asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will publish a table showing the latest figures for annual expenditure on public services of all categories, including defence, incurred in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, respectively.

The tables below show figures of identifiable public expenditure on the main functional programmes in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Figures are presented for the past five years in pounds million, as a percentage of total United Kingdom identifiable expenditure, in pounds per head and the latter as a percentage of United Kingdom identifiable expenditure 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 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 1979. They use the terms and classifications of the public expenditure White Paper "The Government's Expenditure Plans 1979–80 to 1982–83" Cmnd. 7439, published in January 1979 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 a small amount of later information on expenditure, particularly for 1978–79, included in the White Paper "The Government's Expenditure Plans, 1980–81" (Cmnd. 7746).

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to his answer of 15 November, what particular economic developments he was referring to in his assessment of their impact on nationalised industries' shortfall.

I shall let the right hon. Member have a reply as soon as possible.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much of the planned £3·5 billion reduction in public expenditure will be accounted for by the reduction in the purchase of goods and services from the private sector; and how this will be distributed between the various industries.

Cmnd. 7746 indicated the Government's intention to stabilise public spending for the time being. There is no planned reduction in total public expenditure. It is not for me to speculate on what additional orders various industries might have gained if the unrealistic plans of the previous Government were implemented.