§ Mr. GillTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what are the comparable figures for the number of small, medium and large companies in the United Kingdom, Japan and West Germany.
§ Mr. Redwood[holding answer 19 February 1990]: Although some information is published by the individual countries' statistical services there are few sources in which international data are compiled in a comparable form. The most reliable surveys available have been carried out by the Statistical Office of the European Communities (SOEC) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Both studies include businesses which are not incorporated as well as companies and define size in terms of number of people employed. The available comparative data relate to manufacturing industry only. Inclusion of the service sector would be likely to raise the proportions employed in smaller companies still further in each country.
An SOEC report entitled "Structure and activity of industry: data by size of enterprises 1983" contains the following comparison between the United Kingdom and West Germany:
industry cannot be directly compared with the SOEC report. The OECD study presents size distributions by employment numbers but not by numbers of enterprises, and the absolute numbers are not stated.