§ EARL WINTERTON (Sussex, Horsham)I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade for what reason the figures relating to employment in Germany have been omitted from recent issues of the Board of Trade Labour Gazette; and whether he will give instructions for the figures of employment in different countries to be obtained in future.
§ THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE,) Carnarvon BoroughsFigures relating to employment in Germany are only 861 published quarterly by the German Labour Department. The last figures available were included in the Labour Gazette for November last, and the next will be included in the February issue. Official statistics of employment in foreign countries are regularly published in the Gazette as soon as available. While they are useful for the purpose of tracing changes in employment within any particular country, they are entirely useless as a means of comparing the state of employment in different countries as the basis of the figures is quite different. A warning to this effect appears regularly in the Labour Gazette.