asked the Prime Minister what consideration she will now give to obtaining more up-to-date information on the amount spent on scientific research and development each year, indicating the pattern over recent years, broken up into public and industrial, civil and military, pure and applied, and as a percentage of gross domestic product.
Expenditure on research and development in science and technology in the United Kingdom is published biennially in the August edition of Economic Trends. Information in respect of 1983 will be published in the August 1985 edition. Annual data would impose too large a burden on industry as the Government stated in their response to the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology in November 1983. Government expenditure on research and development is published annually in the same edition of Economic Trends.