§ Mr. SalmondTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what documents comparable to Government Expenditure and Revenue in Scotland are published for regions of the UK. [89427]
§ Ruth KellyThe information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician. I have asked him to reply.
Letter from John Pullinger to Alex Saltnond dated 13 January 2003:
The National Statistician has been asked to reply to your parliamentary question on what documents comparable to Government Expenditure and Revenue in Scotland (GERS) are published for regions of the UK. I am replying in his absence.GERS is unique, and there are no directly comparable publications for the English regions, or for Wales and Northern Ireland. Comparable information on Wales used to be published by the Welsh Office, but this was last published in 1996 and related to the financial year 1993/94.There is, however, information published by the office for National Statistics (ONS) and other Government departments on Government expenditure and revenue within the regions of the UK that can provide a partial comparison on some aspects of the data for Scotland presented in GERS, as described below.HM Treasury published a comprehensive account of regional (NJTS I) Government expenditure in its annual publication Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses (HM Treasury (2002)) or PESA. The estimates show identifiable Government expenditure by function of government for Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the nine Government Office Regions of England. The PESA estimates do not cover Government revenue.On 31 October 2002, the ONS published experimental sub-national estimates of Government accounts for the calendar year 1998. The estimates show by region (NUTS1) where General Government output is produced, which regions and sub-regions have contributed to Government revenue and which regions and sub-regions have received Government expenditure. The ONS work, however, is not intended to give a complete picture of Government finances and certain aspects of revenue and expenditure are excluded from the analyses and hence the estimates are not directly comparable with GERS.Finally, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has commissioned a project to identify the flow of Public expenditure (UK and European) into the English regions (NUTS1) and the allocative mechanisms that underpin those flows. The project has close links with the PESA estimates and with the ONS Government accounts work, but is not looking at Government revenue. The project is expected to be completed by the middle of 2003.