Lone Parent Employment

: I am not trying to belittle anything that the Government have done. What I am saying is that the coverage is not complete. My substantive point, which the Minister should reflect on, is that it is very difficult to log whether people are staying in employment beyond 26 weeks. In effect, it is almost as though the attitude is, ““The target has been met; we move on the next target.”” There is absolutely no doubt that activity is taking place under the new deal programmes. The question has always been whether it is devised to best effect. At least in the area of lone parents and having regard to the sensitivities mentioned earlier, which we all understand, I acknowledge that the programme is more or less voluntary. The only element of stick as opposed to carrot, if I can put it like that, is the requirement to attend a work-focused interview if the applicant is receiving income support. Since October last year, that process is refreshed after six months, with those who have older children required to report in quarterly. The Minister touched on further proposals in relation the welfare reform Green Paper. I calculate that the number of initial or review meetings now taking place must be approaching a million a year. I would be grateful if the Minister told us the average cost of each interview and perhaps the time involved, too. Will she also let us know more about the profile of the work load? Is it true, as I have heard anecdotally, that the word has gone out that halls are to be hired and ““conveyor belt”” interviews conducted before the end of the financial year in order to meet targets for participation? Is there a backlog that has to be cleared? It would also be helpful if the Minister gave us further and current details of the one element of the programme that involves a degree of coercion—the sanctions for non-attendance at interview. According to the latest figures I have, about 100,000 lone parents must have suffered at least one partial deferral of benefit. Is that problem going away, or is it likely to increase when we move to more than one interview a year? It was suggested that the change is an attempt to winkle out the people who were, for whatever reason, really determined not to go back to work without very good reason, and there is an idea that they might need to be seen more often than that. It is going to be quite difficult to get them to attend quarterly. I give the Minister a slight warning: I hope that slippages in the timetable for interview, or other means such as letting people off without good cause—of course, they should be let off for good cause—are not used as a device to massage the figures to make them look better. I would like the Minister to unpick that area. I am not saying that there should not be sanctions or interviews—far from it—but it is important that they are carried out genuinely and in the way described by the hon. Member for Colne Valley: supportively, helpfully and with a reasonable allocation of time. They should not be used just as a bureaucratic procedure related to arbitrary targets. As the Minister will have picked up from our exchanges, I am not surprised—but not gratified either—to be told by the Department's annual report that if one examines the total expenditure on the new deal for lone parents, which now approaches £100 million a year, two thirds go on administration and less than a third is spent on programmes.