§ Mr. Frank FieldTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the answer to the hon. Member for
203WDagenham (Ms Church) of 25 November, Official Report, column 72, on the number of people in Great Britain who have experienced at least one spell of unemployment since 1992, if he will list (a) how many have had more than one spell of unemployment, (b) how many are still unemployed and (c) how many are currently in work. [9667]
§ Mrs. Angela Knight[holding answer 18th December 1996]: The information requested falls within the responsibility of the chief executive of the Office for National Statistics. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.
Letter from Tim Holt to Mr Frank Field, dated 14 January 1997:
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has asked me to reply as the Director of the Office for National Statistics to your recent question on how many claimants have experienced at least one spell of unemployment in Great Britain since 1992, and of these claimants how many have experienced more than one spell of unemployment, how many are still unemployed and how many have found work.Since 1 January 1992, an estimated 10,451,600 claimants in Great Britain have experienced at least one spell of claimant unemployment and of these claimants 5,090,260 have experienced more than one spell. As at 14 November 1996, 1,775,250 claimants in Great Britain were claiming unemployment-related benefits although only about a half of these would have been unemployed for more than three months. These figures exclude clerically operated claims which numbered 23,000 in November 1996.Information on the destinations of leavers from the claimant count is only available from January 1995 and is therefore not available for the period requested. However, in November 1996 an estimated 68 per cent. of claimants with a known destination left the claimant count because they had found work.