§ Mr. Buchanan-Smithasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will give, to the nearest convenient date, the number of claims he has received from eligible agricultural establishments for repayment of the Selective Employment Tax; and how many of these claims have been settled.
§ Mr. John MackieUp to 20th January, 61,677 claims had been received. By 24th January, 23,648 had been paid.
§ Mr. Buchanan-Smithasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many applications he had received by 31st December, 1966, for registration of agricultural establishments for the purpose of repayment of the Selective Employment Tax; how many had been approved and how many rejected; and if he will give the number of employees involved in each instance.
§ Mr. John MackieUp to 31st December, 1966, 105,178 applications for registration had been received. Of these, 88,607 had been registered and 13,681 (including about 10,000 from farmers employing no labour) had been refused registration. The registered applications cover about 311,000 regular employees. I regret that information about the number of employees covered by the rejected applications is not readily available.