§ Mr. CousinsTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer pursuant to the answer to the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) of 26 April 2004,Official Report, column 746W, if he will break down the figures by region, giving (a) total numbers and (b) percentages of the total in each case. [173310]
§ Ruth KellyThe information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.
Letter from Len Cook to Mr. Jim Cousins, dated 18 May 2004:
As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your Parliamentary Question about unemployment. (173310)
I am placing in the House of Commons Library a table giving estimates of the number and the percentage of men aged 50 to 64 years and women aged 50 to 59 years not in employment for each region. This table covers the three month periods ending February each year from 1998 to 2004, the most recent year for which this information is available.
Estimates are taken from the Office for National Statistics' Labour Force Survey (LFS). As with any statistical sample survey, estimates from the LFS are subject to sampling variability.