Government Employment Strategy

I thank my Select Committee colleague. On a point arising from what she said, in the existing statistics the Government are trying to have their cake and eat it. They are including people over 65 who are in work in one part of the calculation but excluding them from the other. They are including them in the numerator of the fraction and excluding them from the denominator, thereby pushing up the percentage. It is clearly relatively meaningless if one does not compare like with like. The Government need to make clear why they think that is okay. On international comparisons, fine, we may need some statistics, but that should not be driving what is right for British policy making. Let us have a target, definition and statistic that are correct. Then, if necessary, we can publish the subsidiary figures that allow international comparisons on a like-for-like basis.