§ Mr. Tom Urwinasked the Secretary of State for Employment, what has been the full extent of job loss in the constituency 599W of Houghton-le-Spring and in the Northern Region since January 1970.
§ Mr. Golding,pursuant to his reply [Official Report, 21st June 1976; Vol. 913, c. 379.], gave the following answer:
Precise information about job gains and job losses is not available but an indication of the net change can be obtained by comparing levels of employment at different dates.
For local areas, estimates are normally compiled annually from the censuses of employment, but are not available for June 1974, owing to difficulties in allocating local government employees, following the reorganisation in that year. The latest figures, therefore, relate to June 1973 and show an increase for the area covered by the Seaham and Houghton-le-Spring employment offices of about 900 employees in employment, compared with June 1970. As soon as the estimates for June 1975 are available I shall arrange for their publication in the Official Report.
Provisional quarterly estimates are made for each region, and these show that the numbers of employees in employment in the Northern Region as a whole fell by about 9,000 between June 1970 and December 1975.