§ 61. Mr. Hargreavesasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what is the formula and methodology used to allocated European regional development fund non-quota section assistance to textile closure areas.
§ Mr. Giles ShawThe areas in the United Kingdom eligible for aid from the European regional development fund under the non-quota textile areas regulation (219–84) were Northern Ireland, Tayside, and three groups of travel-to-work areas in England (in West Yorkshire, Lancashire and Greater Manchester). The allocation to eligible areas in the United Kingdom's programme of the aid available from the ERDF was based on statistics relating to Northern Ireland and to the individual eligible TTWAs in England and Scotland. Half of the total allocation was distributed according to each area's share of the total of job losses in the textile and clothing industries between 1976 and 1981 in all the areas. A further quarter of the allocation was made in proportion to the product of multiplying each area's annual average unemployment rate for 1983 by the number of jobs lost in the textile and clothing industries in the area between 1976 and 1981. The final quarter of the allocation was distributed according to the dependency of the areas on textile and clothing employment. Dependency was measured in two ways, equal weight being given to each criterion. The first was the number of jobs in the textile and clothing industries in each area in 1976. The second was the percentage of manufacturing jobs in the area in 1976 in the textile and clothing industry multiplied by the number of textile and clothing jobs in that area in that year.
The initial allocation was then modified by allocating a minimum of I million ecu to each individual area and adjusting the allocations to other areas downwards proportionately so as to arrive at the same total figure. Finally the allocations to Tayside and the three groups of TTWAs in England were aggregrated to form four block allocations.