Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on the level of unemployment in (a) London, (b) Bexley Borough and (c) Bexleyheath and Crayford constituency.

The latest ONS headline figures for unemployment published in July for the quarter ending May 2020, remain at 3.9%.

DWP publishes, via its Stat Xplore website, official statistics on the number of people claiming unemployment-related benefits by parliamentary constituency and local authority area (the ‘Alternative Claimant Count’).

Estimates of the number of people who are unemployed are compiled by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) using the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and Annual Population Survey (APS).

The LFS provides national and regional unemployment estimates whilst the APS, which is a modified version of the LFS, allows sub-regional analysis.

Estimates are based on a sample of cases and therefore subject to sampling uncertainty. Unemployment estimates at sub-regional geographies such as local authorities and parliamentary constituencies are especially uncertain.

The latest figures from the LFS estimate that in the quarter March-May 20 there were 256,000 people unemployed in London. This equates to an unemployment rate for London of 5.1% - an increase of 0.6 %pts on the December-February 20 quarter.

All estimates of unemployment used in this answer are publicly available on the NOMIS website (https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/). All estimates of Alternative Claimant Count used in this answer are publicly available on the StatXplore website (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/alternative-claimant-count-statistics-january-2013-to-may-2020).

ONS considers its estimate of unemployment in Bexleyheath and Crayford constituency to be statistically unreliable as the sample size is based on fewer than 10 people.