Welfare Reform

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 5:42 pm on 5 March 2007.

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Photo of Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham Labour 5:42, 5 March 2007

My Lords, I have a few comments and queries about the aspect of the report dealing with lone parents. The push of the report, which is to encourage lone parents back into the labour market, is absolutely right. I was struck by the fact that the best predictor of outcomes for a girl child of a lone parent—she does not become pregnant, she stays on at school, she gets decent results and goes into a job—is that her mother is in work. The best predictor for a boy child—he does not truant, he does not get into trouble with the law, he stays on at school and gets results—is if he is in contact with his natural father. Whatever the technical or legal relationship of the parent, it is absolutely right to ensure that fathers do not walk away from their responsibilities, especially to boy children. Those moves are to be welcomed.

We also know that the most successful new deals are with those who volunteer—the lone parents who are not required to come, who are the youngest, have the youngest children and are closest to the labour market. Once lone parents have been out of the labour market for 10 years or more, it is very difficult to get them back in. The question is: why? My criticism of the Freud report is that I am not sure that it addresses properly the stumbling blocks to lone parents re-entering the labour market after 10 or more years out of it.

As we all agree, skills are the first problem. Perhaps half of the lone parents out of the labour market for that length of time effectively have the literacy level of a 10 or 11 year-old or are even functionally illiterate. Equally significant is the health problem. Alan Marsh and Richard Dorsett of the Policy Studies Institute have said that before we can get welfare to work, we have to have welfare to health because, on average, lone parents are twice as likely to smoke as non-lone parents and are associated with respiratory illness and asthma, and 75 per cent of their children in turn have respiratory problems. Lone parents may have poor mental health or depression and may be overweight.

Also associated with the problem is the isolation and the lack of a knowledge network, which has also not been addressed properly. Finally and above all, there must be childcare that is trustworthy. Wraparound childcare sounds fine, but unless a lone parent can find childcare that fits with the job that she can get, she will not re-enter the labour market. That childcare is most likely to be offered by her own parent—a grandparent—not necessarily by child minders who are reluctant to work the unsocial hours that are the only hours available for many lone parents in part-time jobs.

I do not think that the analogy with Europe is helpful because lone parents do relatively well in the labour market in Europe. They live in extended homes where other family members pick up the childcare and share that responsibility. In Britain, living in homes on their own, there is no one to whom they can turn for that help and support, which is why, unlike in Europe, lone parents have lower participation rates in the labour market than married women. Therefore, I gently suggest to my noble friend that it is still a very male report—heavy on condition and rather weak on the understanding of what holds lone parents back from the labour market.

We need more of three things. We all agree that we need the health and skill strategy. Secondly, we need to develop the concept of mini-jobs. We know that the best predictor of a lone parent going into work is that she held a mini-job the year before. What do we do? We make sure that if she does, we take 100 per cent of her money away. We must rethink our attitudes to earnings disregarding mini-jobs. Finally, we need to rethink our attitude to childcare and go for the childcare that the lone parent trusts, which means that she is confident to go into work knowing whether or not the child is poorly, comfortable or had a bad day at school. A granny is there to cope if a granny so wishes to do it. Grandparents must become entitled to the childcare tax credit. If we address those three things, lots of the problems of conditionality will disappear. If we do not, the problems of conditionality will remain and too often we will be kicking lone parents, who do a very difficult job in a very difficult climate, back into a labour market without the support that they need.