The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.Letter from Karen Dunnell, dated 22 July 2008:"As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your Parliamentary Question asking what the level of youth unemployment has been in (a) Tamworth constituency, (b) Staffordshire, (c) the West Midlands and (d) the UK in each year since 2005. (220128)""The Office for National Statistics compiles unemployment statistics for local areas from the Annual Population Survey (APS) following International Labour Organisation (ILO) definitions.""The Annual Population Survey classifies as unemployed people who are without a job who were available to start work in the two weeks following their APS interview and who had either looked for work in the four weeks prior to interview or are waiting to start a job already obtained.""Table 1, attached, shows the level of youth unemployment defined as persons age 16-24 resident in (a) Tamworth constituency, (b) Staffordshire, (c) the West Midlands and (d) the UK for the 12 month periods ending December, for 2005-2007, from the APS, which is the most recent period for which estimates are available.""As these estimates are for a subset of the population in small geographical areas, they are based on small sample sizes, and are therefore subject to large margins of uncertainty.""The data are also published on the Office for National Statistics's Nomis® website:""www.nomisweb.co.uk." Table 1: Number of unemployed persons aged 16 to 24, resident in (a) Tamworth constituency, (b) Staffordshire, (c) the West Midlands and (d) the UK in each year since 2005 Thousand 12 months ending December 2005 December 2006 December 2007 Tamworth constituency 1 ¹— 1 Staffordshire 6 4 7 West Midlands 58 61 64 United Kingdom 610 662 660 ¹ Disclosive or data is unavailable. Note: The estimates for local areas are based on very small sample sizes and are subject to a very high degree of sampling variability. Changes from year to year, especially, should be treated with caution. Source: ONS Annual Population Survey