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Social Security (Lone Parents and Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2008

It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. She is an expert in these matters and I concur with just about everything that she said. I, too, have no rooted principled objection to these orders, but it is worth remembering that the Social Security Advisory Committee recommended that the Government did not proceed with the regulations for a variety of operational and administrative reasons, rather than those of principle. I pay tribute to the Merits Committee for its work on these regulations; it has helped the work of the Grand Committee considerably. The same applies to the Social Security Advisory Committee, whose report is instructive and informative. The Government’s Explanatory Memorandum is also a very useful document. As the department develops its policy, documents of that kind and in such detail help us all get a framework within which these changes can be judged. I will try to be brief; I could talk all night about this subject, but I will resist that temptation. I want to talk about the philosophy and about operational capacity in the department; and then add requests for assurances to those that the noble Baroness has just made. I detect that these regulations take us quite a few more steps along the road of the ““responsibility”” agenda. Work first is a condition of benefit in the new active labour market proposals. In a normal, stable environment, when this policy was first put together—some months ago, if not years—there was a case for saying to people, ““It doesn’t matter if you’re better off, your responsibility is to take work and then trade your way out of that with help””. I acknowledge that there has been a lot of support. It is contained at some length in the Explanatory Memorandum; it is useful to have it all set out in one place again. We have to be very careful, in the ugly financial circumstances that we will be facing in the next 18 months to two years, of saying that this is a work-first agenda and that people have a responsibility, if they are claiming benefits, to seek work even if that does not mean that they are financially better off. There are some circumstances in which that can happen. Lone parents are in a unique position because they have to balance family responsibilities in a way that perhaps other claimants do not. That puts them in a unique dilemma. While the work-first agenda may have to be deployed, we have to deploy it with real care if we are talking about lone parents. The first thing I would really like to do—I think that I know the answer to this, or at least I hope I do—lies in a quote from Mr Peter Hain, when he was the Secretary of State, in a speech that he made to Barnardo’s on 29 November 2007, which is on the departmental website. He said, in talking about the development of this policy: "““There will be lone parents for whom work is simply not an option and I will ensure that they will be protected””." I think that that is still the Government’s policy, but I would prefer it to be said by someone more current than the previous Secretary of State, and I should like it to be said on the record, in the House. That would give some reassurance to people. If my understanding of this slight shift in policy and development of policy is right, it would be good to know where we were on that question. I could develop the following point at much greater length, but I shall not. We should start thinking about children in terms of dependency ratios and the demographic change that we face in this country over the next 50 years, not the next two or five years. Children will have to carry a much heavier load. Economists talk about the human capital and developing the human potential. I do not want to suggest for a moment that we should start thinking about children as economic units, particularly, but with the combination of the change in the demographic, with people living longer, and the reductions in fertility rates that we are now experiencing, it is staring us in the face that children will have to carry a much heavier burden of wealth creation in future, if we are to make progress as a nation. We can see that now. The child poverty agenda is so important, but we need more than that agenda. When we talk about active labour markets, we should always be conscious of the fact that this is not just about domestic family income for people in distressed conditions, but about developing the capacity and potential of the children in those households. Generally, the Government’s agenda does not give enough time to that, but maybe, in the short term, they have other problems on their minds, which I understand. On the philosophy behind this, all my experience suggests to me that lone parents are desperate to work. The survey evidence says that nine out of 10 suggest that if the opportunities were there and they could get the support and if all the other circumstances were to hand, you could not keep them at home. Therefore, we need to be careful about moving in a sanctions direction, as we might be going against the grain because there is a willingness to work that we are not tapping into properly. I absolutely support some of the new proposals that the Government have put in place. The Explanatory Memorandum refers to that. There is a lot here, but it is all new. There is the in-work credit from April 2008, the in-work credit and retention, the in-work advisory support from Jobcentre Plus advisors and the in-work emergency discretion fund. That is all brand new, and we do not know how effective it is going to be. That is why the SSAC has asked why we cannot just hold our horses before implementing these regulations to see how that works. I cannot do the figures because I do not have all the data, but the success that the Government have had since 1997, with a 12.5 per cent increase in lone parent participation in labour markets to something like 57.5 per cent, represents a real change. A lot of that is because the economy has been good, because of the tax credit regime and because of the changes that the Government have introduced with the New Deal for Lone