Welfare Reform Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

As this Bill returns to the Chamber on Report, it is astonishing how many policy gaps remain. This group of proposals addresses some of the worst holes in the policy on universal credit, and new clause 2 in particular deals with child care. This is what has happened. Perhaps understandably, Ministers behaved naively, and with beginners' enthusiasm they boasted that universal credit would solve all the problems in the benefit system: that it would always pay to be in work; that the system would be simpler; that thousands would be better off and nobody worse off; and that the benefits bill would be cut. In truth, one did not have to be Milton Friedman to work out that that did not all add up. That is now the Government's problem: they cannot stand up their boasts. When it comes to the detail, they have been unable to deliver. Nowhere is that clearer than on child care support in universal credit. Ministers have rightly recognised—as the Secretary of State did earlier—that support for child care is key to whether parents are better off in work or out of work. But the Secretary of State promised, in his evidence to the Committee in March, that the Government's proposals on child care support would be available before the Bill left Committee. He promised the Committee on 24 March that"““it will certainly be done within the Committee stage.””––[Official Report, Welfare Reform Public Bill Committee, 24 March 2011; c. 161, Q313.]" As I pointed out in Work and Pensions questions, that promise has been broken. No policy was announced before the end of the Committee stage and now the Bill will leave the House of Commons this week and we still do not have a clue what the Government's policy is, because Ministers have not been able to work a policy out. At the beginning of the Committee stage, we told the Government that we were worried by the lack of crucial details, and now the Bill has come back to the House and they are still missing. Ministers have failed to make this fly. We are talking not about minor details, but about whether parents really will be better off in work, as they generally are under the current system. Achieving the whole purpose of these changes hangs on the Government's decision on child care, but Ministers have failed to reach a decision. That is why Oxfam, Barnardo's, the Child Poverty Action Group and others wrote recently to the Secretary of State saying that for many families on low or middle incomes ““the success of universal credit will stand or fall on the level of child care costs covered.”” Those groups are right: the success of this policy stands on the Government's decision, but Ministers have simply failed to come up with a decision. At least with the NHS reforms the Government paused to work out a policy: on this Bill, they have not managed to work out a policy, but they are pressing on all the same. No proposals were presented in Committee and we have none in front of us today. Instead, we just had an informal seminar on options. We know that the Government want to extend provision for child care support to people working fewer than 16 hours a week, but they want to do that within the existing budget. That does not add up—it is a mess.