§ Sir Ian GilmourTo ask the Secretary of State for Employment what is his latest estimate of the number and proportion of families with four or more children where neither parent is in full-time paid work.
Mr. JacksonIt is not possible to distinguish between full-time and part-time paid work for the spouse of the head of the family unit. The answer relates to single and two-parent families with four or more children where neither parent has paid employment. Preliminary estimates from the GB Labour Force Survey for spring 1990 indicate that there were 76,000 such families, representing 28 per cent. of the total number of families with four or more dependent children.