§ Mr. Onslowasked the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity what estimate she has formed of the total number of productive man-hours lost since October, 1964, by reason of unemployment, inclement weather, absenteeism, illness, official strikes, unofficial strikes, and other industrial action, respectively.
§ Mr. Harold WalkerI regret that information is not available in terms of productive man-hours lost.
Estimates are practicable only for working days lost through stoppages of work due to industrial disputes and for days 39W of certified incapacity for national insurance purposes due to sickness, industrial accidents and prescribed diseases. For the former, between 1st October, 1964, and 31st January, 1970, the provisional total for the United Kingdom was nearly 20.4 million working days of which 6.1 million resulted from stoppages known to have been official. It is not known whether all of the stoppages accounting for the remainder were unofficial but the great majority would have been so. Information about the latter is available for the period 7th June, 1965, to 1st June, 1968. During these three years the number of days of certified incapacity due to sickness, industrial accidents and prescribed diseases in Great Britain was about 1,010 million.