Welfare Reform Bill

I have a lot of sympathy with the concerns behind the amendment. I am not sure that I agree all the way with the noble Baroness’s point about childcare. Like her, I have also read the research, but I think that the jury is out on the gains and the downsides of family care as opposed to professional childcare and on the well-being of the child. It is very clear that if going back to work is not the choice of the mother, the pressure on the mother when the child goes into formal childcare means that the mother becomes a reluctant conscript in the labour market. As we know from the pressures caused by tax credits and all the rest of it, such childcare, and the mother’s own guilt, means that a lone parent will very often find it very difficult to be able to stay in work because they are riven with guilt and somehow feel, rightly or wrongly, that they are letting their child down, given the quality of care available. I wonder whether, in our discussions so far, we are failing properly to distinguish between a requirement to work, with appropriate sanctions, and progression-to-work training, which I understand we are asking lone parents of children between the ages of three to seven to go for. Why I support that, subject to certain considerations, is that we know that the longer someone is out of the labour market, the harder it is to get back. The best way of getting children out of poverty is to help their lone-parent mothers get back into the labour market. That does not mean requiring them to work 16 or more hours a week when their child is three, four, five, six or seven but, following the best practices of employers with staff on maternity leave for a year, trying to keep them connected with the labour market through interviews and perhaps encouraging them to do an evening course one evening a week to keep some up-to-date skills. That is helpful and positive, providing heavy sanctions are not attached and, ideally, that there is some financial reward for doing it with grace and willingness. I hope the Minister will assuage the well founded worries of noble Lords by saying that the Government are not seeking to produce a regime for parents with children under the age of seven that requires them to be in work, but are seeking to keep them attached to the labour market because it is in their best interests and the child’s best interests. The best way to do this is not to go heavy on sanctions, but to go light on sanctions and heavy on financial support and encouragement. That way we will get lone parents wanting to stay attached to the labour market with grace, and when their child is old enough they will then be the sort of employee any employer would want to have.