§ Mr. Gouldasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer, further to the answer dated 14 May, Official Report, column 85, concerning real exchange rates, whether he will provide figures for the increases in the normal rate since the fourth quarter of 1984 together with an explanation of what is covered by wholesale export prices.
§ Mr. Ian StewartThe wholesale export price data used in my answer of 14 May derived from line 63 of the relevant country tables of the IMF's "International Financial Statistics", which is available in the House of Commons Library. The definitions vary from country to country, and can be found in the footnotes to those tables.
Percentage changes in sterling's nominal exchange rates against the currencies requested between the fourth quarter of 1984 (average) and the latest available date (29 May 1985) are as follows:
Percentage change Dollar/sterling +3.8 Yen/sterling +6.3 Deutschmark/sterling +4.9 French franc/sterling +4.3 Belgian franc*/sterling +4.8 Italian lira/sterling +8.3 Dutch guilder/sterling +5.0 *The Luxembourg franc has the same external value as the Belgian franc.