Examination of Witnesses (Questions 67
- 79)
WEDNESDAY 8 NOVEMBER 2006
MR CHRIS
POND, MS
KATE GREEN
AND MS
SUSY GIULLARI
Q67 Chairman: Welcome to our second
evidence session on our employment strategy inquiry. It is good
to see you all. I am going to kick us off today. Is full-time
employment always the right thing for lone parents?
Mr Pond: Thank you for inviting
us to give evidence to the Committee. The answer to that is no,
it is not right for all lone parents at all times, any more than
it is right for any parents at all times. There are circumstances
in which it is not appropriate for lone parents to be in employment.
We know that about one-quarter of lone parents are caring for
a child with a disability or a long-term illness. It does not
mean that not all of them can work but it does mean there are
greater barriers. About one-quarter of lone parents themselves
have a disability. Again, that does not mean they cannot work
but it does mean that there are barriers of which we need to take
account. So while the great majority of lone parents do want to
work if the circumstances are right, we need to respect that in
some circumstances those lone parents have made a decision for
themselves and for their children that now is not the time to
be working.
Ms Green: I guess to that I would
add that it is not necessarily determined by the age of the children.
Many lone parents with very young children under the age of one
will be out at work and be able to make that balance, perhaps
because they have got family support or because of the kind of
employment that they are able to access. Lone parents of older
children will often say that that is the time when they most need
to be around for them and at home, particularly if they are going
to be taking exams, going to change schools, or simply facing
some of the peer group pressures that quite a lot of lone parents
say their kids are particularly exposed to in their teens.
Ms Giullari: I think I would add
that it is important to remember that there is quite a diversity
amongst lone parents in terms of the attitudes about when the
right time comes for them to work, but also about whether it is
right to work full time or part time even when the children are
slightly older, so it is important to bear that in mind as well.
Q68 Chairman: Do you think that the
70% employment rate target is achievable and is it desirable to
have such a target?
Mr Pond: I think it is an ambitious
target. It is less ambitious than the target for lone parent themselves,
90% of whom tell us that if the circumstances were right, in other
words if the affordable and quality childcare was available and
if the right jobs were there and the right pay was there, they
would like to work. It is less ambitious than it might be, as
Lisa Harker's report for the DWP has showed us in the past fortnight,
because we need to reach an employment rate for lone parents of
68% if we are through that mechanism alone to achieve the child
poverty target for lone parents themselves by 2010. It is most
unlikely, frankly, that we are going to reach that target. There
has been an astonishing improvement in the employment rate for
lone parents already, especially given the barriers that many
face, but it will be stretching to reach the 70% target. Our argument
would be that we need to focus not only on helping lone parents
get into work but also, most importantly, helping them stay in
work. If we could reduce the exit rates of lone parents from employment
to the same level as the exit rates of other parents then we would
achieve the 70% target without any substantial further increase
in the entry rates, so we need to focus both on retention and
on helping lone parents into work in the first place.
Q69 Chairman: Do you think on retention
it is an issue of the type of job that lone parents tend to go
into or is it a lack of support once they move into work or on-going
support?
Mr Pond: I think it is a combination
of things: first of all, it is the skills and qualifications that
lone parents have when they enter work; it is the type of work
that they go into; it is the type of support that they have in
going into work; and it is about the conditions once they are
in employment, for example the level of pay. We know that many
lone parents face a very real problem of low pay and poor employment
prospects, which does not give them a great incentive to remain
in employment, but it is also important that in terms of rights
at work, and indeed the attitude of employers that they support
lone parents going through those periods of crisis that so many
parents face. We know that 31% of people leave employment when
they become lone parents. If we could deal with that problem,
if we could give lone parents support in those circumstances,
as we are in One Parent Families through a project such as Family
Fortunes, then we could reduce that job loss for lone parents
and increase the retention rate.
Ms Giullari: Another issue is
that the childcare promise has never really been delivered in
reality as yet, and therefore it becomes very, very difficult
for a lone parent to afford childcare and to manage working responsibilities
with working times or childcare arrangements that break down or
that are too expensive. That is the case perhaps mostly for those
lone parents who cannot rely on any other support which is not
formal care or cannot afford home-based child care, which is still
very expensive. So until these conditions are in place, it is
going to be very difficult to achieve that target.
