§ Mr. GibbTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) how many employers with more than 50 employees he estimates have a majority of employees who earn below(a) £3.50 per hour, (b) £4 per hour and (c) £4.50 per hour;[31329]
(2) how many employers employ 50 employees or fewer; and what is the total number of employees involved. [31330]
§ Mrs. LiddellThe information requested falls within the responsibility of the Chief Executive of the Office for National Statistics. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.
Letter from Tim Holt to Mr. Nick Gibb, dated 3 March 1998:
As Director of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I have been asked to reply to your parliamentary questions on employers.There are 940,000 employers in the UK that employ 50 employees or fewer. These cover 5.3 million employees.This is extracted from the ONS Inter Departmental Business Register (IDBR), which covers all UK businesses that are registered for Value Added Tax (VAT) and/or operate a Pay As You Earn (PAYE) scheme.The data relate to April 1997 (time at which an annual extract is taken from the IDBR), and is based on the dataset used for the annual IDBR publication PA1003 (Size Analysis of UK Businesses).The primary source of employee data on the IDBR is the ONS inquiry Annual Employment Survey.Information from businesses about the pay of individuals is based on a one per cent. sample of employees. The number of returns for any single business is too small to assess rates of pay.