Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, perhaps I could say a word. I am sorry to intervene. However, having been to the briefing yesterday and having heard the Minister respond to the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, I cannot in all conscience let this go without pushing it further. I am particularly concerned by the position of parents with teenage children. I understand what the Minister has done. After removing the barrier and artificial threshold between ““in work”” and ““out of work””, he has been forced to compensate by reintroducing a form of conditionality for people who previously did not have it. I understand why he chose to do that. However, the big problem is the way in which it has been set. I read the notes, listened to him and went to the briefing. My understanding from what he said—I hope that he will correct me if I am wrong—is that the default setting for a parent whose child has reached their 13th birthday is that they will work full-time. That means 35 hours a week in addition to travel time. If that is standard travel time, it is up to 90 minutes each way—another three hours a day, 15 hours a week, on top. That will be 50 hours a week. If they are in the kind of job that has a one-hour lunch break, that will be an 11-hour day. Therefore, the parent will be expected to leave home at 8 am and not return until 7 pm. I invite noble Lords to imagine for a moment that they have a teenager who has just turned 13. I have asked people I know who have or have had 13 year-olds whether they would leave them alone in the house for that period. When they had picked themselves up laughing from the floor, they said: ““No—have you met my teenager?””. The general conclusion was that they would not. I asked whether they would be able to get childcare. They said: ““What kind of childcare would I get for a 13 year-old?””. They said, first, that it is very hard to find; secondly, that it is quite expensive; and thirdly, that it is very hard to persuade a 13 year-old to take it. My question is: do we think that that is a reasonable requirement as a default setting before we get into exceptional circumstances? I think that it is simply wrong and I would be very grateful if the Minister would either correct me or tell me that he thinks it is a good default setting. My second question is: even assuming a lone parent or couple in this situation could find appropriate childcare, could they afford it? If they were working full-time on minimum hours, they would still have to pay a portion of that childcare, and that plus other costs could negate the gains from work. Will the Minister explain how that would be taken into account? I have two final questions. When I worked with lone parents, I often found someone doing a 25-hour job who was underemployed for her qualifications but who had found an employer who would not sack her if she took a day off because her kids went sick. She was willing to stick it out when she could probably have earned a bit more but would have ended up being in and out of employment. Having found a job that was safe and reliable and which she had had for a few years, she was not willing to risk it by moving to slightly better paid but more insecure employment. If she had a 25-hour job in that circumstance, and the assumption was that she had to find another 10 hours, she would then have the three choices the noble Lord set out. She could go and find another 10 hours on top of that, which would mean finding 10 hours to fit around the 25 she already has, and adding in another set of travel times to all those different bits of hours, assuming this would even work out. She would have to assume also that that job would remain stable. When I asked the question in the briefing—and I am probably not meant to refer to this, so forgive me if I have the protocol wrong—my understanding from those who support the Minister was that in practice she would have a conversation with a friendly adviser, and they would say, ““No, we totally understand, don’t worry””. But every time I asked, in a theoretical sense, the question, ““What would happen in this circumstance?””, the answer was, ““It depends””. The assumption is that she will sit down with an adviser who will say, ““Don’t worry, we understand all of that. We understand that you have a difficult teenager. We understand that they have GCSEs coming up and you’re worried they will drop out of school. We understand you’re worried that he is going to get into trouble. We understand that you’ve got a daughter who has an eating disorder and you want to make sure she eats””. That is a huge risk to take. The final point is a more general one. Can the noble Lord tell me whether he has had discussions with other government departments about the public policy implications of encouraging the nation’s 13 year-olds to be latch-key children?