HC Deb 20 May 2003 vol 405 cc663-4W
Dr. Kumar

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what analysis has been made of the assessment of earnings levels for(a) each Government office region and (b) each constituency covered by Government Office for the North East, in the New Earnings Survey. [114304]

Ruth Kelly

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician. I have asked him to reply.

Letter from Colin Mowl to Dr. Ashok Kumar, dated 20 May 2003: The National Statistician has been asked to reply to your recent question about the average earnings of people in the Government Office Regions and the constituencies within the North East. I am replying in his absence. The attached table shows average weekly earnings for the areas requested. The data are from the New Earnings Survey (NES) and apply to people on adult rates working full-time whose pay was not affected by absence.

The NES can provide earnings data for small geographical areas. The release of NES data is restricted to figures that are derived from a sufficiently large sample of employees, and have an acceptable level of accuracy. I have provided the available data for the GO Regions and parliamentary constituencies in GO North East only for those areas where the samples are large enough. These are based on the 2002 NES, the latest survey for which data are available.

Average gross weekly earnings1 (£) by location of workplace
New earnings survey, April 2002
North East 399.3
Middlesborough 366.1
Stockton North 424.2
Stockton South 403.0
Bishop Auckland 388.0
City of Durham 425.4
Darlington 365.8
Easington 354.1
North Durham 338.7
Sedgefield 395.3
Wansbeck 399.0
Blaydon 359.1
Houghton and Washington East 414.8
Jarrow 384.9
Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend 340.7
North Tyneside 406.6
South Shields 366.3
Sunderland North 373.9
Tyne Bridge 422.4
North West 426.8
Yorkshire and The Humber 409.9
East Midlands 413.0
West Midlands 427.3
South West 421.7
East 459.6
London 624.1
South East 496.7
Wales 399.7
Scotland 427.0
1 Full-time employees on adult rates, whose pay was not affected by absence.