Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I think we would all endorse good parenting. I like to think, as I guess we all do, that we are the results of it—despite, or perhaps because of the fact that I was brought up in a one-parent family. There is no doubt that love and attention, in addition to good sense and experience, make a wealth of difference. Many of our parents and grandparents learnt their parenting skills from their parents and grandparents, their aunts and uncles. With the move to nuclear families, family break-ups, more geographical movement and, yes, demands of time on two parents working, many of us worry about parenting skills. We would encourage classes, mentoring, learning—anything to improve the child experience. However, not every parent, thankfully, needs a course. As I am this week celebrating the birth of a great-godchild, I know that some parents just seem to be born to it. We would not want to force every parent on to a course to improve their income or, in effect, which is the other side of the coin, to take away any income from parents who cannot or will not attend such a course. That in itself would disadvantage their child. We support the acquisition of parenting skills, but we doubt that the universal credit is the best vehicle for it.