§ Mr. Madelasked the Secretary of State for Employment what is his estimate of the cost, in each financial year for which estimates are available, of the proposed scheme to provide compensation for short-time working; and what is his estimate of the numbers of people likely to be assisted in each of these financial years.
§ Mr. GoldingI shall reply to the hon. Member as soon as possible.
§ Mr. Knoxasked the Secretary of State for Employment what is his estimate of 647W the cost in each financial year for which estimates are available, of the proposed scheme to provide compensation for short-time working and also for his estimate of the numbers of people likely to be assisted in each of those financial years.
§ Mr. Golding, pursuant to his reply [Official Report, 2 April 1979], gave the following answer:
The temporary short-time working compensation scheme will come into operation on 1 April 1979. The estimated cost is about £75,000,000 in 1979–80 and the same amount in 1980–81 in order to avoid approximately 55,000 redundancies being made. However, it is not possible to give an accurate estimate of the numbers of people who will work short-time in each of these financial years to avoid those redundancies being made, because the number of people who will work short time to avoid those redundancies is likely to be more than the number of redundancies avoided, due to the varying circumstances, and the pattern of short-time working adopted, in each establishment.