Disposable Income

HC Deb 22 July 1987 vol 120 cc213-5W

Mr. Nicholas Brown

asked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will publish figures on the distribution of aggregate disposable income in 1985, showing lowest and highest deciles, upper and lower quartiles, and the median, for (a) all households in the United Kingdom and (b) for Greater London, in an adjusted form that will allow direct comparisons with the published figures for 1983 and earlier years.

Mr. Lee

The exact information requested in available only at disproportionate cost. However provision was made in analysis of the 1983 "Family Expenditure Survey" (when the introduction of the housing benefit scheme necessitated a change of income definition) to provide results on two bases. The figures below show 1985 and 1983 distributions from the "Family Expenditure Survey" on the current basis.

local authority services, the police service, the fire service, prison officers, the Civil Service, subdivided as appropriate, but indicating separately, the professional and technology group and the science group, non-manual staff in gas, electricity and water, salaried staff in British Rail and clerical and executive grades in the Post Office.

Mr. Lee

The available information which is based on new earnings survey results for national agreements affecting these groups is shown in the table. Comparable information for 1972 was not collected for all the agreements shown.

	1972 to 1986 per cent.	1979 to 1986 per cent.	1983–1986 per cent.
Civil Service
Administration group:
Middle and higher grades	..	95.5	18.5
Clerical grades	..	84.8	18.8
Professional and technology group	..	108.4	18.0
Science group	..	88.0	15.4
Secretarial, typing and data processing grades	..	94.2	21.1
Gas staffs and senior officers NJC	..	112.8	22.0
Electricity administrative and clerical grades NJC	..	119.3	26.5
Water service staffs NJC	..	117.5	24.9
British Rail—salaried staff	..	125.7	27.3
Post Office—clerical and executive grades	..	..	20.1
1 Whose earnings were not affected by absence.
.. Not available.

The figures shown in the table can be affected by the timing of pay settlements. Changes in average earnings can reflect several factors including changes in the amount of overtime worked and changes in the structure and composition of employment.