§ Mr. Pendryasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if, pursuant to his reply to the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde, Official Report, 28 November 1980, columns 297–98, he will provide more details of his Department's working calculations of the 900,000 one-parent families in Great Britain, including breakdowns of one-parent families created in the following ways (a) single parenthood, (b) death of a parent, (c) separation and (d) imprisonment of a parent, giving features for the female and male heads of households and dependent children involved in each category.
§ Mrs. Chalker:I refer the hon. Member to the latest available estimates (referring to mid-1979) of the number of one-parent families by marital status, given in my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams) on 23 July 1981—[Vol. 9, c. 224–225].
I would also refer to the final table in my reply to the hon. Member for Barking (Miss Richardson) on 23 July 1981 —[Vol. 9, c. 221–224] giving the average numbers of dependent children in one-parent families according to the marital status of the parent. These figures are based on analyses of general household survey data for the years 1978–80.
Families in which the parents are separated by temporary cirmcustances (such as imprisonment) are not included in the OPCS estimates for numbers of one-parent families.