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Mr. Andrew Mitchell: We have done that.
Ms Harman: Only one child in 80 have an after-school place, and the waiting lists are enormous. [Hon. Members: "Where will the money come from?"] The Minister claims that the Government have provided those places, but Conservative Members ask where the money will come from. Clearly, they are split on that issue.
Ms Harman: I shall anticipate the hon. Gentleman's question, and he shall see whether I answer it correctly.
We have said that more money needs to be spent on after-school clubs. They can be financed through a combination of measures: the lottery, public-private partnerships, benefit transfers, and by charging mothers who can afford to pay. After-school clubs are important for lone mothers and are popular with all parents. What has been lacking is a glimmer of understanding on the Government's part that they should provide such a service.
We will use benefit transfer schemes as a springboard for lone mothers out of dependency and into work. We will have targets for training and enterprise councils to train lone mothers, especially on term-time courses.
We will have one-stop shops like that pioneered by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell), who was in her place earlier. Information technology and the Internet are used to bring all the information that lone mothers need on to an easy-to-use computer with a touch surface. The user touches the screen for information about local jobs, child care and training and how her benefits will be affected. All that information is pulled together to provide a one-stop service, so that lone mothers can be helped to get off benefit, get into work and find their way through the maze of conflicting information.
Mr. Hartley Booth (Finchley):
Are we to understand that it is official Labour policy for the lottery to fund social services?
Ms Harman:
The hon. Gentleman does not understand. After-school clubs are not a social service. There is a big demand for them from parents. It is difficult for children to play out if they do not have a safe environment. Many mothers want to, and have to, work. After-school clubs are important for children to do homework, and possibly engage in other activities that have been squeezed out of the national curriculum, such as more music, art, drama and sport.
The lottery is well designed to provide resources for that, but it is not our only suggestion for financing. We have said that extra after-school club places can be financed through a combination of measures, which I set out. That has been supported by the Kids' Club Network. Until we raised the issue, it was not on the political agenda. When I mentioned after-school clubs, the
Secretary of State did not even know what they were, and had to run off to the Secretary of State for Education and Employment to ask about them.
Mr. Andrew Mitchell:
The hon. Lady is talking consummate nonsense. She knows perfectly well that there is nothing between the two sides of the House on after-school kiddies' clubs. The difference is that, over the past three years, we have created 80,000 places. We are committed to the scheme. In his Budget, my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer put £24 million on the table to develop kiddies' clubs. How much money will the hon. Lady put on the table? Let us have a figure, instead of the re-announcement of Government policies and waffle that we get from the Opposition Front Bench.
Ms Harman:
I welcome the signs that the Government have moved firmly on to our territory. They have recognised that they cannot defend a situation in which 1 million lone mothers are on income support, and the sole Government policy was to write to them from the Department of Social Security once every three years saying, "Are you still at that address? Are you still getting your income support okay?"
That was the Government's sole strategy for lone mothers. That is why 1 million of them are on benefit, 2 million children are on the breadline, and the taxpayer is picking up a bill for £10 billion every year. That is why we said that something must be done, and that we need a welfare-to-work approach. We offered a number of proposals, which I am outlining.
If the Government had ever recognised that lone mothers needed to work, they would not have simply have said, "Go away and come back when your youngest child is 16." If they understood the role that after-school clubs can play in helping lone mothers, we would not be faced with a situation in which only one in 80 children have access to an after-school club. If the Under-Secretary of State wants to assure me that he agrees with me about the policies that we have espoused and on which he has failed to act, he should vote Labour at the next election.
We will measure and report our progress with monthly figures. What the Government do is present the unemployment figures and say that unemployment is tumbling; what they never do is present monthly income support figures, showing that the number of people of working age who are not working is rising. The truth is that, in all his years as Secretary of State, all that the right hon. Gentleman has ever done is criticise lone mothers, and, of course, cut their benefits.
That brings me to the Secretary of State's third failed plan to reduce the number of lone mothers. Of course he has criticised lone mothers. Do we not all remember what he said at the Tory party conference? Of course he has cut lone mothers' benefits: that is evident. I hope that he will not even seek to deny that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Oliver Heald):
What did he say at the Tory party conference?
Ms Harman:
We remember the Secretary of State's "little list." He stigmatised lone mothers and their children, saying, "There is something wrong with your
Part of the Secretary of State's record is benefit cuts. Cuts in lone mothers' benefits make the poorest families poorer. In this uprating and in the further measures that the right hon. Gentleman proposes, he plans to cut lone mothers' income by £572 a year. He is not giving them any help so that they can obtain work; instead, they must suffer cuts in benefit.
The Secretary of State must know that, when women cease to be part of a couple and become lone mothers, they become worse off, not better off. Lone mothers are not advantaged; they are disadvantaged. They do not have their partners' income, or their partners' time. The Secretary of State's justification for cutting lone mothers' benefits, and making the poorest families poorer, is that it will deter couples from divorcing or separating; but benefit cuts for lone mothers do not make any couples stay together. Lone mothers are already worse off than married women, yet the divorce rate continues to rise.
