To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will provide details of the number of women in part-time employment; and what is the average level of wages.

Mr. Jackson:

There were 5,146,000 women in part-time employment in Great Britain in December 1990. The 1990 new earnings survey estimated that the average gross hourly part-time earnings of women were £3·95.

The Under-Secretary will recall that answers given to the House on 15 March showed that almost 250,000 women in Scotland were in part-time employment, which meant that their earnings were under the European threshold of decency, and that almost 8,000 of them were earning less than £2 per hour. What steps will the Government take to ensure that companies are prosecuted if they are found to be illegally underpaying women in part-time employment? Only two companies have been prosecuted in the past decade.

Mr. Jackson:

If anyone is in breach of the law, he should be pursued and prosecuted. I shall happily look into the point that the hon. Lady made. I do not know whether the Scottish National party supports a minimum wage, but she must understand that its consequences would be certainly to destroy jobs and to withdraw jobs that would otherwise be available to women.