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Young People (Benefits)
5. Mr. Doran: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if she will make a statement on the number of young people aged 18 to 25 who are dependent on social security benefits.[879]
Mr. Field: I welcome my hon. Friend's re-entry to the House. The answer to his question is 1.3 million.
Mr. Doran: I thank my right hon. Friend for his kind remarks. Is he aware that, even in oil-rich Aberdeen which has one of the lowest adult unemployment rates in the country, almost 1,500 young people under the age of 25 are unemployed? That is almost four times the adult rate. What steps will he take to ensure that those young people are offered real employment and training opportunities to remove them from benefit?
Mr. Field: I am sure that my hon. Friend's constituents will not have missed the fact that, in his first question back in the House, he asks about unemployed under 25-year-olds, because in his constituency the unemployment rate among that group is higher than the average rate in Scotland or, indeed, in the United
Kingdom. They and many of our constituents who are under the age of 25 will look forward to the Budget that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will shortly present to enable us to raise the revenue to introduce our welfare to work measures. They will offer a range of opportunities to every unemployed person aged between 18 and 25.
Mr. Bernard Jenkin: While the Government do not plan to increase expenditure on pensioners, can the Minister confirm that the plans that have been announced today amount to extra spending on single parents and 18 to 25-year-olds?
Mr. Field: It would be helpful to the House for us to hear the speech and then table questions on it.
Welfare Reform
7. Mr. Bayley: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans she has to invite (a) voluntary bodies and (b) other interested parties to submit their views on welfare reform for consideration by her Department's review of the social security system.[881]
Ms Harman: We are committed to a review of the social security system. We want a modernised social security system which will tackle poverty and welfare dependency.
Mr. Bayley: Does my right hon. Friend agree that a range of voluntary bodies such as the citizens advice bureaux and those for one-parent families have a detailed working knowledge of how the benefit system operates in practice and how in many cases it fails the people whom it is designed to help? Will she make sure that those bodies are consulted as part of her Department's proposed welfare review so that they can help to build a social security system that is not only sustainable but targets benefits on those who really need them?
Ms Harman: My hon. Friend is right. We need to draw on the ideas and experience of those who advise and speak up for people who use the benefits system. We want to build consensus for the modernisation of the social security system to ensure that it encourages rather than discourages work, savings and honesty. To do that, we need to draw on the experience of voluntary organisations such as the citizens advice bureaux. We also need to draw on the experience of Department of Social Security staff. I hope that they will be partners with us in modernising the system and fitting it for the 21st century. I have today written to all DSS staff members, stating that I look forward to working in partnership with them. I have placed a copy of that letter in the Library.
Mr. Andrew Rowe: I am sure that the right hon. Lady is as aware as I am that many voluntary bodies know that one of the most useful actions for a young unemployed person is to take on a job as a volunteer in one of those organisations. Such jobs prepare them better than almost anything for training and absorption into the workplace. Will the right hon. Lady undertake to look again at the extremely intractable problem of being available for work and how that interacts with taking on a responsible voluntary job?
Ms Harman: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. One of the four options that will be available under
our welfare to work scheme to people under the age of 25 who have been unemployed for more than six months will be work with a voluntary organisation. By offering that, we hope to ensure two outcomes. First, we shall help to build the all-important infrastructure of our voluntary organisations, which do so much in every community. Secondly, we want to give young people work experience so that they can understand the world of work, learn new skills, have something to put on their CVs and have a stepping stone to paid work.Lone Parents
8. Mrs. Helen Jackson: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans she has to enhance the provision for lone parents on income support.[882]
Ms Harman: We are concerned that there are 1 million lone mothers bringing up 2 million children on income support. I know that my hon. Friend has been concerned about lone mothers in her constituency who depend on benefit and that, like us, she believes that the best way in which to help them and their children have a better standard of living is to allow them the opportunity, which they want, to secure that better standard of living by going out to work.
Mrs. Jackson: I congratulate my right hon. Friend not only on her position, but on the way in which and speed with which she has put opportunities for women, particularly lone mothers, at the top of our political agenda. I am sure that she will agree that the vast number of mothers, both lone and otherwise, want to work, so long as they are not going to be out of pocket. What steps will she take to ensure that the extra child care that is required to enable those women to take up work and training opportunities is both flexible and affordable?
Ms Harman: My hon. Friend raises the important issue of the relationship between balancing responsibilities for children at home with responsibilities at work. Our determination to formulate and implement a national child care strategy is at the heart of that. The week before last, I met the National Council for One Parent Families, which told me that the lack of affordable child care is one of the most important reasons preventing lone mothers from going to work. That is why the Prime Minister, in his speech today on welfare reform, has said that he is determined to do two things: first, to ensure that, when their youngest child turns five, lone mothers are invited into jobcentres to be given advice and information about voluntary work, training and work; and secondly to have a network of after-school clubs throughout the country to ensure that, when lone mothers are perhaps working beyond school hours, they know that their children are learning and playing safely in proper, supervised facilities, rather than feeling that they are having to wander the streets.
Mr. Lilley: I do not know, Madam Speaker, whether you can advise the House, but is there any precedent for the Prime Minister making a speech on social security during Social Security Questions, the content of which is apparently unknown to Social Security Ministers? I have just received a copy, but, obviously, the House has not had time to consider it.
Will the right hon. Lady now clarify the answer given by the Minister of State earlier? Are we to understand that she is now considering reneging on the pledge that she repeatedly gave the House and the electorate that she would pay higher benefits to lone parents than those available to married couples in equivalent circumstances, rather than equalising them, as we had promised beforehand?
Ms Harman:
The pledge that we made repeatedly and that we repeated in our manifesto, and the way in which we asserted that our approach was different from that of the previous Government--whose approach was to criticise lone mothers and to say that they were all young girls who had got pregnant to jump the housing queues--was to say that the best form of welfare for people of working age is work. We know that lone mothers want to work. The right hon. Gentleman's Government simply said, "Here is your order book. We will check up once every three years to see whether you are still living at the same address and come back when your youngest child is 16." That was not good enough for lone mothers, for their children or for the taxpayer. We are going to ensure a better standard of living for lone mothers and their children and a better deal for the taxpayer.
Mrs. Anne Campbell:
Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Cambridgeshire child care information service, which was launched some months ago, has been a huge success in helping parents and lone parents back into work, giving integrated advice not only on jobs, training and benefits, but on child care? Will she try to ensure that that is a national system and not for the benefit just of people in Cambridgeshire?
Ms Harman:
Yes. I have asked my officials to examine closely the pioneering work that my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell) has done in the Cambridgeshire Childcare Links project, which brings all the information together in one place so that the lone mother seeking work can, possibly with a child pulling at her skirt trying to distract her attention, nevertheless have at her fingertips all the information that she might want about benefits, local training courses, local after-school clubs and part-time courses at local colleges. Using modern technology to improve and modernise the social security system to enable it to provide the services that people want is one of the most important parts of our welfare to work programme.
Mr. Lansley:
Perhaps the right hon. Lady will now tell us whether she proposes to pay additional benefits to lone parents over and above the benefits that would be payable to married couples in the same circumstances. Will she pay those extra benefits? Will she give us a clear answer?
Ms Harman:
I have set out, at some length, our approach to lone mothers. The hon. Gentleman will have to wait until we make an announcement--indeed, he would have had to wait for the previous Government to do so--because of the issue of uprating in advance of the Budget.
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