§ Mr. Wigleyasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will publish a table showing, for each of the standard regions of England, the number of proposed redundancies notified under the Employment Protection Act for the period July 1979 to June of the current year.
§ Mr. Jim LesterThe number of proposed redundancies notified to my Department under the redundancy handling provisions of the Employment Protection Act 1975 in each of the English regions from 1 July 1979 to 30 June 1980 is as follows:
Northern 69,600 North-West 135,300 Yorks and Humberside 103,240 Midlands 187,998 South-West 34,861 London 71,318 South-East 81,552 Total 683,869 There is no statutory requirement to notify my Department when proposed redundancies do not take place.
I am informed by the Manpower Services Commission that the number of redundancies reported to it as due to occur in each of the regions from 1 July 1979 to 30 June 1980 is as follows:
Anglia 3,473 East Midlands 21,263 West Midlands 31,341 North 18,759 North-West 55,362 South-East 41,208 South-West 15,917 Yorks and Humberside 24,947 Total 212,270 These figures are provisional since some redundancies are reported late.
Both Department of Employment and Manpower Services Commission figures are for redundancies involving 10 or more employees.
The above figures should be treated with caution for reasons explained in the reply I gave to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Miss Wright) on 30 June.—[Vol. 987, c. 383–34.]