§ Mr. Richard Wainwrightasked the Secretary of State for Employment what has been the total number of jobs 365W lost in (a) the wool textile industry, (b) the clothing industry and (c) the mining industry in West Yorkshire since 1979; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. AlisonThe information is not available in the form requested. Comparison of the employee figures for different dates indicates net changes but changes in levels of employment since 1979 are not available for West Yorkshire.
Employee figures for counties are obtained from the census of employment and the most recent are for June
Standard industrial classification (1968) Number of redundancies 1979 1980 1981 1982 Minimum list heading (MLH) January-December January-December January-December January-December MLH 414 Wool textile industry 1,999 4,855 2,295 1,153 MLH 441–449 Clothing industry 1,199 2,309 2,291 810 MLH 101 Coal mining industry — — 655 81 Notes:
1. Figures for 1982 are provisional.
2. Figures for 1981 and 1982 are not exactly comparable with earlier figures because of improvements in data collection.
Further job prospects in West Yorkshire, as everywhere else, will depend largely on restoring the competitiveness of our industries. This will take time, and meanwhile we are protecting those hardest hit through our special employment and training measures on which we are spending £1.5 billion this year.