Q70 Chairman: We have to recognise,
as you said Chris, that there is not a homogeneous group of lone
parents and there are different individual circumstances, particularly
for those with children with a disability. Is it the case that
the policy focus should be on sectors, if you like, of lone parents
or should it try and maintain the broad-brush approach? I am thinking
particularly of London where the increase has been negligible
in the employment rate of lone parents. One thing that comes through
constantly in all the evidence we receive is this insecurity at
point of change, so what do you think can be built into that?
Mr Pond: First of all, we have
got to recognise that, if we are to reach the 70% target, that
we have to get 300,000 more lone parents into work. That means
we have got to do as much in the next four years as we have achieved
in the past eight years. We also have to recognise that that is
getting more difficult because the groups that we are trying to
help now are the hardest to reach. We all know that the further
you get up the mountain, the thinner the oxygen gets, and we are
now above the tree line in terms of this target. Therefore, we
have got to look to groups such as lone parents in London where
the employment rate, as you say, is much lower than it is for
the country as a whole and where the improvement has been less
encouraging. We need to look to those lone parents who have lower
levels of qualifications and are perhaps less job ready than would
be the case elsewhere. We also need to look of course to those
who have been on benefits for longer because two-thirds of those
lone parents at the moment have been on benefits for two years.
That suggests they are quite a long way from the labour market,
and unless we put much greater investment into projects such as
the New Deal for Lone Parents and New Deal Plus for Lone Parents,
we are not going to reach out to those groups and we will not
reach the target.
Ms Green: One of the things that
I perhaps could add is, first of all, we see a lot of lone parents
who are also, as you have mentioned, parents of disabled children,
maybe disabled parents themselves or maybe carers. There are many
lone parents therefore who are being categorised in the system
under other headings (or could be) and the system is remarkably
inflexible at seeing the whole range of barriers and experiences
that they may have. It categorises them very much by what benefit
regime and therefore what sort of engagement regime a parent is
required to participate in. That means that quite often it will
fail to address the full range of needs for support that a lone
parent may have. For example, we have talked to lone parents who
are also parents who have a disability, and they will say if they
are being treated as disabled parents they will have conversations
with Jobcentre Plus staff about how to manage their disability
but there will not be any acknowledgement of their responsibilities
as parents. Equally, if they are seen as lone parents it may be
completely not taken on board that they have health needs and
might benefit from support around managing those health conditions.
So I think there is a problem with inflexibility and a lack of
data even about how people may overlap into different categories.
Secondly, London represents a very significant challenge and I
am very sure—and I say this also as a member of the London
Child Poverty Commission—that London-specific strategies
are going to be necessary. That is not to say that we do not feel
that policy should be looking to address increasing the employment
rate amongst lone parents across the piece, but I think we do
feel there will need to be particular policy solutions and approaches
in London because, plainly, the broad-brush approach in terms
of the higher costs of working in London and the greater challenges
of managing family life and working in London are not being sufficiently
addressed by current policy. Your point about insecurity at the
point of change is a very significant one. The risk that lone
parents feel they are taking as they move into employment or increase
their hours is indeed borne out by the way in which the benefit
system may interact and start to make that transition quite uneconomic.
I think at the very least there is a need for incredibly good
advice at that point about the financial implications of changing
a working pattern and moving into paid employment, and that advice
is often not entirely complete, not necessarily completely reliable,
and, in terms of the availability of independent advice, is likely
not to be there at all as the independent sector is increasingly
squeezed.
Q71 John Penrose: I just wanted to
follow up, if I could, on those last comments about multiple deprivation
and the interaction between them. One of the things which we are
going to be looking into is the effect of those interactions.
You are saying at the moment that the system is rather inflexible
in the way that it deals with this. What is your best estimate
as to whether or not the effect of being a lone parent, just as
the impact of lone parenting, is something which is important
but which is a secondary overlay to some of these other things
which you are talking about? Do you have to solve them first,
in other words, and then deal with the lone parenting issues or
is it something which if you deal with the lone parenting issues
most of the rest of them will become significantly easier to solve
and you can deal with them in passing?
Ms Green: I think you would have
to be advancing on all fronts. What is more, individuals will
experience the challenges of their different barriers in different
ways at different times so somebody may find that she is a disabled
parent but the real challenge at present is around her health
condition. Another lone parent who in every other way appears
to be in the same circumstances may find that her children are
having particular difficulties at school at that time and therefore
the immediate and most significant problem for her is to deal
with her parenting responsibilities.
Q72 John Penrose: So they are all
show-stoppers?
Ms Green: I think potentially
they all are and picking on let us resolve the lone parent problems,
for example, and everything else will fall into place, would not
work.
