HC Deb 26 February 1991 vol 186 cc783-4
6. Mr. Simon Hughes

To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what has been the number of people registered at the Bermondsey unemployment benefit office for each month from January 1990 until February 1991, inclusive.

Mr. Forth

The information requested for January 1990 to January 1991 can be obtained from the NOMIS—national on-line manpower information system—database in the House of Commons Library. February 1991 figures will be available on 14 March.

Mr. Hughes

The Minister must be too embarrassed to give the figures. Does he concede that there was a 21 per cent. increase in unemployment in the past six months in one of the four docklands constituencies, that there was a 25 per cent. increase in female unemployment, that there is one job vacancy in the local office for every 40 people unemployed and that that is the clearest evidence of the growing recession which is sweeping the south-east, let alone the rest of the country? In a part of the world where the housing service is grossly overstretched, where the health service is pushed to its limits and where the social services cannot cope, is it a sign of success when the Government now tell people that they will lose their jobs as well? Is that a successful economic record?

Mr. Forth

The hon. Gentleman is entitled to put that sort of interpretation upon what is happening if he so wishes, but I should have thought that it would be more realistic to point out that since he was elected in 1983 unemployment has dropped dramatically in his constituency, there are 100,000 fewer unemployed in London than in 1987 and unemployment in this country is lower than the average in the European Community, which I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman supports with great fervour. I might also mention the large number of imaginative programmes that my Department is making available to the hon. Gentleman's constituents and others to help them over a difficult period if they should lose their jobs. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State has already pointed out, more than a quarter of those who lose their jobs come off the register within the first month, more than half leave it within three months and two thirds of those who lose their jobs are off the register within six months. That is a much more positive way of looking at it.