Economic Growth

Mr. Sanders
To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what figures his Department records relating to recent (a) investment levels and (b) business growth, broken down by constituency.

Margaret Hodge
Data on investment levels are not available at constituency level. Data are produced at regional level by the Office for National Statistics and can be found at:

www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/gva1003.pdf

Data on the growth in the number of VAT registered businesses in each of the 640 parliamentary constituencies, can be calculated from data published by the DTI at:

www.dtistats.net/smes/vat

For illustrative purposes this is calculated for Torbay parliamentary constituency. Between the start of 2001 and 2006 the number of VAT registered businesses in Torbay constituency increased by 135, or 6 per cent.

Data on employment and turnover growth in existing businesses are not available at constituency level. They are published by DTI at the regional level and are available at:

www.dtistats.net/smes/sme

Calculated by dividing the change in stock between 2001and 2006 by the 2001 start of year stock.