Ms Giullari: At the same time
it is important to look at the extra specific needs. For example,
for a lone parent who is disabled the main barrier might be the
disability, but the way in which they can deal with it might be
further complicated by the fact that they are a lone parent and
they have not got a partner, for example, to support them in any
way. So further down I think it is always important to remember
the specific and complex needs that lone parents have to juggle
parenting and work.
Q73 Justine Greening: I just wanted
to follow up on the London strategy that you were talking about.
As a London MP, I think I can see the need for some focused work
too, but in your opinion what is driving that extra challenge
that we have got here in the city?
Ms Green: Of course, it is not
just one thing because if it were it would be much easier to deal
with it. I think probably the issues that make London so much
more challenging are well known and understood. It is about the
higher cost of living in London, which means that working at low
pay is even less likely to be economic and, as Chris has already
said, pay is a huge factor in whether or not a lone parent will
take and then sustain a job. It is about the difficulty of accessing
good-quality services in London, including particularly childcare,
both in terms of its availability and again of course in terms
of its cost, which in London is exceptionally high and where of
course the tax credits system does not make any additional allowance
for that exceptionally high cost.
Q74 Justine Greening: Are you saying
that the benefits system should further reflect what have now
become increasingly geographically different cost structures in
our economy? Do you think that is something we should think about?
Ms Green: In terms of the support
for childcare, the focus on the tax credit is proving to be a
rather limited way of dealing with the problem. The take-up of
the childcare element of working tax credit is very low. It seems
to us that the balance of investment between enabling lone parents
to purchase childcare and the demand side stimulus that we have
got through the tax credit, as opposed to what is invested in
the supply of affordable childcare, is probably out of kilter.
So I think we would say the first priority is to look again at
that balance of supply side and demand side provision. It is incredibly
complicated to start to move into different benefit rates for
different cities, but it is certainly the case that in terms of
pay in London so that there is a lot of interest in the Living
Wage campaign and the idea that higher rates of pay in London
are plainly necessary to make jobs economic and worth the lone
parents moving into.
Q75 Justine Greening: One quick follow-up
question on housing: a lot of the single mothers that I see in
my MP's surgery are in some cases sleeping on couches in front
rooms with their existing family because there simply is no space
for them to go to, they cannot rent privately and their home situation
simply does not facilitate being able to easily get back into
work. Is that quite a bad problem we have got here in London with
overcrowding?
Ms Green: I think it is a problem.
The quality of life therefore that families and their children
are able to enjoy is very, very seriously compromised. I think
it is well worth attention in terms of looking at the policy of
increasing the housing supply in London that we make sure that
it is not too focused on building lots of one or two-bedroomed
yuppie flats. What we need is family homes in London and it is
very, very important that housing policy and policy to increase
the supply of affordable housing in London focuses on the needs
of families and children.
Mr Pond: If I may just add to
that, there is a particular challenge on the housing in London
but the reform of housing benefit and giving people more choice
ought to help to address that to some extent.
Q76 Mrs Humble: We are already engaging
in a debate here on all sorts of technical measures to try to
help lone parents, but I want to get back to some basic questions
before exploring those more intricate measures, starting off with
how do we better engage with lone parents? In a way, it is picking
up on your point, Chris, when you were talking about the fact
that we are now targeting the group furthest away from the employment
market. It is often that group that lacks confidence and does
not have the soft skills that are needed before they then start
even looking at engaging with training before going into work.
What sort of measures should we be looking at for improving the
self-confidence of lone parents and making sure that they do have
those soft skills? What role do you think voluntary organisations
like yourselves have in that?
Mr Pond: One of the biggest barriers
to so many lone parents moving into work is a lack of confidence,
especially if they have been outside the labour market for some
time. If I may flag up one of the projects which we have been
undertaking very successfully with Marks & Spencer, the Marks
& Start programme, that is helping hundreds of lone parents
into work every year. An important ingredient of that programme
is both giving them support at the beginning of that process to
make sure that they are ready for work, that they have got their
childcare in place, that they know what will be expected of them,
that their confidence is increased, and then when they are in
work to provide them with the support that they need. In Marks
& Spencer's it is done through teams of mentors of existing
staff who act as "buddies" to them. That combination
has proved very successful in helping lone parents move into work
and to keep them in those jobs. You can see the transformation
that that programme can make to the circumstances of individual
lone parents. That sort of programme is very important. The voluntary
sector can make a real contribution to this, and indeed the private
sector, but it can never be a substitute for a properly resourced
public programme of the New Deal for Lone Parents-type and indeed
the New Deal Plus for Lone Parents. We need to make sure that
that programme is sufficiently well resourced so we can provide
the support to lone parents both before entry to employment and
once they have gone into jobs.
