§ Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many persons in (a) Wolverhampton and (b) the West Midlands have exhausted their right to unemployment benefit; and what percentage of the unemployed in each area they represent.
§ Mr. NewtonAt February 1982, the latest date for which information is available, there were 6,100202W unemployed claimants in the area covered by the Wolverhampton unemployment benefit office who had exhausted their entitlement to unemployment benefit; this was 34.2 per cent. of the total number of unemployed claimants in that area. The comparable figures for the West Midlands were 105,000 and 32.4 per cent. I regret that the figures for the West Midlands given in reply to the hon. Member's question on 7 December 1981—[Vol. 14, c. 308]—related only to men. The figures for both sexes at February 1981 were 47,700 and 18.8 per cent.