§ Mr. Ralph Howellasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will give (a) the total number of people unemployed, (b) those people who were engaged on special employment and training measures and (c) those people who have received State aid towards early retirement, for each of the years 1970, 1975, and 1979 and for the latest year for which figures are available; and if he will give the overall totals for each of these years.
§ Mr. Peter MorrisonFor the purposes of this question I have assumed that my hon. Friend is referring to the job release scheme when asking about State aid towards early retirement. The job release scheme is not, however, an early retirement scheme but an employment measure; it is a requirement of the scheme that job release applicants are replaced by somebody off the unemployed register.
Overall totals for any years are not available because statistics are kept on the basis of the number of people covered by employment measures on a particular date. Since many people stay on the schemes for a number of months, it would be misleading to add together the monthly totals.
331W*The actual effect on the unemployed register will be less for a number of reasons; for example, the figures included for the temporary short-time working compensation scheme are the numbers of workers on short-time in order to avoid redundancies rather than the numbers of redundancies averted.
† Statistics on people covered by training measures are not readily available. 1, 514 people were covered by the community industry scheme.