Lone Parents in London
259. Employment rates in London are lower than for
the rest of the UK - the so-called "London effect."[301]
The overall employment rate in London is 67%, compared to 72%
in the country as a whole.[302]
Part of this effect can be explained by the presence in London
of high proportions of people with characteristics which are associated
with labour market disadvantage. Pamela Meadows of the National
Institute for Social and Economic Research told us that "inner
London has a concentration of people who have characteristics
which put them at a disadvantage in the labour market wherever
they live."[303]
Examples of these characteristics included:
"being of Bangladeshi origin […] [having
low or no] qualifications, [not] speaking English as a first language
or indeed speaking English at all. London has a higher proportion
of first generation migrants generally in its population. There
is always an issue with newcomers in that they do not have access
to the same social networks as a means of finding jobs."[304]
260. Lone Parents seem to have particular problems
in London. The London Child Poverty Commission found that parents
in London had lower employment rates than in the rest of the UK:
"The employment rate for lone parents living
in London (43%) is well below the rate for lone parents outside
London (58%). Lone parents in both Inner and Outer London have
very low employment rates (39% and 47%) relative to lone parents
in the rest of the UK.
The employment rate for mothers living in couples
living in London (60%) is well below the rate for couple mothers
in the rest of the UK (73%). Within London, rates are very low
for those living in Inner London, where less than half (48%) of
all couple mothers are in work compared with two-thirds in Outer
London."[305]
261. Declan Gaffney, a member of the London Child
Poverty Commission, told us that the low employment rates in London
compared to the rest of the UK were almost entirely explained
by low employment among parents:
"The most striking thing about London, looking
at worklessness compared with other parts of the UK, is once you
take out full time students from the picture, which slightly distorts
comparisons, and compare the employment rates of the rest of the
UK parents account for all the difference. This is both lone
parents and mothers in couples and fathers, all of whom have employment
rates which are lower than parents in the rest of the UK. We
found that people who do not have kids tend to have very similar
employment rates to the rest of the country."[306]
262. Carey Oppenheim, Chair of the London Child Poverty
Commission, explained that one of the differences between London
and the rest of the country was the very low rates of part-time
working. This, she said, "may be [caused by] a mixture of
labour market, structural issues but also issues about incentives
to work."[307]
One Parent Families explained that part-time work was a preferred
option for many lone parents, with nearly half of those in employment
in spring 2004 working part-time.[308]
263. Evidence suggests that the New Deal for Lone
Parents, like all New Deals and Jobcentre Plus as a whole, performs
less well in London than elsewhere. A Treasury report published
in March 2006 commented that:
"Given the greater concentration of groups with
labour market disadvantages in London, labour market programmes
in the capital might be expected to have more difficulty reaching
the levels of effectiveness seen in the rest of the UK. There
are indications that this is the case. The proportion of New Deal
leavers in London who find work through the New Deal is significantly
lower than the national average […] […] London's share
of Job Entries through Jobcentre Plus is significantly lower than
would be expected given London's share of the national benefit
caseload. Again, this is reflected across all client groups."[309]
264. We asked Carey Oppenheim what she thought were
the reasons for this poorer performance. She said, "It strikes
me that it would be a combination of turnover within employment
offices, Jobcentre Plus offices and other offices, coupled with
a challenging population."[310]
265. Without a significant increase in the employment
rate in London, the Government is unlikely to reach its existing
targets on child poverty and lone parent employment, or to achieve
the employment rate aspiration. Paul Gregg said that:
"London is the kind of place that, because of
the failures we have had so far, we should be trying things such
as the work-related activity premiums and the in-work credit more
extensively than we are nationally. It should be a breaking ground
for some of those ideas […] work incentives in London are
weak for parents."[311]
266. Carey Oppenheim told us that the Cities Strategy
might work well in London, because the "city pilots are an
ideal way of being able to test greater cohesion and a more rounded
service at the front line."[312]
The Cities Strategy was discussed in Chapter 6. Pamela Meadows
told us that early signs suggested that Employment Zones might
be performing better for harder-to-reach groups, and that this
might be because they were smaller in scale than Jobcentre Plus:
"The one thing we do know about measures to
help people get back to work is that small interventions work
better than large ones. That appears to be partly to do with
the quality of the staff you are able to deploy when you are doing
something new and innovative, as opposed to when you are doing
something big, serving thousands if not hundreds of thousands
of people. That is one of the issues around Jobcentre Plus in
London. It is a big, impassable, rule-bound organisation that
has to deliver things in a way which is equitable across the country,
and it is quite difficult within that framework to offer the sort
of flexible personalised service that you can do in the Employment
Zones."[313]
267. Declan Gaffney agreed that services needed to
be more flexible:
"There is probably nothing in particular about
living in London that constitutes a unique barrier to employment.
What we do have in London is very large numbers of people who
are facing several different barriers which need to be negotiated
at the same time for work to be a genuine possibility. It is
pretty clear that the employment services as they are currently
set up are not set up to address those barriers across the board."[314]
268. Kate Green of CPAG made an additional point:
"The take-up of the childcare element of working tax credit
is very low."[315]
269. We
conclude that the performance of Jobcentre Plus and the New Deals
in London will need to improve if the DWP is to have a chance
of achieving its 70% lone parent employment target. Lone parents
and other groups with low employment rates face particular barriers
to work in London, including a lack of affordable childcare and
high housing costs. We also recommend that the Government should
examine the take-up rate of the childcare element of Working Tax
Credit in London.
270. We will
follow with interest the evaluation of Employment Zones, and the
development of the Cities Strategy pilots in London. We recommend
that the DWP also consider offering enhanced incentives to work
to lone parents in London, and ask it to set out how it intends
to improve its performance in helping lone parents in London overcome
the particular difficulties they face. As we have already recommended,
the DWP should move towards a more flexible menu of provision
for all.
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