Letter from the Director, Macro-Economic Statistics and Analysis Group, Office for National Statistics, Mr. John Kidgell, dated 29 June 1999.

In the absence of the Director of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I have been asked to reply to your recent parliamentary question on the deficit of the United Kingdom's trade with the rest of the European Union (EU).

Latest data for current account transactions with the EU are published in the Balance of Payments First Release, a copy of which is available in the House of Lords Library. The latest release published on 22 March gave estimates for 1997 and 1998.

Estimates of the geographical breakdown of the UK balance of payments current account data for 1992 to 1997 were published in Economic Trends, December 1998 (number 541), a copy of which is available in the House of Lords Library. It is planned to extend this analysis from 1988 to 1998 in the forthcoming annual UK Balance of Payments (Pink Book) to be published later this summer. These data are likely to be revised for all years due to improvements in methodology.

A copy of the relevant pages of the Economic Trends article are enclosed. I have also attached a table that shows the UK's current account balance with the EU excluding the balance on current transfers for the years 1992 to 1998. Finally, I have attached a table showing the UK's balance of trade in goods only for 1973 to 1998.

Letter from the Director, Macro-Economic Statistics and Analysis Group, Office for National Statistics, Mr. John Kidgell, dated 29 June 1999.

In the absence of the Director of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I have been asked to reply to your recent parliamentary question on current account data for the United Kingdom with the countries in the European Union (EU).

The data requested are shown in the attached table. The latest annual data for the individual EU countries are for 1997 as published in the December 1998 edition of Economic Trends. Figures for 1998 will be published in the 1999 UK Balance of Payments Pink Book, a copy of which will be available in the House of Lords Library at the end of August.

The ONS does not compile constant price data for trade in goods and services for individual countries. We do however publish volume and price indices for trade in goods with the EU as a whole. I am therefore attaching copies of tables 4 and 5 from the latest UK Trade First Release, published 23 June, a copy of which is available in the House of Lords Library. The series have been defined to include Finland, Austria and Sweden for the years before their accession.

Source:

Office for National Statistics.

Notes:

¹ Data for Belgium are not separately available.

² The definition of the EU includes EU institutions as defined by EUROSTAT.