money supply is proving entirely accurate in measuring the growth in the level of money.
§ Mr. LawsonAs the Green Paper on monetary control published last March (Cmnd. 7858) pointed out, no single statistical measure of the money supply can be expected fully to encapsulate monetary conditions. So that although the target ranges in the medium-term financial strategy are denominated in terms of £M3 growth rates, the Government watch developments in a range of aggregates in assessing the overall tightness of monetaary policy. As for £M3 itself, the removal of the corset revealed distortions in the recorded figures, but these distortions have now substantially worked themselves through.