§ Mr. Strawasked the Secretary of State for Employment what are his estimates of the net Exchequer cost or benefit of every £100 million gross per annum spent on the temporary short-time working compensation scheme, on a range of assumptions about benefit flow back; and if he will also state those assumptions.
§ Mr. Jim Lester[pursuant to his reply, 10 July 1980, c. 249]: I estimate that for every £100 million annual gross ex- 472W penditure on the temporary short-time working compensation scheme, after allowing for taxes and national insurance contributions which continue to be paid by those who would otherwise have become unemployed, and after allowance for the amount saved in payments of unemployment benefits to those who would have registered as unemployed, the net cost to the Exchequer is about £30 million per year. The estimate is based on assumptions about the average earnings and taxes paid by those in the scheme, the average level of unemployment benefits paid during the course of a year and the extent to which those who would become redundant in the absence of the scheme would on average register as unemployed. Because there is no detailed information on the personal characteristics of the group of workers who would have become redundant in the hypothetical absence of the scheme, there is no basis for the calculation of a range of estimates which would be other than arbitrary.