Lone Parent Employment

: It that is accurate, it is encouraging—but I would be interested to hear whether the Minister has more up-to-date figures relating to the table, and can clarify what has happened to the lone parent employment rate since autumn 2004. Has it continued to plateau or is it inclined to increase? Tempted by my success in anticipating the outcome of the Liberal Democrat leadership election, I would wager a bet that the Minister will find it difficult to meet her target of 70 per cent. by 2010. We all have to hope that the labour market will start to improve rather rapidly, rather than continue to pause. There is clearly a challenge for the Government, and all parties, to consider other measures that may be able to support accelerating the rate at which lone parents get back into employment. It seems statistically to be the case that without acceleration, the target will simply not be met. It seems less likely to be met than the Government's child poverty targets for the same period. That takes us to Government policy in the area. One of the most complicated and controversial issues is what the benefit rules for lone parents should be. That is always controversial, and in our Library briefing pack we have a headline from The Independent on Sunday from 23 October last year, which reads ““Blunkett to crack down on single mothers””. The article quotes the Minister as saying:"““If you are a lone parent and you have a child in secondary school, I think you have a responsibility to support and provide for your family and that is as important as being there for children””," and I will surprise her by telling her that I entirely agree. One of the things that has baffled me when considering the social security system is how far out of line on this matter we appear to be with other countries across the world. I wonder whether the rules are based on a view of the role of women, particularly, in the labour market that is totally out of date and based on Beveridge's conception in the 1940s, after the use of women in the labour market during the second world war, that the natural place for women was at home. Even today, after the Government have supposedly put rights and responsibilities high on their agenda, the presumption in the benefit system is that there is no obligation on a lone parent to work. They can stay on income support until their youngest child is 16. I was surprised when I first heard the limit. Testing my perception of it on other individuals in Westminster and my constituency, I found that they were almost universally baffled that that was still the rule in the United Kingdom in 2006 under this Government. I have a table that compares us with other countries on whether there is a work test or whether lone parents are expected to be willing to go back into employment, and we seem to be dramatically out of line. Not only are the lone parent employment rates in many other countries far better than ours, but they almost all appear to have a work test for lone parents when children are still at an early age. In fact, the age range for the work test is between one year and seven years. The briefing note says that of the countries in the table that do not already have a work test, only Ireland and the United Kingdom do not plan to introduce one. A number of those who have work tests plan to increase their severity. In some parts of the United States of America, the age threshold for youngsters at which their lone parents are expected to present themselves to go back into the labour market is not 16 years, but 16 weeks. That is an extraordinary comparison with the United Kingdom. I am not suggesting that 16 weeks is an age that my party would support; most of my colleagues would not—and I am sure that the new compassionate Conservative party would not support a reduction to that level, either. However, we should be having a real debate about whether the benefit system in that area is completely out of line with modern reality, and whether we are sending out a message to lone parents that they should consider it normal to stay out of the labour market for that long. After all, if a lone parent has several children it could mean the person being out of the labour market for two decades. We do not need to be a genius to work out that if a person has been out of the labour market for 20 years, their skills and willingness to return to employment would be eroded dramatically. The Government said in one of their publications that a large proportion of lone parents who were still out of employment when their children turned 16 years old ended up automatically on incapacity benefit. That is a worrying escalator. That is not to say that some lone parents may not be genuinely unable to work, but we must suspect that some of them have simply fallen out of the labour market altogether and, given the level of jobseeker's allowance, sensibly and rationally looked at other benefits that they could claim. The Green Paper quotes the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as saying that"““once employment and childcare support is available on a comprehensive basis, it would be reasonable to oblige sole parents on Income Support to make use of it””." The Government then state:"““By 2008, half of all families will have access to school-based care for 5 to 11-year-olds. By 2010, all parents of school-age children will have access to care from 8am to 6pm all year round.””" That seems to show that the Government believe that when that child care is available, it will be an obvious time to change policy. Will the Minister explain her thinking on that topic? Does she consider that it will be right at some stage for the Government to make re-engaging with the labour market and going back on jobseeker's allowance or into employment, rather than being on income support, compulsory? Does she think that that should be part of the benefit system, rather than encouraging lone parents back to work as the Government have chosen to do, through the work-focused interview route? I am not suggesting for one moment that there will not need to be all types of support to help lone parents back into employment. Perhaps a work-focused interview approach will still be part of the system, but is it sensible to have a benefit system predicated on the basis that anyone who has a child can stay at home until that the child is a certain age? It is difficult to calculate the right age at which a work obligation should be imposed. My initial inclination was that it should at least be when a child goes to secondary school. However, people's expectations have moved on rapidly in recent years, as has the Government's provision of child care. Many of those whom I have spoken to in my constituency would set the threshold far lower than I would. They would put it more in line with the figures in the rest of the developed world—presumably at the age when children enter primary school. The Government should be considering such matters. Parents have a responsibility to provide for their children, and that is difficult to do on benefits. If we are to have a benefit system with support and child care provision, as well as opportunities, incentives and responsibilities, the existing rules seem rather out of date. I referred earlier to the pilot. How much budgetary support will there be to help lone parents and others back into the labour market? It is difficult to establish whether over the next few years the Government will put in the financial resources necessary to help individuals, many of whom have been out of the labour market for many years, to reconnect with the labour market. Presumably, the Government will want to help through those reforms the many lone parents on incapacity benefit, as well as those on income support. Given that the Government have piloted some of the schemes, several of which have been successful in giving lone parents economic incentives to return to work, is it not unsatisfactory that they are not made part of a national benefit system? As the Minister candidly admitted, is there not a danger that the Government will do no more than pilot the schemes more extensively, although they know that they are working successfully, because they do not have enough money to deliver them throughout the country? If so, how will the prioritisation process work? Will pilot schemes be scattered geographically at random? Will the Minister explain how the process works now? Alternatively, will the Government pilot the schemes in areas with the highest number of lone parents and people on incapacity benefit? That would be more logical, although it still would not be consistent with the national benefit system; it might seem a rational approach, although it would not satisfy my constituents. However, when we consider some of the pilot areas, such as those in Surrey, Somerset and elsewhere, it is clear that the Government are not taking such an approach. Perhaps the pilots are supposed to be spread throughout the country to capture different labour market features. If it is demonstrated eventually that the pilots work, how will we guarantee that everyone will have access to them? Is it fair that a lone parent seeking to go back into employment in one part of the country will not have access to an advantage that a lone parent elsewhere will have? In addition, can the Minister give us a little more information about the roll-out of assistance for people on incapacity benefit who need support to go back into work? She will be aware that there is considerable worry about whether the incapacity benefit reforms will be properly funded, when the Department for Work and Pensions budget is bound to be under great pressure during the next spending review. We know that the next spending review will bring about a much lower overall settlement than the present one.