Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, some noble Lords may be surprised by what I have to say on this amendment. As other noble Lords have indicated, the thrust of the Bill in relation to single mothers is to ensure, through a series of steps, that these mothers keep in touch with the labour market. I am sure that we all agree with that ambition. All the research consistently makes clear the sense of independence that a job gives to lone parents. Self-respect and involvement with others are very important to their mental well-being and hence to their capacity for effective parenting, so the work will be to the benefit of their children. For a single mother, it is all too easy to slip into depression, isolated from work colleagues and losing confidence as time moves on. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, indicated, the gap between being at home and work feels ever more enormous. It is ever more challenging to make the leap from being at home back into work and it is extraordinarily difficult if left for more than a relatively short space of time. As the Minister reminded us, life on benefits is a life of poverty, which we all want to see challenged, as this Bill does. I therefore support the intentions of this part of the Bill and believe that, in time, the children and lone parents involved will benefit considerably. Many years ago, I worked with single mothers as a social worker and I am well aware that many struggle to cope. Sensitivity to an individual’s capacities will be essential. For this reason, I regard the Government’s concessions on good cause to be very relevant to this amendment. I will be tabling a further amendment designed to ensure that claimants are given adequate opportunity to demonstrate good cause—in particular, where a person may have a mental or physical problem—to ensure that a home visit will be made to assess the feasibility of undertaking a work-related interview or activity. The Government’s concession that in the preparation of an action plan the well-being of any child under the age of 16 must be taken into account is most welcome, as others have said. Also welcome is the Government’s concession that a lone parent will be entitled to restrict the times at which they are required to undertake work-related activity. I assume that that means that the parent will be able to ensure that they can undertake that activity while the child is at nursery or school. In considering this amendment, I hope that noble Lords will take account of the Government’s considerable concessions, in my view, in relation to lone parents and what I hope will be a positive response on provision for home visits in appropriate cases, although at this point I cannot take that for granted by any means. Taking all this into account, I think that the Government are right, where good-quality childcare is available, to urge lone mothers to begin thinking about getting back into part-time work—that is all that they are really seeking in the early stages—as soon as they feel reasonably able to do so. Many years on benefits cannot be right for the great majority of lone parents or for their children, although we would all agree that parents with a disabled child are an exception to that rule. I understand the many arguments put by colleagues in support of this amendment but believe that the Government’s overall objective deserves our support.