Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, lone parents mostly want to work. I hope that your Lordships will forgive the metaphor but if one thinks of a ladder of five rungs or so, on which entry into work is at rung 5, then the lone parent trying to work out childcare or transport arrangements is at rung 4—in other words, she is work-ready and the only obstacles are practical ones. If she wants to work but has been out of the labour force for some time and has few, if any, qualifications—but she wants to try—then she might be on rung 3. It might take her two or more years before she enters the world of work—possibly a year of support and training followed by a year in a mini-job with, I hope, a £50 disregard. Other lone parents who have such low self-esteem, who are so apprehensive about taking the risk of coming off benefits, who have effectively disengaged from school at the age of 13 or 14, who do not have a qualification to their name, who are functionally almost illiterate, who live, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, said, untidy and even chaotic lives and who ricochet off unsatisfactory, unemployed boyfriends, may be on step 2 of my ladder and take three or four years to build their health, confidence, skills and job readiness. Yet I cannot believe that anyone here, including the noble Lord, Lord Freud, thinks that it is wise or kind to neglect them and, crucially, their children. Hence, we have pathways to work. Why am I unhappy with the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Freud? It is not because he is suggesting that we should not sanction the requirement to attend work-focused interviews, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, has adduced. We are talking about participation in the work-preparation programme, because it is still proposed that entry into work should occur when the child is seven. Given my analogy of ladders and rungs, why am I unhappy about that? Some lone parents need a steady, lengthy and supportive programme, and it might take several years for them to become work-ready. They need a longer programme. This amendment would mean that some of the neediest lone parents, those who are furthest away from the world of work, would find their work preparations squeezed into only two years when their child is aged between five and seven, thus adding to the stresses they might face. If we want to engage them earlier then—I am afraid that this is human nature—we will need sanctions. A programme without sanctions might be called compulsory but, essentially, it is voluntary. Although the noble Lord, Lord Freud, said that there could be sanctions other than financial ones, he did not give us a single instance. I would like to know what they would look like. I have found from bitter experience that the sanction that really gets people engaged is the financial one. That is especially true for lone parents, who, compared with disabled people or pensioners, are financially much more ready—rightly so; I am glad they are—to claim benefits and entitlement. They are financially acute. I am pleased about that. It also means that they understand that imperative. I do not know what a non-financial sanction would look like—other than having to turn up every day to do something. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Freud, can help me on that. What happens if they do not turn up every day? Is the sanction then to tell them to turn up twice a day? What happens if they do not? It will not work. Equally, any such sanction must come in only as a last measure. No one in the Chamber today would wish to make lone parents and their children worse off. As soon as the lone parent engages, which is the whole point, the sanction should come off. In other words, the sanction seeks to ensure engagement and will apply only so far as that engagement has been rebuffed. Engagement is at the core of what we need to do to ensure the long-term prosperity of the parent and her child. I am sure that my noble friend can give the House two assurances which it needs. The first is to ensure that there is satisfactory childcare, whether nursery care or whatever, in place for work preparation. The second is to ensure that the steps are in place to ensure that financial sanctions are not the first or second step but the very last one, to ensure that a lone parent is engaged in preparation for work. I am sure we all believe that that is in the best interests of her and her child. Those of us who were engaged in the New Deal a few years back were surprised to find that half of the participants were volunteers. Parents with very young children aged between one and three—not a group which the programme was seeking to reach—were keen to return to work because they were the ones who had most recently been in work. That was the defining feature of those lone parents who volunteered for the New Deal. As for previous incapacity—the noble Lord, Lord Freud, will know this as well as anyone—the longer that one is out of work, the more tenuous one’s connection with the world of work is and the harder it is to get back into work. With a requirement to come in when the child is three, the work preparation programme is designed to get the lone parent to walk over that bridge back into work. The longer she leaves it, the longer the bridge will appear and the harder it will be for her to cross it. In that sense the noble Lord’s amendment is no kindness. It would require the neediest lone parents to face the most compressed and, therefore, the most demanding work-preparation programme, with the neediest having to do in two years what the less needy would have to do in four. Although the amendment is well intended, it is profoundly misconceived. We do not want to make the programme essentially voluntary for those who need it most. I do not think that that is wise. I hope the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.