§ Mr. D. E. Thomasasked the Secretary of State for Defence if he will give details of where the 35,000 civil servant redundancies in his Department by 1st April 1979 are to occur.
§ Dr. GilbertThe Department is aiming to achieve a net reduction of 35,000 civilian jobs by 1st April 1979. The reductions will be effected by the various measures, including closure of defence establishments, outlined in the 1975 and 1976 Statements on Defence Estimates (Cmnd. 5976 and 6432).
The consequential rundown in civilian manpower will be achieved in a number of ways, including natural wastage, selective controls on recruitment, staff trans- 856W fers and, only where it becomes unavoidable, redundancy. Until all these processes are complete, and this will not be before April 1979, I cannot give any meaningful indication of what the final number of redundancies as a result of the cuts in defence expenditure may be or where they will occur.