§ Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Secretary of State for Employment how many craft and technician apprentices in the engineering industry were made redundant during the 1980–81 training year; and how this compares with the figures for each of the previous five training years.
§ Mr. Peter Morrison[pursuant to his reply, 1 December 1981, c. 83]: In the period 1 September 1980 to 31 August 1981, the engineering industry training board received reports of 2,959 craft and technician apprentices made redundant from firms in scope to the board. A further 548 redundancies have occurred since 31 August 1981. Support is available through the EITB to enable 141W apprentices who have been made redundant to continue their training. Because the scale of the problem in earlier years was small, it was not considered necessary by the board to keep records of the number of craft and technician apprentices made redundant in those years.