Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the reasons for the change in the inactivity rate recorded in the Office of National Statistics Labour Market statistics issued on 21 January 2015.

Latest figures show that for the period September to November 2014, excluding those not looking for work because they are students, inactivity was 16.6% of the 16-64 population. This was unchanged compared to the same period in 2013 and down 1.3 percentage points compared to 2010.