§ Mr. FieldTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many workless households with dependent children there were in(a) 1979, (b) 1984, (c) 1989, (d) 1994 and (e) at the latest date for which statistics are available. [79661]
§ Ms Hewitt[holding answer 13 April 1999]The information requested falls within the responsibility of the Director of the Office for National Statistics. I have asked him to reply.
Letter from Tim Holt to Mr. Frank Field, dated 14 April 1999:
As Director of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I have been asked to reply to your recent parliamentary question on workless households with dependent children.
The ONS introduced Labour Force Survey (LFS) databases especially designed for analyses of household data in August 1998. The earliest data available is for spring 1990. Hence, figures can only be given for 1990, 1994 and the latest date available, 1998. These figures are shown in the table.
248W
Numbers of workless working age households with dependant children, Spring, United Kingdom Year 1990 800,000 1994 1,238,000 1998 1,164,000 These figures were published in an article in the January 1999 edition of Labour Market Trends (pp 31–40), a copy of which is in the House of Commons Library.