asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, and if so when, he has informed the Chairman of the International Monetary Fund that the Government have now abandoned their objective of getting the year-on-year increase in retail prices below 10 per cent. by the end of 1976.

The IMF will no doubt be aware of paragraph 14 of the White Paper "The Attack on Inflation—The Second Year" (Cmnd. 6507), which makes it quite clear that we do not now expect the rate of inflation to fall to single figures by the end of 1976.