asked the Paymaster General if he will publish a table showing (a) the number and percentage

Changes in the numbers of employees in employment between June 1979 and June 1985
	Northern region		Great Britain
	Thousand	Per cent.	Thousand	Per cent.
Manufacturing industries	-125	-31	-1,743	-25
Service industries	-30	-5	+361	+3
All industries and services	-219	-18	-1,812	-8
Metal goods, engineering and vehicles	-60	-33	-781	-23
Shipbuilding and repairing	NA	NA	-51	-36
Mechanical engineering	NA	NA	-250	-24
Electrical and electronic engineering	NA	NA	-104	-14
Instrument engineering	NA	NA	-15	-12

The number of registrants unemployed for over one year in the northern region and Great Britain in July 1979 was 32,521 and 340,543 respectively. The number of claimants unemployed for over one year on this basis for July 1985 was 106,502 and 1,269,286. Figures for long-term unemployment are only calculated quarterly.It is difficult to make comparisons of long-term unemployment between 1979 and 1985 because of the change in the basis of the count in October 1982, the 1983 Budget provisions which mean that some men, mainly aged 60 and over, no longer need to sign on at unemployment benefit offices to receive benefit, and the change to a ward-based system for allocating claimants to localities.

asked the Paymaster General how many people were in (a) full-time and (b) part-time employment in the Wirral and Chester travel-to-work areas in 1979, and at the latest available date.

Comprehensive employment statistics for travel-to-work areas are not available except for dates when censuses of employment are taken. Censuses have been taken triennially since 1978 and the latest results are for September 1981.Results of the 1978 census of employment are not available for the travel-to-work areas announced last year, but figures for the area covered by the old Chester and Birkenhead travel-to-work areas, which corresponds most closely to the Wirral and Chester travel-to-work area, are as follows:

Employees in employment
Thousands
	Full-time	Part-time	All
1978	146·4	46·3	192·7
1981	140·0	43·4	183·3

The following table contains the changes for the areas, dates and categories specified. Separate statistics are available for the shipbuilding and engineering industries only at national level. At regional level they are included in the metal goods, engineering and vehicles industries—division 3 of the 1980 standard industrial classification.More up-to-date employment figures for travel-to-work areas will become available following the publication of the 1984 census of employment in the spring of 1986.

asked the Paymaster General what is the breakdown of unemployed people (a) by sex and (b) by duration for each of the years since 1979 for the London borough of Wandsworth.

The following information is in the Library. The table gives the breakdown of unemployed claimants by sex and duration for October 1984 and October 1985. Statistics of unemployment for local authority districts are derived from the new ward-based system. At present the analysis by duration is only available from April 1984 onwards, but information back to June 1983 will shortly be available.

London borough of Wandsworth
	11 October 1984		10 October 1985
	Males	Females	Males	Females
Duration of unemployment in weeks
One or less	347	200	307	202
Over 1 and up to 2	358	225	349	217
Over 2 and up to 4	562	327	581	356
Over 4 and up to 6	628	425	620	397
Over 4 and up to 8	390	212	395	225
Over 8 and up to 13	853	508	863	457
Over 13 and up to 26	1,611	829	1,676	934
Over 26 and up to 39	1,186	492	1,085	525
Over 39 and up to 52	897	381	797	352
Over 52 and up to 65	743	303	736	309
Over 65 and up to 78	535	165	533	186
Over 78 and up to 104	901	250	800	220