Mr. Alan WilliamsTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many workers have been recruited by Remploy in the last 12 months; how many of these are in Remploy's factories; how many vacancies existed, at the latest available date, in these factories; and if recruiting is continuing as vacancies arise. [32598]
§ Mr. Alan HowarthResponsibility for the subject of the question has been delegated to the Employment Service agency under its Chief Executive. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.
Letter from Leigh Lewis to Mr. Alan Williams, dated 3 March 1998:
As the Employment Service is an Executive Agency, the Secretary of State for Education and Employment has asked me to reply direct to your questions about how many workers have been 603W recruited by Remploy in the last 12 months; how many of these are in Remploy's factories; how many vacancies existed, at the latest available date, in these factories; and if recruiting is continuing as vacancies arise. I am replying because the Employment Service has operational responsibility for Remploy.On the question of recruitment, I understand from Remploy that they have recruited 1551 disabled people in the last 12 months, and that 757 of these were people placed into Remploy factories.Turning to your question about vacancies, at the end of January—the latest date for which figures are available—there were 14 vacancies in Remploy factories.As for vacancy filling, I am told by Remploy that, although in order to keep within their operating budgets they have temporarily suspended recruitment in some of their factory groups, they are continuing to recruit disabled workers into their Manufacturing Group.I hope this is helpful.