Diane Abbott

No.

Given the right support and help with child care, the majority of single mothers will go back to work. However, we are talking about a residual group of women who, in practice, go back at the very bottom of the work pyramid, to do jobs that none of us would want to leave our three-year-old children to do.

The second point is that the Government's proposal is based on fantasy figures about the availability of nursery care and child care for children aged three. Ministers have said that nursery places are available for three quarters of children, but that is not my experience in Hackney. My experience is that people regularly come to me with children aged five and above who cannot get places for them in nursery. I would be happier with the Government's proposal if the Government came to me with solid research to show that nursery provision is available for 75, 80 or 90 per cent. of children, but that is not my experience in the east end of London.

We therefore have a proposal based on fantasy figures about the availability of child care. However, even if child care were available to 100 per cent. of such children, speaking as a single mother—albeit a well-paid one—I put it to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench that although some children skip off happily to nursery at the age of three and never look back, some do not like nursery, while others are sick every minute and have to stay at home for a week or two at a time. It is very hard for someone with a child who is poorly every other week or who has something wrong with them to sustain permanent employment. Only the mother is best placed to judge whether she can leave her three-year-old and go out to work.

As I have said, some children are happy in nursery at the age of two or three, but some need more support because of health issues or whatever. The mother should be able to judge that, not some official in a jobcentre. Even if 100 per cent. nursery care were available, which it is not, I believe that Ministers are peddling fantasy figures. Only a mother can tell whether it is best for her child to be left while she goes out to do work-related activity or to work. The residual group of mothers that we are talking about needs support and education as mothers; they do not need to be shoehorned into jobs at the bottom of the work pyramid.

Ministers have tried to explain to me that those women will have to work only if it fits in with school or nursery hours. Again, they are not talking about the real world. Are they taking into account travel time to and from work and the time it takes to pick up children from nursery? When my son was five, I had to leave Westminster an hour and a quarter before picking him up from nursery. Are Ministers adding on these women's travelling time? Are they taking into account the time that it takes to travel to pick up another child from school after picking up a younger child from nursery? This is not real world stuff.

Of course work is a route out of poverty, and of course we should encourage and support single mothers who want to go back to work. In the middle of a recession that has by no means played itself out, however, it is unconscionable to talk about imposing financial sanctions on women with children as young as three. We know that those women are on the breadline because they are on benefits.

It is a fact that, nowadays, the proceedings of the House of Commons are not properly reported, if they are reported at all. Colleagues on the Treasury Bench will be grateful for that, because if ordinary Labour members and supporters could hear Labour Ministers talking about imposing financial sanctions on women with three-year-old children to get them into notional jobs in the middle of a very real recession, they would be shocked and unhappy. Ministers have not made their case, and I will be voting to support Lords amendment 2.

— from debate entitled “Clause 2 — Work-related activity: income support claimants and partners of claimants”

The three speeches/headings immediately before

  1. 1 earlier: Jim Knight

    Will my hon. Friend give way?

  2. 2 earlier: Diane Abbott

    I rise to speak in support of Lords amendment 2, but let me first nail the idea, which seems to emanate from my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench, that single mothers as a group do not want to work and that they have to be coerced and threatened into doing so. The majority in my circle of friends are or were single mothers—some had children as early as 15—but they all went back to work. Indeed, some went back to work and got degrees—they did that of their own free will, 20 years ago, in circumstances that were a lot harder. My experience from my constituency is that single mothers with any type of skill are anxious to return to work and will do so given the right support.

    What we are talking about in this debate is the Government's wish to coerce a residual group of young women, who probably do not have skills and almost certainly have very little education, back to work. Let us pause and think. I went back to work when my son was eight days old. I have nothing in principle against women with young children going back to work, but I was a well-paid woman doing a job that I loved. My right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench are talking about ill-educated girls going back to work to stack shelves or do a service job, often in split shifts. That is the work that they want to drive those girls back to, not work that they would want to leave their three-year-old children to do. The first thing to say, therefore, is that the vast majority of single mothers, given the right support and encouragement, will go back to work as the Government wish.

  3. 3 earlier: Steve Webb

    The hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out in an earlier intervention that there are as many children in poverty in working households as in non-working households, so work in itself is not a guarantee of being out of poverty. I also take his point that it should surely be for the lone parent themselves to judge what is in the best interests of their family, particularly when their children are young, rather than for the state to impose that on them.

    The safeguards, although welcome if we have to lump what the Government propose, make the system even more complicated for someone trying to navigate it. Such a person might fail to comply, after which they get another go, but then they might fail to comply again. One of the earlier speakers in this debate said, "It's three strikes and you're out," and the Minister said from a sedentary position, "It's four strikes and you're out," but at what point is a decision appealable? If someone says, "I don't think this is in the best interests of the child—it's in breach of the Lords amendments," can the individual concerned go to appeal? Can they go to appeal because someone says that something conflicts with the child's school hours or school holidays? Can someone go to appeal on the availability of child care? The Government say that there is enough good child care available, but what if someone says that there is not, because they would need to get a bus there and they do not have the money for the bus fare?

    Everything gets incredibly complicated. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) mentioned in an intervention a family with five children. Often we are talking about families with not only one child under five, but several. Life can be incredibly complex and messy, and then there are all the hoops to jump through and all the caveats—you might satisfy this one, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but can you appeal against that one? Lone parents with young children do not need the grief, but that is what the additional threat will give them.

    By all means let us contact lone parents and support them. Let us make the options that we give them as attractive as possible. Then I envisage that many will take those options up and see them as being to their long-term benefit. However, if a lone mother—or a lone father—decides that something is in the best interests of herself, her children and her family, she should have the right to do so.

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