Welfare Reform Bill

I shall be moving Amendment 72 as a separate amendment, but I shall not move Amendment 73, as we have already explored the issues in it fairly fully. However, I should like to make a couple of points that relate to both Amendments 71 and 72 before going into the detail of Amendment 71. As I am sure members of the Committee appreciate, I should like to emphasise how much I support the philosophy of the Bill to keep lone parents attached to the labour market. The later you return to work, the harder it is. The best way of helping children out of poverty is to help their parents, particularly a lone parent, back into work. I was delighted to see that half the mothers on the NDLP programme—the New Deal for Lone Parents—were volunteers, even though they have young children, because they were attached to the labour market and had recently worked. Secondly—and we have said this before—I believe that we are making a profound mistake if we try to fit lone parents, with all the pressures they face, into a model of JSA designed for the feckless 22 year-old young man who does not care to get up in the morning. One of the problems is that JSA is conceptually based on men; it assumes that they are either out of work and, without a health reason, therefore lazy, or in full-time work—one or the other. There is no recognition of, and probably no need in that situation for, sensible disregards, mini-jobs or stepping stones—all the things that make sense for lone parents who not only have children whom they are bringing up single-handedly but who may have been out of the labour market for some time and need a more gradual re-entry than just pressure and hassle. We do not want the lone parents dichotomy of slammed doors—in work, out of work. We need a staircase, a ladder, so that every hour you work you are better off. Therefore, although we want to encourage lone parents who may have lost the knowledge, confidence, even the will to re-enter waged work, we should encourage them by additional premiums, not sanction them by cutting their benefits. You sanction the lone parent, and you sanction the child. Amendment 71 proposes that we offer women on IS who are required to engage in work-related activity a premium or an additional component. Currently, if they are on employment and support allowance, they receive an additional £24 above the JSA rate for participating in a series of work-focused interviews. But no such additional premium is proposed if instead, because of the age of their child, they are on IS. Instead, they will receive a sanction, as will their child, for failing to do what the adviser has required. I do not understand why one group of lone parents gets the premium and the other does not when they are both required to participate in work-related activity. In practical terms, we are far more likely to get a positive response and outlook from lone parents with an additional premium than with the threat of sanction, which impoverishes and demoralises both them and their children. This amendment proposes what the Government themselves proposed for this group of lone parents in paragraph 2.70 of their July Green Paper No One Written Off. It says that, ""to encourage those with children under five to take part in these activities voluntarily at an earlier point in time, we will also pilot a "skills for work" premium for agreed activity, on top of existing benefit entitlement"." Note the language—it says, "We will also", not "We may", not "We shall consider", not "We shall reflect", not even "We shall consult". And then nothing. We know that the amendment is in line with the Government’s original proposals, which seem to have got lost. Can we hope that this is a temporary loss of memory, and that we can help my noble friend recover it on behalf of the department? Can we hope that my noble friend, appropriately nudged, will come back with his own amendment to introduce a work-related premium to lone parents in this situation? I beg to move.