HC Deb 26 June 1961 vol 643 cc10-1
14. Mr. Lawson

asked the Minister of Labour if he will describe the nature of the apprenticeship scheme operated by the betting industry, giving the length of time required to be served, the qualifications demanded, and the percentage of apprentices in the industry at present enrolled in the appropriate day release classes.

Mr. P. Thomas

There is no apprenticeship schema for the betting industry as such. Figures recently published by the Department showed sixteen boys and five girls entering apprenticeships or learnerships in the industry in 1960. Of these, two boys entered the industry as apprentices in engineering and printing occupations; one boy and four girls entered the industry as clerks, not as apprentices; eleven boys and one girl entering apprenticeships in other industries were wrongly classified as entering the betting industry and two cases cannot be traced. I apologise for these errors, which are partly due to changes in the industrial coding.

Mr. Lawson

The published figures from which the information has been taken show there were more apprentices this year than ever before. Are not these figures exceedingly unreliable? Will the Minister look much more closely into the question of how the figures are arranged and obtained so that we can get some reliable information about the number of apprentices in industry?

Mr. Thomas

I do not think the Answer I gave shows that the figures as a whole are unreliable. My inquiries have shown that the mistakes are mainly due to the recent introduction of the betting industry under a separate heading in the statistics, which apparently has led to some confusion between the new heading and previously existing headings. A new procedure which is to come into operation next month has as one of its objectives to reduce the possibility of such errors.