Oral Answers to Questions — National Finance – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 23 February 1989.
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what has been the growth of real personal disposable income over the latest 12-month period for which figures are available.
3½per cent.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the increase in disposable incomes is the most tangible way in which people realise the success of the Government's economic policy, and that it has been reflected in increased home ownership, wider share ownership and an increase in the general standard of living of all people in the United Kingdom?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He may recall that real take-home pay for a married man, with two children, who is on average earnings has gone up by some 29 per cent. since the Government have been in power. The comparable figure when Labour was in power was a miserly, measly 0·7 per cent.
If real disposable income is increasing and if all the other answers that we have heard from Treasury Ministers are correct, why have they not told the voters in Richmond, Yorkshire, where half the Conservative vote is disappearing from view?
I am sure that by this time tomorrow the hon. Gentleman's question will have been proved wholly wrong.