§ Mr. Meacherasked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many (a) doctors, (b) nurses and (c) other Health Service workers have either (i) been made redundant, or (ii) not been offered a job in the Health Service which would otherwise have been available following reductions in manpower made on his instructions and required to be completed by 31 March.
§ Mr. Kenneth Clarke[pursuant to his reply, 7 June 1984, c. 273]: In my opinion, no-one need have been made redundant as a result of our manpower targets. I realise that some health authorities may attribute some redundancies to the manpower targets exercise, but the individual cases usually follow the closure of a unit which is no longer required for service reasons or are voluntary redundancies amounting to early retirement. Our recent circular to authorities therefore pointed out that no early retirement should be based on manpower targets alone.
I regard it as pointless speculation to try to calculate how many people have not been offered jobs as a result of our efforts to make more effective use of manpower and reduce over-manning.