EARL OF RONALDSHAY (Middlesex, Hornsey)To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will take steps to have the unemployment chart, which is published in the Board of Trade Labour Gazette, based upon returns affecting all members of trade unions in future instead of upon returns affecting only 591,000 members; and can he give the percentage of the whole of the members of trade unions at present unemployed.
(Answered by Mr. Churchill.) It is not possible to comply with the suggestions of the noble Lord, as many trade unions are unable to state the numbers of their members out of work, and any figures they might supply would of necessity be merely estimates. The Board of Trade have convinced themselves, after the most careful examination of the question, that the only solid and trustworthy basis for statistics of this kind for the purpose of serving as a barometer of the labour market is the record kept by trade unions which pay unemployed benefit. Any gain by widening the basis so as to include unions which do not keep this record would be much more than counter-balanced by the greatly increased margin of error in the returns.