§ Mr. HuttonTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his oral answer to the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) of 9 March,Official Report, column 769, if he will list the defence companies which have made redundancies since 1990; and what were the total numbers of redundancies in each case.
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§ Mr. AitkenMy Department does not keep such a list in the form suggested but was aware on 9 March of some 43,000 announced job losses in defence companies since July 1990. This is at best an approximate estimate for it includes some civil sector jobs lost by these companies; it does not identify how many of the job losses are due to reductions in United Kingdom defence expenditure; it does not include job losses among some smaller defence companies which were not announced in the press or notified to my Department; it does not differentiate between redundancies, retirements or natural wastage; and it does not take account of jobs gained by some defence companies as a result of new orders.