Q77 Mrs Humble: Just staying with
voluntary organisations though, I know when I speak to colleagues
from different parts of the country that not everywhere has voluntary
organisations to support lone parents, so if there is a role for
them—and I hear what you say about the statutory sector
having its function and there will be other questions later about
the New Deal and the statutory sector—what can be done to
ensure that there is a spread of voluntary organisations around
the country to undertake the particular functions that you do?
I have to say that sometimes lone parents respond to you because
you are not statutory, so when you intervene and are saying, "We
want to improve your self-confidence", they will listen to
you. How can you better work, especially given that you are not
everywhere simultaneously?
Ms Giullari: This is an issue
where perhaps there is a chance to talk about some kind of mixed
model where the statutory sector certainly provides in terms of
numbers and in terms of programmes the major role, but voluntary
organisations like One Parent Families and like ourselves can
actually provide programmes that perhaps are better at reaching
out to those who are very hard to reach. I think the point about
trust is a key issue. Being a lone parent organisation which is
based in the community is more likely to attract those lone parents
who still feel stigmatised by the statutory agencies and who are
not very work ready. The people that we see tend to be lone parents
who are literally getting by day-by-day, and when they come to
our services they really have no ideas, they are not even thinking
about work, they are not thinking about training, they are just
living day-by-day, and they are not thinking beyond that. So there
is a sense in which organisations like voluntary sector organisations
can work with lone parents who are living in very disadvantaged
conditions, who are very, very far away from the labour market,
who have no qualifications and very low self-confidence, to actually
engage them in the first step of thinking of perhaps engaging
in some kind of goal-setting and investing in the time that they
have where they are looking after their younger children. We have
been talking about this with the National One Parent Forum which
is a meeting which happens twice a year of different lone parent
organisations. We were discussing this issue because all the lone
parent organisations provide services of this kind but we became
very aware that our services worked really well because of the
context in which they are provided, and also because as a lone
parent organisation we understand very well the lone parents'
very holistic needs. The services that we provide are not just
training and skills; for example we provide signposting, advice
and information; we provide childcare on site so lone parents
can access the childcare; we provide flexible training which works
with the hours that the lone parents feel they can spend away
from their children. In terms of gaps, we know there are gaps
in the country and we are interested in working together to collate
our evidence on the outcomes of these programmes and to work out
where the gaps are to see whether we can support perhaps non-lone
parent community organisations to develop similar programmes that
can engage lone parents in these deprived communities. There is
a key issue and that is one of sustainability. A lot of those
programmes have to rely on short-term, small-scale trust-funded
funding, which means that they often cannot be replicated in the
actual areas where they are. So in order to develop something
that is much bigger and covers many more areas, there is a need
for larger scale funding from the Government that would enable
us to work together and provide this kind of model.
Mr Pond: Could I perhaps just
add to Susy's comments about the importance of the holistic approach,
and it is related to Mr Penrose's question. We do know that people
face multiple disadvantage and that people are not cardboard cut-outs.
One of the particular contributions that the voluntary sector
can make is providing that holistic approach, and we are working
with a consortium of organisations, both in the voluntary sector
and in the private sector, to create a community-based centre
which will allow people who come through the door with employment
needs to be treated as individuals and for their multiple disadvantage
to be treated in an holistic way. I think that could be an important
way forward building on some of the proposals in the Welfare
Reform Green Paper.
Q78 Mrs Humble: Can I just ask you
a question about the work-related activity premium (WRAP). You
make comments in your written submissions, but I just wonder if
you could expand a little on what role you think this premium
will have in encouraging more lone parents back into work or into
work for the first time (because I do also meet lone parents who
have never been in work)? Chris, do you want to start off because
the OPF made some comments.
Mr Pond: We are very hopeful that
WRAP is going to reach out to those groups we have been talking
about who are most difficult to help, and we think it is an important
step forward. There are certain aspects of it that we would like
to see moving further on. We would prefer that it was not wholly
concentrated on those lone parents with older children, who to
an extent have already reached the employment target (66% of those
with a youngest child aged over 11 are already in employment)
so that does not take you much further towards the 70% target.
