HL Deb 09 November 1998 vol 594 cc71-2WA
Lord Kennet

asked Her Majesty's Government:

What proportion of economic activity they understand to be being measured by means of (a) Gross Domestic Product and (b) Gross National Product in:

  1. (a) the United Kingdom;
  2. (b) the European Union;
  3. (c) the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries;
  4. (d) the Council of Europe countries;
  5. (e) less developed countries; and
  6. (f) the most indebted countries.
[HL3605]

Lord McIntosh of Haringey

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the Director of the Office for National Statistics, who has been asked to reply.

Letter to Lord Kennet from the Director of the Office for National Statistics, Dr. T. Holt, dated 9 November 1998.

As Director of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I have been asked to reply to your recent parliamentary question on economic activity.

I replied to you on a similar question in my letter of 15 July this year (Official Report, 15 July 1998, WA 29). As I explained then, the ONS does not have the information requested.

The measurement of economic activity is covered by the internationally agreed System of National Accounts 1993, and GDP and GNP are widely used as measures of economic activity by countries around the world. For the European Union, the equivalent of the System of National Accounts has been agreed under the ESA95 Council Regulation No. 2223/96 on "the European system of national and regional accounts in the Community".

Estimates of GDP may not capture all economic activity in countries which have, for example, a significant amount of illegal economic production, a large volume of transactions in barter, or substantial household production. However, these are extremely difficult to measure, more still to measure with any realistic comparability between countries.

An article "A household satellite account for the UK" was published in the October 1997 issue of Economic Trends, which presented some developmental work on household accounts for the UK. Also, an article was published in the July 1998 issue of Economic Trends, "Developing a methodology for measuring illegal activity for the UK national accounts", which examined the feasibility of making estimates of economic transactions which are illegal. Copies of both articles are attached. Also, Economic Trends is available in the House of Lords Library.

Some other countries have undertaken similar work, although all such work is at a developmental stage.