§ Mr. Proctorasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he can now provide an estimate of the number of births to United Kingdom-born parents of New Commonwealth and Pakistani ethnic origin for each of the years 1981 and 1982.
§ Mr. Geoffrey FinsbergThere is little further to add at present to the statement made in OPCS Monitor PPI 81/6 that the number of children born to parents both of whom are United Kingdom-born and of New Commonwealth and Pakistani ethnic origin seems likely to have amounted to a few thousand a year around 1980, and over the 1970s to have totalled about 10,000 to 25,000. Preliminary results from the labour force survey are consistent with these estimates. However, the numbers of such children identified in this survey are small and the sampling errors for estimates based on them are correspondingly large, so that it will not be possible to give precise estimates of the numbers of births in any given year.
Work is continuing on the analysis of the 1981 labour force survey and some further results will be published later this year. A similar survey will be held in 1983.