§ MR. ARTHUR HENDERSONI beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can give the approximate number of persons employed in the sweated and other trades to which the statutory orders as to particulars of wages, etc., applied during 1906, or the number of workshops and factories subject to the provisions of those orders, and the number of firms convicted for infringement of the particulars section in the same period.
§ MR. GLADSTONEThe total number of factories and workshops to which the provisions as to particulars apply is 24,661, of which 9,624 are textile. The total number of persons employed in such works, including both piece and time workers, is according to the latest available figures a little over 1,500,000, of which 1,000,000 are textile workers. I have no trustworthy figures as to the number of outworkers who have been brought under the provisions in question. The number of persons convicted in 1906 of infringements of the particulars section and orders was seventeen.