§ Mr. Altonasked the Secretary of State for Employment if, since Liverpool has lost 8,000 jobs through planned closures in manufacturing industry in the last year, and since 3,000 more losses have already been announced, he will seek to take urgent action to prevent the loss of further jobs.
§ Mr. GoldingI agree that Liverpool has suffered badly from redundancies and in no way want to underestimate the problems which they have created.
We should remember, however, that the temporary employment subsidy scheme, which has helped over 14,000 workers in the Liverpool travel-to-work area, undoubtedly prevented redundancies from being higher. This assistance has now been replaced by the new temporary short-time working scheme and I hope that employers in Liverpool will consider this as an alternative to redundancies.