Parliamentary Debate on Welfare Reform

10 Nov 2009
Jim Knight: We are not saying that we know what is best for the child; we are saying that the well-being of the child comes first. This should be at the convenience of the parent—if adequate child care is available, and while the child is in whatever child care, nursery setting or school that the parent thinks is appropriate. All we are saying is that work is the best route out of poverty. If we are committed to tackling child poverty, we have to make it easier, and put the structures in place, for lone parents to be able to get back into work.

Steve Webb: There is a non sequitur in the Government’s argument. They seem to argue that—the Minister in the Lords, Lord McKenzie, argued this—without the threat, the support cannot be provided, which is nonsense. Lord McKenzie said that, if we accept the amendment, it

    “would mean depriving lone parents with a youngest child aged three or four of the help and support that they may need”.—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 22 October 2009; Vol. 713, c. 839.]

Why? Why does the absence of bullying, a threat or a sanction prevent Governments and jobcentres from contacting lone parents, encouraging them and telling them what is available? Why do we need to threaten them?

Ms Abbott: I respect the hon. Gentleman and his party’s position on no sanctions of any kind. However, is not the case against sanctions for women with children under five that such sanctions affect not only the adult, who is arguably conscious of making their own decisions, but children who are already living on the breadline? Those are the people whom my hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench want to sanction.

Steve Webb: That is absolutely right. There is a fiction in the Department for Work and Pensions that when sanctions are applied, they are sanctions on the adult bit of the benefit. However, the implications of the sanction are felt by the whole household. The Minister has said, “Ah no, we have brought in a safeguard—the well-being of the child.” I have looked at the three amendments in the group relating to the well-being of the child, and they relate to action plans—amendments 8 and 54—and to jobseekers’ agreements.

Will the Minister clarify something? Surely it is very hard to argue that the sanction does not adversely affect the welfare of the child, so how does the safeguard work? The action plan is drawn up with the welfare of the child in mind, as, too, is the jobseekers’ agreement. However, if the lone parent does not comply, will an appeal tribunal or a DWP official argue, “Well, it is in mum’s best interest that she gets to work, because work is the best route out of poverty, so even if the child has to live below the breadline for a while, it is for the best.”? It is hard to know what that so-called safeguard means.

John Mason: The phrase, “the best route out of poverty is work”, concerns me a little, first because it is not always a route out of poverty. There is a second reason however: according to the Government’s logic, that route could take us right down to age zero. Surely for some families, where both kids and adults are affected by lots of problems, the best thing is not to be working; however, such families should not be in poverty either.

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Ms Abbott: I rise to speak in support of Lords amendment 2, but let me first nail the idea, which seems to emanate from my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench, that single mothers as a group do not want to work and that they have to be coerced and threatened into doing so. The majority in my circle of friends are or were single mothers—some had children as early as 15—but they all went back to work. Indeed, some went back to work and got degrees—they did that of their own free will, 20 years ago, in circumstances that were a lot harder. My experience from my constituency is that single mothers with any type of skill are anxious to return to work and will do so given the right support.

What we are talking about in this debate is the Government’s wish to coerce a residual group of young women, who probably do not have skills and almost certainly have very little education, back to work. Let us pause and think. I went back to work when my son was eight days old. I have nothing in principle against women with young children going back to work, but I was a well-paid woman doing a job that I loved. My right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench are talking about ill-educated girls going back to work to stack shelves or do a service job, often in split shifts. That is the work that they want to drive those girls back to, not work that they would want to leave their three-year-old children to do. The first thing to say, therefore, is that the vast majority of single mothers, given the right support and encouragement, will go back to work as the Government wish.

Given the right support and help with child care, the majority of single mothers will go back to work. However, we are talking about a residual group of women who, in practice, go back at the very bottom of the work pyramid, to do jobs that none of us would want to leave our three-year-old children to do.

The second point is that the Government’s proposal is based on fantasy figures about the availability of nursery care and child care for children aged three. Ministers have said that nursery places are available for three quarters of children, but that is not my experience in Hackney. My experience is that people regularly come to me with children aged five and above who cannot get places for them in nursery. I would be happier with the Government’s proposal if the Government came to me with solid research to show that nursery provision is available for 75, 80 or 90 per cent. of children, but that is not my experience in the east end of London.

We therefore have a proposal based on fantasy figures about the availability of child care. However, even if child care were available to 100 per cent. of such children, speaking as a single mother—albeit a well-paid one—I put it to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench that although some children skip off happily to nursery at the age of three and never look back, some do not like nursery, while others are sick every minute and have to stay at home for a week or two at a time. It is very hard for someone with a child who is poorly every other week or who has something wrong with them to sustain permanent employment. Only the mother is best placed to judge whether she can leave her three-year-old and go out to work.

As I have said, some children are happy in nursery at the age of two or three, but some need more support because of health issues or whatever. The mother should be able to judge that, not some official in a jobcentre.

Even if 100 per cent. nursery care were available, which it is not, I believe that Ministers are peddling fantasy figures. Only a mother can tell whether it is best for her child to be left while she goes out to do work-related activity or to work. The residual group of mothers that we are talking about needs support and education as mothers; they do not need to be shoehorned into jobs at the bottom of the work pyramid.

Ministers have tried to explain to me that those women will have to work only if it fits in with school or nursery hours. Again, they are not talking about the real world. Are they taking into account travel time to and from work and the time it takes to pick up children from nursery? When my son was five, I had to leave Westminster an hour and a quarter before picking him up from nursery. Are Ministers adding on these women’s travelling time? Are they taking into account the time that it takes to travel to pick up another child from school after picking up a younger child from nursery? This is not real world stuff.

Of course work is a route out of poverty, and of course we should encourage and support single mothers who want to go back to work. In the middle of a recession that has by no means played itself out, however, it is unconscionable to talk about imposing financial sanctions on women with children as young as three. We know that those women are on the breadline because they are on benefits.

It is a fact that, nowadays, the proceedings of the House of Commons are not properly reported, if they are reported at all. Colleagues on the Treasury Bench will be grateful for that, because if ordinary Labour members and supporters could hear Labour Ministers talking about imposing financial sanctions on women with three-year-old children to get them into notional jobs in the middle of a very real recession, they would be shocked and unhappy. Ministers have not made their case, and I will be voting to support Lords amendment 2.



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