§ Mr. Michael Forsythasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list for each local authority in Scotland the number of employees, both in absolute terms and in full-time equivalents, in each of the last five years.
§ Mr. AncramPrior to 1981, manpower figures for individual Scottish local authorities were not available to the Central Government. Since then, quarterly figures of local authorities manpower have been published jointly by the Scottish Office and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities with full-time and part-time totals for each authority. These are available in the Library. Conversion to full-time equivalents for the global figures is achieved by using factors established by a survey of all authorities, but because of differences in the patterns of part-time working from authority to authority, conversion of individual authority figures using this method is inappropriate and estimates of individual full-time equivalent employment could only be obtained from the local authorities concerned.