asked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will give the resources allocated to the Health and Safety Executive in each year of its existence stating them in (a) cash terms and (b) real terms; and if he will give the number of inspections carried out in each year.

The resources allocated to the Health and Safety Commission and Executive have been published each year in Supply Estimates. When these are deflated using the single index most widely used for such purposes, the gross domestic product deflator, the figures are as shown in the following table. When using the figures in column (3) it should be remembered that a number of elements within the Health and Safety Commission/Executive's budget have not moved in line with the gross domestic product over this period.

£000's
Year (1)	Supply Estimate (2)	At 1983–84 prices (3)
1974–75	12,311	37,193
1975–76	27,972	67,565
1976–77	38,610	82,149
1977–78	44,647	83,609
1978–79	46,836	79,383
1979–80	55,757	80,807
1980–81	70,970	86,760
1981–82	80,816	89,996
1982–83	81,335	84,990
1983–84	87,873	87,873
1984–85	90,298	86,410
1985–86	93,283	85,035

The numbers of visits made by Health and Safety Executive inspectors in each year from 1975 (the first full year of the Executive's existence) to 1983 are as follows:

Year	Number of Visits
1975	341,000
1976	307,000
1977	279,000
1978	281,000
1979	289,000
1980	291,000
1981	270,000
1982	254,000
1983	241,000

Visits may be made for a variety of purposes and vary greatly in duration. Care should also be taken in interpreting movements in figures for total visits because of changes in recording methods over the years and changes in the priority given to different types of visits with varying average duration.