To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will give for each region and for Great Britain as a whole, separately for male and female, a table showing for each month since October 1988 (a) the number of young people who were receiving bridging allowance, (b) the number who began claiming bridging allowance and (c) the number of young people who ceased claiming bridging allowance; what were the numbers of those young people who exhausted their bridging allowance payments because they had used up their eight week entitlement; and if he will make a statement.
Questions on operational matters in the Employment Service executive agency are the responsibility of Mike Fogden, the agency's chief executive, to whom I have referred this question for reply.