Welfare Reform Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

I do not make my money out of campaigning, and I never have. Anyone who has done that will know that maximum fear is the way to get the most subscriptions, the largest membership and the highest amount in grants. I make my money out of my only job, which is serving my 71,000 or so constituents and trying to do what is best. Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I occasionally open the Budget Red Book and look at the detailed figures. Table A2 on page 80 makes it clear that a lone parent with one child working 35 hours a week would have £105 without universal credit, and more or less the same with it. However, when parents work 10 hours, things change. A lone parent working 10 hours rises receives £20 without universal credit, and £53 with it. If we move to universal credit, those people will end up, broadly, with more money. That mini-job is massively incentivised by universal credit, which makes part-time working much easier. Why does part-time working matter, and why should we give greater incentives for it? To answer that, we must look at the proportion of parents with child care responsibilities who are in work. Some 61% of lone parents who have children aged between five and six, who would find things difficult under new clause 2(5), work part time, as do 64% of partnered mothers of children of that age: 64% of all mothers work part time. The statistics are pretty clear that we have had a joint working revolution: there is much more sharing of economic power in couples, and more pooling of income. To a great extent, universal credit recognises that in the system. There has also been a revolution involving women in the workplace. Often they work part time, because even now there is a bias towards women having primary responsibility for child care. Finances might be shared, but the responsibility for child care tends to fall to women. That is what comes out pretty clearly from the figures. For that reason, we should allow women maximum flexibility. Why have a 16-hour cut-off, as new clause 2(5) proposes? I, for one, cannot agree with that. It is not the right way to go; it is a retrograde step.