§ Mr. RuaneTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will list the average level of consumer debt owed by families for each of the last 10 years; and what his forecast is for each of the next three years. [110210]
613W
§ Mr. Timms[holding answer 15 February 2000]: The information requested falls within the responsibility of the Director of the Office for National Statistics. I have asked him to reply.
Letter from Tim Holt to Mr. Chris Ruane, dated 16 February 2000:
As Director of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I have been asked to reply to your parliamentary question on consumer debt.The consumer borrowing series that are readily available, consumer credit and mortgage lending, are published in Table 3.2B of Financial Statistics, a copy of which is in the House of Commons library. The database identifiers are VZRD and AMWT respectively.Information is not available on the number of families, from which to derive an average. Data on the number of households in Great Britain are published in the annual volume Housing and Construction Statistics, published by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. Using estimates of the number of households in the United Kingdom (UK), the average level of consumer borrowing per household was approximately £22,800 in 1998, the latest data available.We do not make forecasts of these series.