§ Mr. McLeishTo ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the number of Scottish children living in families where the head of the household was unemployed annually from 1978.
§ Mr. LangThe estimated number of dependent children aged 18 years or under in households in Scotland where the head was unemployed is 120,000 in 1988, according to preliminary results from the spring 1988 labour force survey. The equivalent estimate for spring 1981 was 136,000. These estimates are subject to sampling errors.
Estimates are not available from the 1979 survey and could be obtained for the remaining years for which there were surveys only at disproportionate cost.