§ Mr. Fauldsasked the Secretary of State for Social Services why he does not arrange for the collection of statistics of social security benefits drawn in areas smaller than departmental regions.
§ Sir K. JosephStatistics of social security benefits are mainly derived from the records of national insurance contributions and claims to benefit dealt with either locally or centrally. In order to provide statistics for relatively small areas of varying definition, the addresses of individuals would need to be coded precisely so that figures could be aggregated for different areas. The maintenance of up-to-date address codes on the records would, however, be extremely costly. Moreover, in order to economise on the work involved many of the existing statistics are obtained by using sampling techniques, which could not generally be used to provide reliable information about small areas.