Mr. David Willetts (Havant):
If the hon. Lady does not support the Government's measures on benefit for single parents, and given that the shadow Chancellor has made it clear that, if she were in office, she would be obliged to stick to the Government's totals for social security expenditure, what other cuts does she propose?
Ms Harman:
We have said that the way in which to stop what the hon. Member for Southport (Mr. Banks) described as the blossoming of the social security budget, and hence the increased burden on taxpayers, is not to shave the benefits of the poorest families year by year. It has been said that, although the hon. Gentleman has no common sense, he has two brains, so he will know that lone-mother families are the poorest. He clearly agrees with that.
We cannot deal with the problem of the rising social security bill simply by reducing the standard of living of the poorest families. What we must do is go with the grain of what they want to do--what married women are doing--which is to go out to work. That is why it is so shameful that the Government of whom the hon. Gentleman has been a part have adopted a policy of saying "Here is your income support. Collect it weekly, and go away until your youngest child is 16."
Our approach will not be to cut the social security budget by making the poorest poorer. We will employ a welfare-to-work strategy to ensure that those people can obtain work, so that we no longer see an increase, year after year, in the number of lone mothers who are on benefit because they cannot work.
The Minister for Social Security and Disabled People (Mr. Alistair Burt):
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Ms Harman:
No, I will not. I have answered the question.
The problem is that the Government have put the social security budget up. My right hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown), the shadow Chancellor, is right to recognise the appalling state of public finances,
to recognise that people have been hit by 22 Tory tax increases and to say that our priorities and our approach are different from those of the Government. Our approach is, as I have said, to employ a welfare-to-work strategy. That is why, as I said earlier, we will break the vicious circle by a windfall levy on the privatised utilities to fund a £3 billion welfare-to-work programme for the long-term and young unemployed.
In the debate on social security a year ago, the Secretary of State said that there were three ways in which he would stop the increase in income support for lone mothers. First, he would make fathers pay. He has failed. Secondly, he would get lone mothers to work. He has failed. Thirdly, he would deter people from becoming lone mothers, by ensuring that couples stay happily together by reducing the benefits for lone mothers. He reduced the benefits, but benefit cuts for lone mothers do not make couples stay together. Lone mothers are already worse off than married women, yet the divorce rate continues to rise.
Relationship breakdown is far more complex than a simple financial issue. Does the Secretary of State really think that couples will say to themselves, "Good heavens! The Secretary of State for Social Security has cut lone parent premium and one-parent benefit. Let's not break up. Let's stay together"? The world is not like that. That is why his strategy to reduce the number of lone mothers on income support has failed. Much as he may like to, he cannot regulate from Whitehall the relationships of men and women. What he could do but has failed to do is help lone mothers to do what they want to do--work.
After 17 years of criticism of benefit cuts, the Secretary of State has produced a leaflet, which he sent to all lone mothers on income support. I can see that he is leafing through his file, and that he has the second to latest version. I have the latest one. The most important thing that it does not say is where to go to find a job. The Government simply cannot understand that a maze of obstacles confronts women on income support who want to go to work. A one-stop-shop approach is needed, not one set of advice on benefits, another on work, another on training, and another on child care.
Undeterred, this afternoon I rang the hotline number on the leaflet, and spoke to Lee. He was courteous and polite, but explained that he cannot give any advice about an individual case. He certainly cannot give any advice about availability of jobs, training or child care, as that is nothing to do with the Department. However, he offered further leaflets on benefits.
If the Government's back-to-work strategy for lone mothers is to send them a leaflet and then have a hotline that offers them further leaflets, it will not succeed. It is very expensive. It cost £750,000 to get three columns in the Daily Mail to defend the Government's lamentable record. That is the wrong use of public money.
With our welfare-to-work strategy, we will, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition set out, spend less on unemployment--mopping up the cost of Government failure. Then we will be able to spend more on education, investing in the future for success. The failure to get people off benefit and into work forces the benefits bill up, and the Government squeeze benefits:
cuts in benefits for asylum seekers, cuts in benefits for war pensions, cuts in benefits for people who are not well enough to work, and cuts in housing benefit.
The Conservatives used to say, "Let the housing benefit bill take the strain." Now they have cut it. They also used to say that unemployment was a price worth paying. From October 1997, they propose that single people under 60, including widows who have lived all their lives with their husbands, will be forced to go into shared accommodation to claim housing benefit. How can the Secretary of State justify that? For the third year running, the Government have cut housing benefit for parents whose grown-up children still live with them. It is not always easy for an adult to live with his or her parents, particularly if he or she is without work. That cut simply makes it more difficult. How can the Secretary of State justify that?
One important way to curb the spiralling housing benefit bill would have been to take the tough action that Labour proposed on the Social Security Administration (Fraud) Bill. The Select Committee on Social Security estimates that one in every five pounds spent on housing benefit are wasted on fraud, but the Secretary of State refuses to implement our proposals for tougher measures.
We must at all times remain vigilant in the battle against fraud on the public purse, no matter where it is committed. Every pound wasted on fraud is a waste of taxpayers' money, which could go to those in need, and a waste of public support for the welfare state. Labour defends the welfare state, and we want to see it better defended against the abuse of fraud.
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