Departments: Trade Unions

Mrs. May
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many meetings (a) he and (b) his Department’s Ministers held with trade union representatives in 2006.

Mr. Hain
Ministers and civil servants meet many people, including union representatives as part of the process of policy development and advice. To provide specific details of such meetings would require a manual trawl of ministerial diaries and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.