§ Mr. Gordon Brownasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make a statement on the unemployment review investigation of unemployed persons 18 to 25 years old; and how many officers of his Department are to be engaged on the review work in the coming year.
§ Dr. BoysonIn my reply to the hon. Member on 31 January, at columns126–7, I described the experiment being carried out to evaluate the effect of devoting more of the time of unemployment review officers to young people within the 18 to 24 age group. Although the field work has now been completed, the exercise has not yet 78W been evaluated. Some preliminary results should be available in about a month's time, but a final evaluation will not be possible until about the end of the year, when regard can be had to benefit records over several months. Decisions on whether any, and if so how many, officers should be specifically allocated to unemployment review of this age group in future will, of course, be dependent on the outcome of the experiment.