§ Mr. Pendryasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will estimate the cost of the addition of a further 20,000 school leavers on to the employment register in one year.
§ Mr. AlisonNo single estimate can be made of the costs of additions to the numbers of unemployed school leavers. Estimates would require assumptions to be made concerning a large range of factors including the nature of the activities which would have been undertaken by the school leavers had they not been unemployed. The results would be highly dependent upon the assumptions used and would yield a range of figures so wide as to be virtually useless.