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Welfare Reform

My Lords, I welcome the broad thrust of the Statement. I entirely agree with my noble friend about the well-being that comes from work. The section ““Work for your benefit”” includes a section on lone parents, but of course lone parents are working for their benefit. They are bringing up children; they are just not engaged in waged work. I am obviously delighted about the full maintenance disregard—a sort of privatised tax credit as long as the money actually flows—but I have two questions for my noble friend about the proposal for lone parents. When their youngest child is seven, they are expected to be available for the labour market. Given that a seven year-old is too small to walk to school alone, it means that the lone parent must seek work, for the most part, within the hours of 10 am and 2 pm. Such jobs, particularly in rural areas, are like gold dust. What work is my noble friend doing with employers to ensure that lone parents have such hours of work available to them? Secondly, so that they do not then drop out at every half term, lone parents will need childcare that is not only flexible but trusted. In rural areas, that is more likely to be care from grandparents than from any other body. I accept that it is probably too costly at present to go for a childcare tax credit payment to grandparents who do significant caring, but would my noble friend take back to the department the proposal that, at the very least, a grandparent caring for, say, 20 hours a week should get a national insurance credit towards the basic state pension, so that as a result of helping her daughter to work, that grandparent does not herself lose her own pension rights?