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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.
Jim Knight: Will my hon. Friend give way?
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.
Lynne Jones: I should like to start by quoting from the Department for Work and Pensions' five-year strategy that was published in 2005. It states:
"we think it would be wrong simply to move lone parents from Income Support onto the Jobseeker's Allowance regime: an unrestricted requirement to search for work is inappropriate, given the complex and difficult circumstances many lone parents face. We think such an approach would be expensive, unfair and ineffectual."
I agree, but what has changed since 2005? Certainly, lone parents have continued to engage with work as their children have got older. They have been supported and helped by programmes such as the new deal, which I fully support.
It seems, however, that we are constantly having to respond to the Daily Mail-type agenda, which suggests that lone parents and other people on benefit-perhaps incapacity benefit-are somehow feckless and living the life of Riley while the state pays them luxurious benefits. That is not the case. As the DWP knows full well, the reality is that only a small proportion of lone parents with children over 11 are actually not in work. The figures that I have are probably not the most up to date, but they suggest that 19 per cent. of lone parents whose youngest child is over 11 claim income support. Of those, 25 per cent. are caring for a disabled child, and 28 per cent. have a disability themselves.
The reality is that lone parents do engage in work, and as the child care becomes less onerous as their children get older-or as the access to child care improves-more of them are returning to work. Research has shown that access to good quality child care is the biggest factor in determining whether lone parents go out to work. I commend the Government's work over the years on improving access to child care, but we still have a long way to go. In that quote, the Government seemed to acknowledge that lone parents have difficult lives and that they have to juggle their work and home lives.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) that it is not for some bureaucrat to decide what is best for children. Most parents take responsibility for their children and do a good job. We should value the work that parents do in bringing up their children. That in itself is a valid contribution to our society. By all means, those who want to work and can work should be encouraged to do so, but we as a society should value the work that parents do in bringing up children and value the decisions they make about how best to do that. Yes, some people may be inadequate and need support, so we need programmes to offer it, but I do not agree with having sanctions to deprive people who are already poor of their benefits, as this may affect the children.
The biggest problem people face is coping with poverty. Yes, work will help people get out of poverty, but for some people, it is not in the interests of their family for them to work. The Government acknowledge that, as we have had all sorts of concessions made to the original proposals, which I welcome. I think that the new Secretary of State has engaged positively, trying to reflect the realities of life for lone parents in trying to engage with work, but what we have as a result is a very complex and bureaucratic system. We know that people do not understand complex systems. We know that those on the receiving end of those bureaucratic complexities do not understand them. We also know that the staff who administer those complex regulations are often not very good at understanding them. As a result, we do not always get the right decisions.
I remain of the view that the Government are right to support people on benefits, lone parents and other groups to engage in work so that they have a life of their own away from their caring responsibilities. That is good. I think that most lone parents who experience that kind of support value it and want to engage, so I think it is unnecessary to have these complex regulations to invoke sanctions against already poor people. We know from DWP research that staff themselves feel very uncomfortable about introducing a mandatory element into their work with lone parents. The Government should listen to the views of those staff, which are well documented in the DWP's own research publications.
Ms Abbott: Given that the staff working at the sharp end do not want to be involved in mandatory sanctions for women with children up to the age of three, why does my hon. Friend think that Ministers are so wedded to those mandatory sanctions? They have not explained themselves and my hon. Friend might be able to shed some light on this issue.
Lynne Jones: I think the answer is in what I said at the beginning of my contribution-that there is an agenda out there that we have to be tough. I simply do not accept the idea of tough love. I think that we need positive encouragement and incentives for people to live a more fulfilled life, which they often experience by going out to work. I take my hon. Friend's point that some jobs that people engage in are low paid and not particularly interesting to do, but even those jobs provide the advantage of enabling people to meet others and to develop friendships and comradeships with their fellow workers. I believe that people value that experience; it is part of being part of society.
Mrs. McGuire: If the Government were proposing to extract parents from their home, absolve them of responsibility for their children and put them into jobs, I would probably agree with my hon. Friend, but that is not what is being proposed. Does she accept that it is important that lone parents and women in particular remain with some sort of attachment to the labour market so that when they make the decision to go back into employment, they still have live skills that they can use to lift their children and their families out of poverty?
Lynne Jones: I agree that opportunities should be provided for lone parents and other benefit recipients to engage in the world of work, in the voluntary sector and in other activities that include a social element. I do not think that people ought to be stuck at home with the children and without those opportunities. However, it is up to individuals to decide how they wish to engage with those opportunities. I do not think that the opportunities should be forced on them, along with the threat of a loss of benefits which are already not over-generous.
Mrs. McGuire: We have almost reached an agreement. We agree that it is important for young women, in particular, to remain in contact with the labour market. May I point out, however, that the subject of sanctions-on which I understand that my hon. Friend holds a principled position-arises very far down the line? There is encouragement, support and negotiation for months before sanctions are even mentioned. Does she not accept that that encouragement is built into the programmes proposed by my right hon. Friend the Minister?
Lynne Jones: I do not accept that sanctions are necessary. All that can be said for them is that they provide a structure for the relationship, because staff cannot simply give up the attempt to make contact; they must continue the encouragement. That is the only beneficial aspect of a sanctions programme that I can see, and if it is to be used so rarely, why invoke it?
