§ Mr. Austin Mitchellasked the Secretary of State for Employment whether he will bring up to date the information on the Lancashire textile industry given in the reply of 4 February 1980, Official Report, columns 22–23, to the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw).
§ Mr. AlisonEstimates for 1980 and 1981 on the same basis as those given in the reply on 4 February 1980 to the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) are as follows:
Employees in employment (000s) Redundancies Reported Operatives on short-time (000s) 1980 *68.8 12,988 8.5 1981 *54.4 †6,280 ‡6.0 * Provisional. † The figure for 1981 is not fully comparable with those for 1980 and earlier because of improvements in data collection, designed to secure a better coverage of redundancies actually taking place. ‡These figures are only available for one week in each quarter. This figure is therefore the average for the four weeks in 1981 for which information is available. There are also some revisions to the figures given previously. Notified redundancies in 1979 are now 233W recorded as 5,411, and the estimates of the numbers of employees in 1977, 1978 and 1979 are 88,300, 81,500 and 77,700. The 1979 employees figure is still provisional.