We would rather it was on an opt-in basis rather than an opt-out
basis, but we think the principle is very important and it could
be a way of helping lone parents to get into work and stay in
work. It will require New Deal advisers to develop a new set of
skills which are much closer to the professional career development
skills that we see in the private sector and it will mean that
those personal advisers will have to make sure that they provide
long-term continuing support for lone parents, but the principle,
we think, is absolutely right. We need to make sure that we define
properly what the work-related activities are and that when lone
parents change from one form of activity to another that they
do not find that suddenly their work-related activity premium
stops. Personal advisers should have the discretion to be able
to continue that payment even though nature of the activity has
changed.
Ms Giullari: We are also concerned
about the time it takes. It is what we were saying before; it
does take a long time to get lone parents who are very far away
from the labour market into thinking about and engaging in work-related
activities. So we feel that the six-month limit on the premium
is fairly short in this respect. The other thing we also feel
is that it is a shame that the WRAPs are being targeted at lone
parents who have children over 11 because we do feel the biggest
group that needs to be engaged in work-related activities is lone
parents who are furthest away from the labour market, and that
is not always determined by the age of the child. There is a danger
that these lone parents will be left out. The other issue on the
point that Chris made earlier about holistic support; again there
is a role for voluntary sector lone parent and non-statutory organisations
to work closely with personal advisers to actually inform them
about what kind of work-related activities on an holistic basis
an organisation like ours provides because for those lone parents
that are hardest to reach and less trusting of other organisations
perhaps that would be a really good way to make the work-related
premium work.
Q79 Mrs Humble: Finally from me two
more controversial questions. The first one concerns compulsion:
should there be more compulsion for lone parents within the system
and, if so, should it be targeted at lone parents with older children?
Mr Pond: Frankly, compulsion is
not going to buy you very much progress towards the target. Up
to now One Parent Families has been supportive of, for instance,
the work-focused interviews and the requirement that lone parents
attend those interviews because it does make sure that lone parents
have a full understanding of what is available to them moving
into work or to access training and other facilities. We are very
sceptical indeed that moving further down the road of conditionality
is going to have any greater success. The evidence is not supportive
of that. It could be counter-productive because one of the great
successes of the New Deal for Lone Parents has been its voluntary
nature, the fact that people feel they are engaging on a voluntary
basis and they therefore engage more enthusiastically than they
would if required. Most importantly we do not think, frankly,
that Jobcentre Plus and the DWP can deliver on increased conditionality
without undermining the quality of the provision that is already
there. We know that Jobcentre Plus is facing very, very stretching
targets on both headcount and on their budgets, but that does
mean we are already seeing the effects on the ability of personal
advisers to provide a really high-quality service to lone parents,
which itself will start to impact on the employment target. We
are very, very anxious that the attempt to increase that conditionality
is simply going to mean that the quality is going to fall further,
the amount of help and support that lone parents are given is
going to be reduced, and it will be more difficult to reach the
employment target and not easier to do so.
Ms Green: CPAG are very concerned
about the tendency to increase conditionality across a whole range
of benefits regimes in fact, but particularly in this instance
in the case of lone parents. I very much agree with Chris that
the very admirable achievement in increasing lone parent employment
to date has not been as a result of more and more compulsion;
it is much, much more to do with a combination of a strong economy
which has created more job opportunities; the importance of tax
credits in making work pay for more lone parents; the quality
of support that they have been able to access through New Deals
and other programmes, and I think there is, as Chris says, no
evidence to suggest that what is needed is more compulsion. Plainly
what seems to work well is good-quality support and so the emphasis
needs to be on more of that. I think we are anxious that this
is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way, that the more
compulsion is out there, the more it is argued that that is what
is needed, to a point where I think we are in danger of letting
this become more prevalent in the way in which the welfare system
is working without a proper debate about the principles as well
as the practice of taking that approach. I think we are, for example—going
back to the question you were asking a few moments ago about the
work-related activity premium—seeing what might in some
senses be regarded as conditionality being dressed up as other
things, because if a benefit is reduced if you do not participate
that is in fact conditionality, and I think we need a more honest
and open debate about what sort of tendency is really being followed
here. Finally on your question is it appropriate for some lone
parents and not others, and I think perhaps the suggestion that
you could expect more of lone parents with older children, if
you were to continue to increase compulsion on lone parents whose
children are aged over 11, you are going to see ever-reducing
gains. Most of those lone parents are in paid employment in fact.
Those who are not are likely to either have been out of work for
a relatively short time (they may be just coming into lone parenthood
and move back to work quite quickly) or they face very substantial
barriers, and the answer to addressing those will not be about
making their lives harder through more compulsion; it will be
looking at the kind of holistic support that they need.
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