To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will make a statement on the current trends in unemployment in the United Kingdom regions.

Unemployment has fallen in all regions of the United Kingdom over the last 12 months. The largest falls in the unemployment rate have been in the west midlands, north-west and the north.

To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many job vacancies were registered at jobcentres in the city of Durham, at the most recent available date; what this figure represented as a percentage of registered unemployed; and what the comparable percentage is for the United Kingdom.

The table shows the number of unfilled vacancies at jobcentres and the number of unemployed claimants for the city of Durham and the United Kingdom in April 1988. It is not meaningful to calculate the ratio of unfilled vacancies at jobcentres to unemployed claimants, since only about a third of all vacancies in the economy are notified to jobcentres.