United Kingdom National Accounts – The Blue Book

[1][2] After the Second World War the UK government recognised the importance of understanding what kind of state the economy was in.

This continued to develop until 1984 when it was renamed 'UK National Accounts – The Blue Book', and expanded to around 140 pages.

Chapter 2;[7] Includes Input-Output Supply and Use tables and analyses of gross value added at current market prices and chained volume measures, capital formation and employment, by industry.

This section analyses GVA, Gross Fixed Capital Formation and employment by the ten broad industry groups; Chapters 3 (Non-financial corporations),[8] 4 (Financial Corporations),[9] 5 (General Government),[10] 6 (Households and Non-profit Institutions Serving Households (NPISH))[11] and 7 (Rest of World)[12] cover the sector accounts.

The sector accounts summarise the transactions of particular groups of institutions within the economy, showing how the income from production is distributed and redistributed and how savings are used to add wealth through investment in physical or financial assets.

For each of the four sectors (the rest of the world does not have a production account), the balancing item, gross value added, is shown as output less intermediate consumption.

The sum of gross value added and taxes less subsidies on products for the UK economy is equal to GDP at market prices.

The value of net lending/borrowing is the same irrespective of whether the accounts are shown before or after deduction of fixed capital consumption, provided a consistent approach is adopted throughout.

Includes chapters 8 (Percentage Distributions and Growth Rates),[13] 9 (Fixed Capital Formation Supplementary Tables),[14] 10 (National Balance Sheet),[15] 11 (Public Sector Supplementary Tables)[16] and 12 (Statistics for European Union Purposes).

In December 2012, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in partnership with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) published a 'roadmap' that set out the timeline for the project to incorporate natural capital into the national accounts.

These accounts, once complete, will enable natural capital to be incorporated into mainstream economic decision-making.