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Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, on these Benches we are sympathetic to lone parents who have the added burden of a child with a disability. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, for tabling this amendment. However, to exempt all lone parents from progression-to-work and work requirements based on a child’s receipt of DLA harks back to an era when legislators thought that they needed to protect people from the need to work. I remind noble Lords of the key finding of Waddell and Burton that work is generally good for health and well-being. The amendment refers to children up to 16 receiving DLA. Many such teenagers will be out of the house for much of the day, so the effect is to delay for far too long the time when their lone parent is introduced to economic activity. The route out of this quagmire is personalisation of the system, not blanket exemptions and blanket requirements.