asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how the United Kingdom figure for the increase in the real money supply, after taking account of increases in gross domestic product, so far in the current year compares with the corresponding figures for Japan and West Germany.

, pursuant to his reply [Official Report, 7th November 1978; Vol. 957, c. 133], gave the following information:The following table sets out the increase in the real money supply for the United Kingdom, West Germany and Japan over the period between the middle of the last quarter of 1977 and the middle of the second quarter of 1978.

Country		Money supply measure	"Real" money supply growth Per cent
United Kingdom	…	£M3	3·4
West Germany	…	M2	2·5
Japan	…	M2	3·5

For each country national income statistics are available only for the period up to the second quarter of 1978. Precise comparisons between the growth of the money supply and the growth of GDP are not possible since the former relates to stock figures on a particular day and the latter to flows during a period. For each country the growth of real money supply has been estimated by adjusting the growth in the chosen measure of money supply from the average of the stock at the end of the last two quarters of 1977 to the average of the stock at the end of the first two quarters of 1978, by the change in the GDP deflator between the last quarter of 1977 and the second quarter of 1978.