Welfare Reform Bill

Before I discuss my amendment 36, I wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones), who was aided and abetted by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell); after a standing start, she certainly got into her swing with the help she was given. I may not necessarily agree with everything she said, but I have some sympathies with her proposals. I am sure that right hon. and hon. Members will be glad to hear that I wish to discuss just my amendment 36 and am not going to go through every amendment—that would mean that we would be here all night. If we are to place additional requirements on parents as part of these reforms, we need to make sure there is adequate support before the conditions kick in. I recognise the need to get people into work, particularly in the current times—it is important that people have that opportunity. However, with the prospective Bill on child poverty and the difficulty of reaching our targets on this, we need to make sure children are at the forefront of our minds when we consider the effect of these reforms. We cannot put extra strain on parents if they cannot afford it—that would mean that they would be left worse off by the welfare system, and that was never the intention. Given the increasing obligations to be placed on parents who are unemployed, there is particular concern over the lack of high quality, flexible and affordable child care, particularly in Scotland. My amendment seeks to make sure that that is considered before strict conditions are placed on parents. It is a probing amendment—for the third time—to ensure that the Government have been listening and that children are at the heart of these reforms. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform recognised the issues involved, both on Second Reading and in Committee, and undertook to revisit them on Report. We are now on Report and I look forward to his reply. I know that he has been looking at the matter, which is why I have re-tabled this provision. I wish to thank the Scottish Campaign on Welfare Reform, which has helped me with this amendment. The group includes more than 40 organisations that work with people experiencing exclusion and poverty in Scotland, and when it was discussed in Committee the amendment attracted media coverage north of the border due to the group's excellent work. The provision seeks to make sure that unless a claimant has good access to affordable child care they will not be faced with a Catch-22 decision between benefits and making sure that their children are looked after. My hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) made a good point that my amendment missed out: the cover provided for older children. I ask the Minister to have a word with his colleagues who deal with schools about after-school care and pre-school care, to ensure that children are looked after while parents are working and that the care that they get is sufficient for their needs and their education. That would go a long way to help remove the fears that my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North has about whether older children are being looked after. I wish to focus on the lack of child care in Scotland, because the Minister recognised that on Second Reading. According to figures from One Parent Families Scotland, more than 50,000 children could be affected by the planned changes. There are limited means of systematically monitoring Scottish-wide provision, so it is difficult to get a precise picture and no one can produce any knock-down statistics. However, there are a number of important factors that I would like to bring to the House's attention. First, there is a precedent for ensuring that child care arrangements in Scotland are taken into account in legislation. Implementation of provisions in the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 was delayed in Scotland for four years because removing benefit entitlement was based on alternative care arrangements in England and Wales that were not in place in Scotland—these differences remain today. There is no legal entitlement to child care in Scotland, unlike in England and Wales. There is no subsidy for child care for two-year-olds in Scotland, again unlike in England and Wales. There is no UK-wide equivalent of the Childcare Act 2006, which puts a duty on local authorities in England and Wales to secure as far as is practical sufficient child care to meet the needs of working parents. I hope that that message has been heard north of the border and that Scotland will put its house in order to meet the same requirements as exist in England and Wales.