§ Lord James Douglas-Hamiltonasked the Secretary of State for Employment what is the number of persons who have been granted early retirement under the revised job release scheme over the six months period from April 1983 in Scotland and in Great Britain as a whole; what percentage this represents of the present total of unemployed persons; and what is the number of persons who have applied for job release and been refused as a result of the stricter conditions in the revised scheme.
§ Mr. Alan ClarkThe information (where available) is set out in the table:
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Job Release Scheme—April-September 1983 Scotland Great Britain Column 1 Number of people on the Scheme Column 2 Column 1 expressed as percentage of total of unemployment claimants Column 3 Number of rejections Column 4 Number of people accepted on the Scheme Column 5 Column 4 expressed as percentage of total of unemployment claimants Column 6 Number of rejections 1,491 0.44 * 20,726 0.68 *1,421 *Details of rejections by region are not available and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost. It is not possible to assess the number of applications which have been rejected as a result of the revised rules operative from 6 April 1983. The figure quoted is the total number of rejections over the period in question.