Mr Major’s Written Parliamentary Answer on Departmental Spending Programmes – 1 March 1988

Below is the text of Mr Major’s written Parliamentary Answer on Departmental Spending Programmes on 1st March 1988.

Mr. Kirkwood To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will list in the Official Report the relative price effect experienced for each Department’s spending programme for each year since 1979, and the retail price index for each year since 1979.

Mr. Major Since the introduction of cash planning in 1981 the Government have not compiled information on price movements systematically in the way that would be needed to calculate relative price effects for each departmental programme (or the planning total itself). Some Departments produce specific price indices for their own use. Appendix 3 to the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee (HC 292) lists the information which is available.

The retail prices index is published each month in the Employment Gazette. However, the GDP deflator is the measure of inflation used by the Government for public expenditure comparisons. This measures the rise in general inflation across the United Kingdom economy as a whole while the RPI is a consumer price index. The latest estimates of GDP deflators for the years since 1979 are as follows:

Years | GDP deflators
1978–79 | 51.3
1979–80 | 59.9
1980–81 | 71.0
1981–82 | 78.0
1982–83 | 83.7
1983–84 | 87.6
1984–85 | 91.5
1985–86 | 96.9
1986–87 | 100.0
1987–88 | 104.3