§ Miss Wrightasked the Secretary of State for Employment how many redundancies were notified to his Department in the last year for the Birmingham travel-to-work area.
§ Mr. Jim Lester[pursuant to his reply, 24 June 1980, Vol. 987, c. 90]: From June 1979 to May 1980 inclusive, the number of proposed redundancies notified to my Department in accordance with section 100 of the Employment Protection Act 1975, for the Birmingham travel-to-work area, involved 26,733 employees at 344 establishments.
I have noted the hon. Member's remarks in the debate on 20 June concerning job losses in Birmingham, which appear to have been based on a misinterpretation of the figures supplied in my written answer of 16 June. Since my answer may have misled the hon. Member, I should like to take this opportunity to explain these statistics in more detail.
All employers are required by law to notify my Department of prospective redundancies involving 10 or more employees; and these are figures which I have quoted. However, many of these notified redundancies never occur. For example, jobs may be supported by the temporary short-time working compensation scheme (for which prior notification is a condition), or the firm's circumstances may subsequently improve for other 384W reasons. In such cases there is no obligation on any employer to notify my Department that the redundancy will not take place, or that it will affect fewer workers than expected, although some employers do so.
An indication of the scale on which employers' intentions alter is provided by a separate set of figures based on reports compiled by the Manpower Services Commission's employment offices and jobcentres as they follow up these redundancy notifications. I am informed by the Manpower Services Commission that the provisional total of redundancies reported by its local offices as due to occur in the Birmingham travel-to-work area, from June 1979 to May 1980, involved 6,620 employees. (This figure too does not cover redundancies involving fewer than 10 workers).
To some extent the figures reported by the Manpower Services Commission are subject to change in the same way as those notified to my Department under the Employment Protection Act. For example, redundancies may still be averted, or be reduced in size, after they have been reported. However, as the information is obtained much nearer to the date of the prospective redundancy, it is likely to be closer to the truth.
Furthermore, whereas the figures notified to my Department relate to the months during which the notifications are received, the Manpower Services Commission's figures related to the months during which redundancies are due to take place.
The Manpower Services Commission's reports cover the advance notifications of redundancies made- to my Department. The two sets of figures cannot therefore be added together to give a total of redundancies. Moreover, "redundancies", however measured, cannot be equated with "net job loss", since to measure the latter redundancies have to be offset by new jobs created.