Lone Parent Employment

: I am somewhat bewildered by that intervention, because we remain as committed as we have ever been to the eradication of child poverty, and are currently working on the new measure of material deprivation that we announced when we announced the public service agreement targets. I hope to bring forward our definition of that in the not-too-distant future, so that we have another good way of measuring not just absolute poverty but the relative poverty of families with children. That, for me, is one of the Government's most important aspirations, and as I develop my opening remarks I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree that the enormous inroads that have been made into absolute and relative child poverty are one of the Government's proudest achievements. To achieve the challenging target that I have spoken about, we are implementing a multifaceted strategy: first to provide families with better financial support, secondly to tackle material deprivation, thirdly to invest in and reform public services so that we can improve children's life chances, and fourthly, to provide lone parents who want to work with the opportunity to do so, by breaking down the barriers that have stunted their opportunity in the past. We know that children living in lone parent households are three times more likely to be living in poverty than children living in couple households. About two thirds of the children living in workless households live in a household headed by a lone parent. The combination of those two facts has led us to emphasise the importance of our new deal for lone parents and our intervention policies in relation to employment for lone parents. We know that through employment we can help to lift lone parents and their children out of poverty. The second reason for our involvement in active labour market policies affecting lone parents is that lone parents tell us, in survey after survey, that they want to work. Nine out of 10 express the desire to work, but they face a range of barriers in realising their ambition. It is no surprise that people want to work. Work is important to all of us in the Chamber this afternoon. We need it. It is important because of the money that it brings to enable us to support ourselves and our families, the value and self-esteem that it gives us, and the position that it gives us in our communities and society. It is also important because of the network of relationships and friends that people can establish through work. We need to set about tackling the barriers that have prevented lone parents from realising their ambition to fulfil their potential through work. In the past, lone parents were either ignored or stigmatised. They were ignored in the sense that no support was offered and they fell off the edge when their youngest child reached 16 and their automatic entitlement to income support stopped. Through our active labour market policies, the steps that we have taken to balance parents' responsibilities to their children with their workplace responsibilities, and the changes that we have made that ensure that work pays, we are responding to lone parents' express desire to work. The third reason that I want to emphasise for our being involved in policies for the employment of lone parents is that we want to ensure that, as the demography of the country changes, we can continue to maintain growth and improve the prosperity of communities in Britain. We all know that 50 years ago, there were 10 people of working age to support every person in retirement. Today there are four people of working age to support every one person in retirement. Looking forward 50 years, we expect two people of working age to be supporting every one person in retirement. If we want to maintain prosperity and growth in our communities, we need to set ourselves, as we have done, a more ambitious target of bringing more people of working age into the labour market—hence our aspiration of an 80 per cent. employment rate for the UK. We already enjoy an unrivalled record on the management of the economy and participation in the labour market. All hon. Members present will know that we have the highest employment rate among the G8 countries, and the second lowest unemployment rate, and that we have created almost 2.4 million new jobs for Britain since we have been in government. The right to enjoy the opportunity to work is both a modern and a traditional value for a Labour Government. Extending that right to people who were never before supported to move into work is at the heart of the Labour Government's purpose and reason for being. Our traditional values in this instance find clear meaning and vital purpose in a modern setting, with the demographic structure of our society pulling us in that direction. Those are the three main reasons why this issue is an important part of the Government's policy agenda. Although we are proud of what we have achieved so far, we recognise that there is much left for us to do if we are to realise our aspirations. In 1997, just over 45 per cent. of lone parents worked. In a mere eight years, we have introduced policies that have helped us to increase that to 56.6 per cent. The figures are now higher than they have ever been, which is a tremendous achievement. About 1 million lone parents are now in work. Since 1998, our new deal for lone parents has helped more than 400,000 lone parents to find employment, lifting them and their families out of poverty and ensuring a net saving to the Exchequer of about £40 million a year, on the latest analysis that I have seen. Partly as a result of that intervention, we have been able—again on the latest figures available—to lift 600,000 children out of poverty on the measurement before housing costs; that is 500,000 after housing costs. Our success is the result of a range of interventions. Through a number of policies, we have helped to make work pay, overcoming one of the key inhibitors for many lone parents seeking to move from benefit dependency into the world of work. That has happened partly because of the tax credit systems, under which the poorest fifth are now more than £3,300 better off than they were before the Labour party came to power. It has also happened because of the minimum wage, which has helped to make work pay, and because of a specific set of interventions in the new deal for lone parents, including job grants, work search premiums, in-work credits and linking housing benefit and mortgage interest benefit entitlements into the lifetime of people in work. So we have made work pay. We have also made work more possible for lone parents. That is partly because of the £17 billion that we have invested to date in early years education and child care, nearly doubling the number of child care places available. It is also because of our introduction of better parental leave rights, better conditions for part-time workers and parents' right to request flexible working if their children are young.