asked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will consider including the costs of meals on wheels in the retail price index for pensioner households.

Expenditure on meals on wheels is included in the expenditure pattern on which the retail prices index numbers for pensioner households are based. However, price quotations for a wide range of representative items of expenditure on food and meals are already collected and I do not consider that expenditure on meals on wheels is sufficiently substantial, taking pensioner households as a whole, to justify collecting additional prices specifically for them.