To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will update the table in the answer to the hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire) on 10 January 1989, Official Report, columns 632–34, stating the effects at different income levels of alternative policies based on Exchequer expenditure equal to a 1p cut in income tax.

The effects of the various changes to income tax and child benefit on a married man with two children are shown in the table. Each of the changes would cost £1·7 billion a year, that is the cost in a full year of a 1 p cut in the basic rate of income tax. Estimates are based on projections of the 1987–88 survey of personal incomes in line with forecasts in the Autumm Statement.

The latest available information on profits and capital flows remitted back to the host country by foreign-owned concerns in the United Kingdom is given in table 2·1 of Business Monitor MA4 "Overseas Transactions 1987". The relevant items in net earnings and net direct investment are:

(i) interest paid to, net of interest received from, overseas parent companies;

(ii) dividends paid to overseas parent companies;

(iii) net profits from United Kingdom branches;

(iv) disposals of United Kingdom companies' share and loan capital.

In addition, the categories "increase in amount due to overseas parent on inter company account" and "increase in indebtedness to overseas parent companies on branch head office account" may include indistinguishably certain capital flows from United Kingdom subsidiaries, associates and branches to their overseas direct investors.