Lone Parent Employment

: I accept that entirely, but I would go further: there is not only a business case, but a social exclusion case. The reason why we have focused our energy on those who have traditionally been most disadvantaged in and ignored by the labour market is that, although we want to promote the economic prosperity that comes from using the skills and attributes of all in our society, we want to promote social inclusion, too, by bringing people into work. It is important to deal with the key issues. All my discussions with labour market economists—I cannot believe that Opposition Members do not also engage in such discussions—lead me to retain my optimism and confidence that we have in place the basic structures that will ensure that as we develop our active labour market policies for the most disadvantaged in the communities, plenty of good-quality jobs will be available to them. The overall employment rate in Great Britain increased from 74.6 per cent. in 2003, to 74.7 per cent. in 2004; in 2005, which was a flat year, it went down 0.1 per cent. to 74.6 per cent. again. However, lone parent employment rates continued to increase throughout those years: in 2003, the rate was 53.1 per cent., rising to 54.3 per cent. in 2004, and in our latest figures from spring 2005, which appear to be more up to date than the Library's, the rate was 56.6 per cent. Even with the flattening of the overall labour market, through our interventions we have been able to obtain some improvement in lone parent participation. I have identified the source of the research that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I used to produce the figures. It is by Paul Gregg and Susan Harkness and it covers employment changes from 1992 to 2002. It is as a result of that research that we come to the assertion that half the employment rate increase is due to Government policies, the majority of which were implemented after 1997. I accept that our target of reaching a 70 per cent. participation rate by lone parents by 2010 is ambitious. One of the joys of government is setting oneself stretching, ambitious objectives. The difficulty of government is trying to achieve them, but if we had set less ambitious objectives, no doubt this debate would have been about how unambitious and constrained our policies were. I am confident that we will reach that rate, but I accept that we need to introduce more policy changes. That is precisely why we have the propositions in the Green Paper, and we called for the debate this afternoon so that they could be discussed. The hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) raised the interesting question of compulsion. I put much of our success down to the fact that we have moved along in a gradual way on a voluntary basis. We have engaged lone parents. The only element of compulsion is that they should attend a lone parent interview; we have not put any further compulsion on them. That is one reason why we have been so successful at lifting the lone parent participation rate by more than 11 per cent.