§ Mr. Hordernasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will publish a table, from international sources available to him, of charges paid by companies on behalf of their employees, excluding income tax, per head, per week, and expressed in £ sterling, in France, West Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, respectively, at the latest comparable date.
§ Mr. BrittanThe international comparisons my hon. Friend seeks require a comprehensive measure of total non-wage labour costs for the company sector. Such a comparison should include administrative and training costs and other overhead expenditures in addition to social security payments and pay-roll taxes. It would be affected by the different treatment of pension contributions and of pan-time workers. Labour cost surveys published by the Statistical Office of the European Communities provide some of this information, for France, West Germany and the United Kingdom. The latest full survey results are for 1978. Comparable data for the United States of America and Japan are not available from published sources. I am writing to my hon. Friend giving more details and I will place a copy of the letter in the House of Commons library.