§ Mr. Lawsonasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will publish 481W a breakdown of Table 4b of his Written Answer to the hon. Member for Blaby, Official Report, 10th February 1977, c. 781–2, in the form of two further tables, one providing the same information for the public sector, as defined for the purposes of Table 8b of the Secretary of State's Written Answer to the hon. Member for Blaby, and the other
TABLE 4c TOTAL EMPLOYEES* PLUS SELF-EMPLOYED: UNITED KINGDOM (Thousands) Total Public sector† Private sector Not allocated‡ 1963 … … … … 25,283 5,331 19,902 50 1968 … … … … 25,453 5,641 19,765 47 1969 … … … … 25,456 5,599 19,809 48 1970 … … … … 25,348 5,633 19,666 49 1971 … … … … 25,140 5,743 19,333 64 1972 … … … … 24,823 5,873 18,861 89 1973 … … … … 25,184 5,955 19,149 80 1974 … … … … 25,257 6,053 19,130 74 * Estimates of employees are based primarily on counts of national insurance cards for the years 1963 to 1971—for consistency with estimates published in the Bullock Report. Estimates for the years 1972 to 1974 are based primarily on the annual censuses of employment, because an industrial breakdown on a national insurance card count basis is not available for these years. Consequently, estimates for the last three years are not directly comparable with those for earlier years, and differ from those in Table 4b. †As defined by Price and Bain. ‡ Persons registered as unemployed who are new entrants (or re-entrants) to the labour force are not classified to industry and, therefore, cannot be ascribed to either the public sector or the private sector. Table 4c above sets out the information requested by the hon. Member as far as it is available. A comparable estimate for the nummer of total employees plus self-employed in the public and private sectors in 1958 cannot be provided. Information about union membership in the public and private sectors is not available and could not be provided without mounting a special inquiry.