§ Sir L. Lyleasked the Minister of Labour in view of the large number of unemployed still recorded, exactly what work these men and women, as a whole, are fitted to do or wish to do?
§ Mr. BevinI cannot accept the implications of my hon. Friend's suggestion that there are large numbers still recorded as unemployed. In the case of men, 30 per cent, of those wholly unemployed have been adjudged unsuitable for ordinary industrial employment and the great majority of the others were on the day of the count simply passing from one job to another. In the case of women, the determining factor is often that they are not mobile and cannot readily be sent to employment available in other districts, and the only means of absorbing them is by the withdrawal of mobile women from local employment for employment elsewhere, and replacing them so far as possible by the women who cannot leave home. The register is made up of applicants for a great variety of different employments and it is not practicable to state what employment they are, as a whole, fitted to undertake.