Medium-Term Planning in UK Nationalised Industries: An Enquiry

There is now, of course, no official medium-term National Plan. The Government in recent years has published very little about possible medium-term developments. In the Public Expenditure White Paper, from December 1972 up to February 1976, there was a single table outlining the possible evolution of the economy over the four-year period which the public expenditure forward estimates cover. In the last two public expenditure white papers, even this single table has been dropped. In the latest paper there is the highly tentative suggestion that gross domestic product might rise at 3½ per cent a year up to 1979-80—but nothing is said about the macro-economic assumptions for later years. There is now no table showing the distribution of resources which might accompany this growth-rate—merely a text reference which says that ‘a rise in the proportion of national income devoted to industrial investment is essential…’