§ Mr. Andrew F. Bennettasked the Secretary of State for Employment, further to the Minister's reply to the hon. Member for Stockport, North, Official Report, 23 May, column 437, about handicapped and 7W disabled persons, if he will list the 55 firms who applied to pay wages below wages council rates to disabled or handicapped persons together with the wages council rate of pay and the proposed reductions in each case.
§ Mr. Jim Lester[pursuant to his reply, 6 June 1980, c. 800] : No. In order to protect the interests of handicapped and disabled persons and their employers an application to a wages council for a permit to pay or receive less than the appropriate statutory minimum is treated as confidential.
Applications of this sort are comparatively rare. More than 2.7 million employees are covered by wages councils but only 55 permit applications were made during the last 12 months. Each applica-
Increase in number of unemployed ethnic minority group workers Increase in number of all unemployed Actual Percentage Actual Percentage South East … … 4,179 22.1 30,121 11.3 West Midlands … … 3,066 29.0 27,740 23.6 East Midlands … … 786 18.0 14,429 20.4 Yorkshire and Humberside … … 1,260 33.5 22,454 19.9 North West … … 2,012 46.0 35,208 18.4 Other regions … … 154 6.2 72,969 15.2 Great Britain … … 11,457 25.8 202,921 16.4 Notes :
1. The figures for May 1979 and May 1980, on which the increases have been calculated, are not strictly comparable because of the introduction of fortnightly attendance and payment of benefit. This had the effect of raising the monthly figures for all unemployed for the country as a whole by about 20,000—approximately l½ per cent.—from October 1979. Estimates of this effect on the figures for ethnic minority group workers are not available.
2. The figures for ethnic minority group workers for the South East and the North West regions exclude unemployed young people in East Ham and Liverpool.