asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will publish in the Official Report the text of the letter from the hon. Member for Renfrewshire, East (Mr. Stewart) to the hon. Member for Dundee, West of 10 September regarding the level of rates paid by manufacturing industry in Scotland.

The text of the letter is as follows:

Thank you for your letter of 23 August about the rates paid by manufacturing industry in Scotland.

The figures quoted by Jack Straw in theHansardcutting which you enclosed from the proceedings on the Finance Bill on 12 July were, as he said, taken from the Business Statistics Office census of production for 1979. These figures are in respect of the United Kingdom and separate figures for Scotland and for England and Wales are not apparently available from this source. In any case we have no such information for the retail and service industry, which you asked for in the last part of your Question of 28 July.

Although we do not have the figures you asked for, we have others which may help to answer part of your question in approximate terms. We can first of all reach an approximate figure for rate-payments in Scotland by manufacturing industry which includes what are described as industrial and freight transport subjects. The calculation is done by applying to the total rate income for a year that percentage of total Scottish rateable values which the general industrial sector comprises. Figures for the three preceding years are as follows:—

	Total rate income	Per cent. of total rateable value comprising industrial + freight transport subject	Approximate total rate payments in respect of industrial subjects
	£ million		£ million
1979–80	720·6	12·5	90·1
1980–81	975·7	11·7	114·2
1981–82	1,321·0	11·3	149·3

For the reasons given above I cannot relate rate payments to total manufacturing costs. We do however have figures for Scottish industry's sales or turnover up to 1979–80 and for that year these came to about £15 billion. As you see this makes a rate burden of about £6 per £1,000 of turnover. The comparable figure for England and Wales is £5·40. As you will notice these figures are very similar to those provided to Jack Straw by the Department of the Environment for rates as a proportion of manufacturing costs.