§ Mr. Churchillasked the Secretary of State for Defence if, following his statement to the House of 12th January that one job is lost for every £10,000 cut from the defence budget, he will give his estimate of how many jobs have been lost and are to be lost in consequence of cuts announced in planned defence expenditure since March 1974; and if he will give a regional breakdown.
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§ Dr. GilbertThe net reduction in Service and directly employed civilian staff—including those staff of the Property Services Agency engaged on defence work, but excluding those in the Royal Ordnance Factory Organisation which operates under a trading fund—made since March 1974 is 15,200 and 20,700 respectively. It remains the aim to achieve the full reductions of 38,000 Service personnel and 40,000 civilians as set out in the 1976 Statement on the Defence Estimates.
I estimate that, in comparison with the programme contemplated before the defence review, job opportunities in the defence industries and associated suppliers have been reduced by about 90,000, and that this figure will rise to a maximum of about 140,000 in 1979. The effect on industrial job opportunities of the reductions in defence expenditure announced by the Chancellor on 15th December cannot yet be assessed.
Statistics on the regional breakdown of Service and civilian staff have not been kept regularly in the past. A special exercise to collect this information from 1974 was, however, recently put in hand, and I hope to be able to write to the hon. Member shortly. The methods used to estimate employment in the defence industries do not permit the figures to be broken down geographically.