§ Lord James Douglas-Hamiltonasked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many persons were employed by local authorities in Scotland in each year from 1970 to date ; and how many additional local government employees have been recruited in each year since the implementation of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973.
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Mr. McEllhone:The figures given below include part-time workers translated into terms of full-time equivalents.
For the years 1970 to 1975 the information is derived from the Department of Employment while for the years 1976 to 1978 the information is obtained from the Scottish Joint Manpower Watch Survey; the methods of collecting these figures and their detailed coverage were not the same and consequently the two sets of figures are not directly corn parable.
000's Total Full-time equivalent Net Increase/Decrease 1970 196. 8 — 1971 202.7 +5.9 1972 212.3 +9.6 1973 213.1 +0.8 1974 218.5 +5.4 1975 234.5 +16.0 1976 257.1 +22.6 1977 248.1 —9.0 1978 248.0 —0.1 Notes: 1. The figures do not include staff employed tinder the Government's job creation programme.
2. Figures for the years 1970 to 1975 do not include some staff engaged in services transferred to local government because of changes in responsibilities for example water, some health and social work and some public transport functions.
3. The final column shows net increase or decrease in numbers. Figures of total recruitment, which would have to include replacements for people retiring, are not available centrally.