§ Mr. Tebbitasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will list, for the latest quarter of 1978 for which information is available, his estimate of the percentage share of total registered unemployment in the EEC attributable to the United Kingdom.
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§ Mr. Harold Walker:From national data collated by the Statistical Office of the European Communities—SOEC—it can be estimated that the United Kingdom accounted for about 26 per cent. of registered unemployment in the EEC in the third quarter of 1978. However, while these SOEC statistics all relate to registered unemployment, national differences in concept, coverage and method of compilation prevent precise comparison. If the registered unemployed were counted in the same way and on the same definitions in each country, United Kingdom proportion of EEC unemployment would differ from the above figure.