§ 9. Mr. Ellis Smithasked the Minister of Labour the percentage increase in wages since 1939 paid to those employed in the engineering industry on plain time rates, the percentage paid on wages since 1939 to those employed on piecework, the highest percentage increase paid in all industry and the average increase paid in all industry?
§ Mr. BevinThe percentage increase in wages varies widely, not only in different industries, but in different occupations, districts and undertakings in those industries, 315 and the available information is not sufficient to enable me to answer the first three parts of the Question. It is estimated that the average weekly increase in full-time rates of wages from the beginning of the war until the end of February, 1943, was about 33 per cent. or 34 per cent. The latest available information, about average earnings in the principal industries relates to July, 1942. This was published in the "Ministry of Labour Gazette" last December.