asked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will publish figures showing the number of employees made redundant as reported to his Department since the Redundancy Payments Act 1965 and the estimated number made redundant over the same period who were not eligible for redundancy pay under the provisions of the Act and therefore not so reported.

Although many employers inform the employment services voluntarily of redundancies in their organisations, there is no statutory duty on them to do so. The information which is available therefore relates to those employees in respect of whom payments have been made from the Redundancy Fund, and this information is given below:

Year or period			Number of employees for whom Fund payments made
6.12.65–31.12.66	…	…	138,895
1967	…	…	249,782
1968	…	…	264,491
1969	…	…	250,764
1970	…	…	275,563
1971	…	…	370,306
1972	…	…	297,120
1973	…	…	176,919
1974	…	…	182,161
1.1.75–31.3.75	…	…	70,657

No definite information is available about redundant workers who do not qualify for statutory payments. Such information could be obtained only at unreasonable cost and would not in any case be very meaningful since it would include, inter alia, all those coming to the end of fixed-term contracts, for example seasonal workers.