§ Mr. GROVESasked the Minister of Labour the number of cases recorded in the West Ham area in the past three months of persons to whom unemployment benefit has been refused on the ground that no serious attempt had been made to seek work, and the number of cases of girls refused benefit on the grounds that they would not accept domestic service; and whether, in the latter cases, his department assures itself that the particular class of work the girls were previously engaged in offers no opportunity before domestic service is impressed?
§ Mr. SHAWSeparate figures for girls or for the West Ham area are not available. I can only give figures for all classes of claimants and for the Employment Exchange areas of Stratford, Canning Town, Leyton and East Ham, each of which contains a part of West Ham. The following Table gives for the period 18th October, 1923, to 9th June, 1924, the total number of claims to uncovenanted benefit referred to the local employment committees, and the total number rejected by the committees on the ground that they were not satisfied that the claimants were genuinely seeking whole-time employment:
Girls are not allowed to remain on un-covenanted benefit if domestic service be suitable employment for them, and they refuse to accept it. Although I have no 1654W statistics on the paint, I think it may be safely assumed that in the cases where benefit is refused on this ground there is no other occupation in which the girls have a reasonable opportunity of obtaining work at an early date.
— No. of un-covenanted claims referred to Committee. Number of refusals on grounds of "Not genuinely seeking whole-time employment." Stratford 10,048 363 Canning Town 14,293 1,236 Leyton 11,765 366 East Ham 3,124 774