Ms Laura Weymes:

Let us turn to slide 19 and look in a little bit of detail at the outturn developments and what we have seen happening in the labour market. Latest quarterly national household survey data to quarter 2 tells us that there has been quite a strong pick-up in the volume of employment growth in the first half of this year, which totals in the region of 2.6%. In terms of the contraction in the levels of unemployment, levels are down since peak by about 117,000. Some flatlined in the three months to August when the unemployment rate stayed relatively static, but levels began to contract again in September.

Turning to the next slide-----