asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will publish tables showing total identifiable public expenditure in the four countries of the United Kingdom, on each of the main functional programmes, in each year since 1973–74, in £ million, as a percentage of total United Kingdom identifiable public expenditure and in £ sterling per head.

The tables below show figures of identifiable public expenditure on the main functional programmes in the four countries of the United Kingdom, over the past five years, in £ million, as percentages of total United Kingdom identifiable expenditure and in pounds per head.The term "identifiable expenditure" refers to expenditure which can be identified from official records as having been incurred in a particular country. In the case of Scotland and Wales it has a wider coverage than expenditure within the responsibility of the Secretaries of State and than expenditure proposed for devolution, and in the case of Northern Ireland it has a slightly wider coverage than the Northern Ireland programme in the public expenditure survey. It excludes debt interest and expenditure on defence, overseas aid and other overseas services which is incurred on behalf of the United Kingdom as a whole. Total identifiable public expenditure represents about 75 per cent. of total public expenditure.The extent to which expenditure can be identified may vary from year to year and between countries, particularly for services administered on an England and Wales basis. The figures in the tables also reflect other differences in administrative arrangements; for example, current expenditure on sewerage by regional water authorities is treated as a trading expense in England and Wales and excluded from public expenditure: but in Scotland it is local authority rate fund expenditure and so is included in other environmental services as public expenditure. Total Government net lending to nationalised industries is allocated to countries, industry by industry, pro rata to the industries' identifiable capital investment, and the amounts attributed to each country fluctuate from year to year because of the variability both of the aggregate lending figures and of the incidence of expenditure on large capital projects in particular countries.The estimates below were compiled during the late summer of 1978. They use the terms and classifications of the public expenditure White Paper "The Government's Expenditure Plans, 1978–79 to 1981–82 ", Cmnd. 7049, published in January 1978 and, for earlier years, may therefore differ slightly from those given in Answers previously. The public expenditure totals on which the estimates are based correspond broadly to those of the Treasury Analysis of Public Expenditure, published as a Supplementary Table in the September issue of "Financial Statistics ", and they do not take account of the later information on expenditure, particularly for 1977–78, included in the White Paper" The Government's Expenditure Plans, 1979–80 to 1982–83 "—Cmnd. 7439.