I think I am right in saying that since sanctions were introduced for work-focused interviews, about 4 per cent.-not an insignificant figure-of lone parents have had to endure them. My argument is that we need to ensure that the services on offer are excellent and effective, that we need to involve lone parents in the identification of what services are effective and ensure that they are on offer, and that if for some reason a lone parent does not engage with the process initially, we must not give up but must use other means of drawing their attention to the availability of support, such as Sure Start centres and after-school activities involving parents. The support
should be seen as a positive element, and that can be achieved through members of these people's peer group, rather than their being forced to jump through hoops because Ministers want to appear tough.
In an earlier intervention, which was rather lengthy, I gave an example involving one of my constituents. Her children are older than the ones that we are discussing, but the case demonstrates that DWP staff know that it is a waste of time trying to develop an action plan for parents such as her to engage with the world of work, because they will never be in a position to do that.
I have visited my constituent at her home, and she has explained to me how she has to juggle her commitments in order to be there for her children. Some of them go to school, and she has to be there when they come home. They have severe disabilities. I know that because my constituent is a carer she will not be required to engage in work-focused activity, but none the less she is being subjected to regular mandatory work-focused interviews, and she resents that very much. For her, it is a complete waste of time-it is a waste of her time, and it is a waste of the staff's time.
My constituent acknowledges that she would like to maintain a relationship with the person who interviews her, because she is really nice and they have a nice chat. However, that is all that it amounts to: a nice chat. I think that it is probably better to support people who need nice chats in other areas of public services, such as schools and health care settings, than to force them to participate in work-focused interviews. She says she knows other parents of disabled children who feel that these requirements are unnecessary and intrusive.
Today we only have the opportunity to vote on removing the benefits sanctions in relation to three to five-year-olds, but we are concerned in general with a group that has young children and for whom child care is the most difficult to organise. I, too, will be supporting the Lords amendment. I just wish that we were not going down this route and that we were sticking to the voluntary approach.
Jim Knight: We have had an interesting debate, during which I was grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling-
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. I am sorry to interrupt the Minister but he needs the leave of the House to speak again on the Lords amendment.
Jim Knight: By leave of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, may I say that I was grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire) for her sterling support?
We started with an interesting speech from the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison). My right hon. Friend described the speech as opportunism. I agree. The Opposition are simply playing politics rather than being serious. I confirm that the amendment tabled by the noble Lord Freud in the other place was restricted to work-related activity, so the position in the other place-there are countless examples of the noble Lord Freud saying something slightly different from the Opposition spokesman-was clear: there is no problem with financial sanctions in respect of lone parents whose youngest child is aged between three and five. The measure was in respect of work-related activity. Indeed,
there was no problem with sanctions; it was only a question of financial sanctions. The hon. Gentleman talked, bizarrely, about what sounded like vouchers and about making it inconvenient by forcing people to travel across cities. For the avoidance of doubt, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the regulations in amendment (a) would include the sanctions.
My hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) made a typically clear and, at times, amusing contribution, but I would obviously dispute that we are being mean-spirited. We are trying to help and support this group of lone parents, to improve that help and support and to build on the success of the new deal for lone parents. I was pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) paid tribute to that programme.
The hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) talked about whether he would be characterised as too soft. He worried that we thought we knew best. I dealt with most of his points in a series of interventions, but if he agrees in any way with conditionality, he must see merit in what we are arguing.
I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) that we do not want to sanction anybody. We want lone parents to be supported and to get back into work, but in a way that is sympathetic to their needs as parents. That is what I said at the outset: the principle on family-friendly working is that we believe that work is the best route out of poverty but that, first and foremost, those parents have a responsibility to their children. Any requirement that we put on them, first and foremost, has to bear in mind the needs of the children and their needs as parents. I hope that it never comes to using any of these sanctions, but having them in place helps to focus the system.
I would also say to the hon. Member for Northavon that the work-related activity must flow from an action plan, so the safeguard does apply to work-related activity. It was unfortunate that my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington did not want to take any interventions, as that meant I was unable to clarify a few matters for her. She accused me of using fantasy figures, although they were taken from the Department for Children, Schools and Families child care and early years survey of parents of last year, but I think there was some fantasy attached to her argument. We are not talking about forcing people into work; we are talking about people agreeing with us an action plan through the work-focused interview, and then, at the end of a very long sanctions process, the possibility of financial sanctions. There is a guarantee of a child care place for 15 hours a week from 2010 and currently for 12.5 hours, which is already in place in Hackney for all three and four-year-olds, but if that is not in place in practice, that is certainly a good cause for a lone parent not to take advantage of the work-related activity that we would provide.
5.15 pm
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) made an interesting contribution. She said we were merely competing with the other side as to which party was tougher. That is not our motivation at all. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling made clear in some of her useful interventions, our motivation is to help people-to help these lone parents
be able to get into work-because there is a fundamental point here: we have to go back to the truth that the longer someone is out of the labour market, the more difficult it is for them to get back into work. Members have to weigh up in their minds whether or not they are serious about trying to help these lone parents overcome the obstacles to their getting back into work. Many of them will have more than one child, and if they wait until their youngest child is five, they will be waiting longer than five years to get back into the labour market. We want them to be able to have a flying start if they want one, once their children start school- [Interruption.] Yes, if they want one. They would not be required to go into work until their children are seven, but we want them to be able to have a flying start, and those of them who have literacy and numeracy problems-as many lone parents do-will need the time to be able to acquire those skills by taking advantage of the support on offer to them and to build their attachment to the labour market. That is why they need more than two years.
That is why this policy is right, and that is why the Conservatives have, within hours, failed to adhere to the principles on tackling poverty that were set out in the speech their leader delivered earlier. They are failing the test of wanting to tackle child poverty. This is at the heart of why the Government urge the House to agree to our amendment, and to disagree to the Lords amendment.
Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 2.
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