§ Mr. Charles Irvingasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will give an assurance that there will be no redundancy among staff in his Department as a result of the expenditure cuts in the Gloucestershire area, particularly in Cheltenham.
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§ Mr. DeakinsIf the administration savings required of my Department were to be achieved solely by reducing the number of staff employed some 4,000 of existing posts would need to be given up by April 1978. It is expected that, since natural wastage is currently running at some 7,000 a year, the reduction should generally be achieved without recourse to redundancy measures. It is impossible, at this stage, to say what particular effect the implementation of the measures proposed to achieve the cuts will have on the Department's South-Western Region, which covers the county of Gloucestershire, but there is no reason to think that the effect there will be any different from that in the Department as a whole.