Parents. There is a success and a momentum that could be built on. If we could only find a way of retaining the jobs that lone parents win, we would get to the 70 per cent target by 2010 quicker and with the grain of the lone parent client group that we are trying to deal with. There is a sense that the department thinks that lone parents lead an orderly lifestyle, and it may be that 80 per cent of them do, but 20 per cent lead very difficult, incoherent lifestyles in which they drop in and out of work, benefit and childcare. For all those reasons, they need additional support. If I were the Minister, I would be thinking about looking at that 20 per cent, working with them, trying to sustain them in work, and trying to deploy all the department’s resources in that direction, rather than going down the route of sanctions and the rest of the proposals in the regulations. I want to move on quickly. I notice from the Explanatory Memorandum that the Government think that these proposals are easily done and that Jobcentre Plus will implement them at a canter. I have to tell them that the department’s annual report for last year revealed that only three out of the six key priorities were achieved. Last year was an easy year. If the Government think that Jobcentre Plus will improve on that record in the next 12 months, they are blind, deaf and dumb. I seriously think that given the job cuts that the department is experiencing and the tight Comprehensive Spending Review targets—I bore on about this, for which I apologise, but it is a very important point—the footfall after Christmas in Jobcentre Plus offices will skyrocket, which will put pressure on all the staff and certainly on the personal advisers. What sort of caseload will they have? Will that interfere with the training which they will need to develop this sensitive advisory service for lone parents who are coming into this regime for the first time? Is there time to train anyone in Jobcentre Plus these days? The realignment payment suggestion of a crisis loan from the social fund is just a joke; the social fund is up to its armpits in backlogs and delays. We know about that because we have debates in this House about it. The Government suggest, ““Oh well, people can apply for a crisis loan””. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, was right to mention that, as was the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale. The social fund entitlement of the cohort of people that we are talking about in this client group is already exhausted. Special provisions will have to be made if crisis loans are to be made for realignment for that group of people. That is guaranteed to go wrong. If you bring child tax credit and HMRC into the equation, you will have a really nice mix of things that will all work sweetly, everything will be hunky dory, and by next spring, everything will be fine. I just do not think so, and nothing that I have heard, seen or read in the Explanatory Memorandum or anything else convinces me otherwise. I could talk at great length about that, too, but I shall not. I shall finish on the need for assurances that have not yet been required because all of us who have contributed so far are on the same page as the Minister as regards policy development. However, there are serious concerns, and I concur with everything that has been said. I shall not repeat the concerns about the childcare wraparound provisions mentioned by both colleagues earlier, but I certainly have concerns about Scotland, because the Government have no idea what is going on there and they have no control of the policy delivery of wraparound care in Scotland. It is an entirely different jurisdiction, with a different policy envelope. I need reassurance about that and the rural areas. In terms of home education, the department is heading straight for a judicial review. Home education used to be a lifestyle choice by people with a kind of hippy way of life. It is not any more. It is worrying that the department does not know how many people this measure will apply to, but I would put money on the fact that the provisions in the regulations will be challenged in the courts by those who home educate. I would support them in doing that because someone needs to test the fairness of the regulations as they currently stand. I accept that there has been a concession in regard to disabled children, but the provision, which leaves people with children in the lottery of the DLA component, trying to find childcare and to fit into the regulations, is not fair. There was no need to leave lower-care component DLA children in that category. The Government should think again about that. There is nothing like enough consideration of domestic violence and breakdown. It was alluded to earlier and needs to be looked at as well. I understand that lone parents will not continue to go from New Deal for Lone Parents into flexible New Deal after the gateway. Stage 5 of flexible New Deal is workfare. I know that a Bill is coming, and that we will need to think about these matters again, but I have great concern about how lone parents put on to jobseeker’s allowance will come out the other end. We know that Jobcentre Plus will look after them in the first year and that they will go into the private sector for specialist providers in the second. If they are still unemployed, they will go on to workfare. I am not happy about the lone parent client group that the regulations cover being turfed into workfare at stage 5 of flexible New Deal. If that is where they are heading, the Government should think about it very carefully indeed when the Bill comes before the House. I am in the same place as the two Members of the Committee who have spoken earlier. We need more assurances. The philosophy is entirely defensible, but the operational and administrative constructs that try to support the policy are very shaky and suspect. I hope that the Government will think about it carefully and give us some assurances before we take the plunge with the regulations, which after all start next week. There is not a lot of time to work these things out and make sure that we avoid the pitfalls into which we are concerned we might fall if we are not careful.