§ Mr. WoolasTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will estimate how many people in the constituency of Oldham, East and Saddleworth earn less than the proposed national minimum wage, broken down by(a) gender, (b) age, (c) full or part-time employment and (d) ethnic origin. [48187]
§ Mrs. LiddellThe information requested falls within the responsibility of the Chief Executive of the Office for National Statistics. I have asked him to reply.
Letter from Tim Holt to Mr. Phil Woolas, dated 1 July 1998:
As the Director of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I have been asked to reply to your parliamentary question on earnings in the constituency of Oldham East and Saddleworth.The national minimum wage will become effective in April 1999 and has been set at £3.60 for employees aged over 21 and £3.00 for those aged 18 to 21, although there are a number of qualifications to this general observation.184WThe Low Pay Commission, in arriving at their recommendations, had to adjust 1999 pay rates to 1997 values. Their methodology produces £2.80 and £3.40 as the 1997 values of the government's preferred rates and I have provided supplementary data for these levels.The New Earnings Survey (NES) does not collect information on the ethnic origin of employees, therefore figures for this element of the question cannot be given. I cannot provide data for those aged 18–21 years who would earn below the proposed minimum wage since there were only 7 individuals in the NES sample for Oldham East and Saddleworth. Also, reliable estimates by gender of full-time/part-time status for those employees aged over 21 years cannot be provided, because the associated statistical standard errors are too high.The overall percentage of employees aged over 21 years in Oldham East and Saddleworth earning under £3.40 per hour excluding overtime and shift payments at April 1997 was 4.4 per cent. Similarly, 5.9 per cent. of employees aged over 21 earned below £3.60 per hour excluding overtime and shift payments at April 1997.The NES is based on a one percent sample of employees in the PAYE system and is therefore likely to under-represent relatively low paid staff earning below the tax threshold and in particular those who work part-time.The extent of this bias may be estimated for the North West by using data from the NES augmented by data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). This suggests that the estimate of the overall proportion of employees aged over 21 years earning below £3.60 could understate the true position by as much as 3 percentage points. However, it is unlikely that the occurrence of lower paid jobs is uniform across the region. and so it would be wise to treat this figure as broadly indicative rather than a precise estimate.