§ Mr. SteinbergTo ask the Secretary of State for Employment what is the average time for his Department to process redundancies; how many redundancies are awaiting processing; and whether there are any plans to recruit extra staff to increase efficiency.
§ Mr. ForthThe average time to process a redundancy payment is currently 10 weeks and the number of claims awaiting processing is 53,000. My Department has introduced a number of efficiency measures to improve the time taken to deal with claims, including the recruitment of additional staff.