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Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, during the Commons’ consideration of Lords amendments in the other place, honourable Members accepted all the amendments made in your Lordships’ House with the exception of Amendment 2. This amendment would have placed a requirement in primary legislation that financial sanctions should not be imposed on a single parent with a youngest child under five for failing to undertake work-related activity. In the other place, a government amendment to make affirmative the regulations to which this clause applies was agreed in place of Amendment 2. I shall take a moment to reiterate our position on lone parents and the safeguards that we have incorporated following the valuable discussions that we had in this House. Noble Lords will be aware that our policies for lone parents rely on two key tenets; namely, that work is the best route out of poverty and that parents, especially lone parents, must be allowed to fulfil their responsibilities to their children. We have continued to invest heavily in evidence-based policies over the past 10 years. The changes we have debated in this Bill are a further step forward along that path. We know that combining programmes such as the New Deal for Lone Parents with work-focused-interview conditionality increases take-up of support and movements into paid work. Nevertheless, there is still a very significant disparity between the numbers who would like to move into paid work and those who take steps to achieve this. We want to bridge that gap so that we have the potential to make further significant reductions in the numbers of children who still live in poverty and improve those children’s life chances. That is why we want to introduce the measures in this Bill. Over a period of time, lone parents will be prepared for the time when they are able to engage with the labour market and be actively available and looking for work. The gradual steps which we will expect people to take will ensure that preparation for paid work becomes a natural progression by helping lone parents gradually prepare for the workplace by improving their skills and undertaking work-related activity. We feel that preparing for work should become the norm for lone parents with younger children. Indeed, it would be unfair not to encourage them to do so and would risk them being unprepared for the time they start looking for work when their children are older. Lone parents with a youngest child aged under one will be in the "no conditionality" group and will not be required to undertake any mandatory activity unless they want. Lone parents with a youngest child aged between one and two will be required to attend six-monthly mandatory work-focused interviews. We made amendments in this House, which were supported in the other place, to ensure that this policy intention was secured in primary legislation. When the lone parent’s youngest child is aged between three and six, they will be expected to attend three-monthly work-focused interviews and agree an action plan with their adviser which will detail mandatory work-related activity. This action plan will set out their individual route-way to prepare them for work when it is appropriate for them, and will take into account the well-being of their child. We expect that some lone parents with a youngest child aged between three and six will be among the hardest to help, some distance from the labour market and with multiple barriers to employment. If it is to be most helpful, work-related activity should therefore be interpreted broadly to meet their needs. Lone parents and advisers will work together to agree appropriate work-related activity. Given the broad spectrum of activities that count as work-related activity, we would hope that in most cases customers and advisers would be able to agree suitable activity and that these activities can be easily undertaken by lone parents. I should stress that work-related activity is not intended to be an onerous requirement. There will be no daily, or even weekly, requirement to undertake activity; but a minimum of one activity to be undertaken between work-focused interviews, or every three months. This will allow advisers and lone parents flexibility in drawing up the action plans and allow activities to be tailored to take into account not only their individual needs but also the well-being of the child. The nature of the work-related activity will vary with the age of the child and the situation of the parent. For example, after their discussion a parent and an adviser may agree that because confidence is low and the lone parent is at the beginning of their journey and some way from the labour market, quarterly attendance at a children’s centre is an acceptable work-related activity as a starting point. At the other end of the scale, a parent who is much more prepared for work may agree with an advisor a more intensive activity, such as attendance at a short part-time course to develop or update work-related skills, perhaps while their child is at school. These agreed activities will act as a starting point for a lone parent’s journey towards work and will be reviewed and built on over time so that when it is appropriate they can progress to further activities that will increase their chances of moving into work when the time is right. Throughout this process, lone parents will not be required to undertake any activity that cuts into time where their child is not normally at school or in formal childcare. For lone parents with a youngest child aged three or four, this would mean that they could restrict the times they can undertake work-related activity to within the hours that locally provided free part-time nursery places are available. However, if a lone parent fails or refuses to undertake such activities without good cause, we would want, as a last resort, the ability to impose a sanction until they comply. As noble Lords are aware, sanctions are very much a last resort and we have outlined on many occasions the sanctions regime we wish to test as part of the Progression to Work model, which moves away from those currently present in jobseeker’s allowance and income support to include a more upfront, in-depth method of engagement with lone parents before a financial sanction is imposed. This will provide extra opportunities for personal advisers to gather further information which may have been missed or not volunteered by the lone parent, and then adapt work-related activity accordingly. This should encourage participation and ensure that lone parents understand what they need to do and the consequences for not doing it. If a lone parent initially fails to take part in a work-focused interview, or to undertake or complete work-related activity without good cause, there will be no financial sanction. Instead, the adviser will discuss any issues the lone parent may have and give them another opportunity to engage. If a lone parent misses two work-focused interviews or has failed to carry out the minimum agreed work-related activity in their action plan over three months, they will be given an opportunity to explain good cause, renegotiate the action plan, or begin the work-related activity. If they fail or refuse to do so, a formal written warning will be issued. After three missed interviews or three failures to take up agreed work-related activity, an individual case review will be done as the next stage of compliance action. This could include home visits for parents and, where necessary, compliance checks. The purpose of this stage is to provide a more in-depth review of the lone parent’s circumstances and the reasons for their failure to comply. Only after this fourth stage will a financial sanction even be considered if they fail to comply, with initial sanctions at a significantly lower level than currently applied. Those lone parents for whom there is a very real barrier to their being able to undertake work-related activity will have had the opportunity to explain this long before a sanction is even considered. This model will provide lone parents with more opportunities to comply with the requirements and ensure that they will not face a financial penalty before a full review of their circumstances has been carried out. As now, lone parents will have the opportunity to ask for the sanction decision to be reconsidered, and to appeal the decision. Overall, this approach will provide lone parents with every opportunity to engage with work-related activity and lead to fewer financial sanctions but will provide the necessary backstops to ensure engagement and progression. As I hope noble Lords will agree, requiring lone parents to undertake work-related activity will benefit them and their children in the long-term. It is for this reason that, in the other place, the Government laid an amendment that overturned the amendment made by the noble Lord, Lord Freud. That amendment amended the Bill so that financial sanctions could not be imposed upon a "single" parent in receipt of income support with a child under five if they failed to undertake work-related activity. This amendment would not achieve the purpose I believe it was intended to achieve. "Single" is not defined in social security legislation and as such there is a risk that it could be interpreted to mean a non-resident parent rather than the lone parent who has caring responsibility for the child. Furthermore, the amendment applies only to lone parents on income support. It would not preclude financial sanctions being applied to lone parents on employment and support allowance or the modified jobseeker’s allowance regime. This seems like an anomaly that could confuse people and make the administration of the system difficult. I took it from the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Freud, on Report that his party was in favour of financial sanctions for failure to undertake work-focused interviews when the youngest child of a lone parent reaches age one, and that they were in favour of the concept of work-related activity starting for lone parents when their youngest child reaches age three, although I must admit that his colleagues in the other place seemed somewhat confused on this point. I also took it that they were in favour of some other sanctions, although not specified, for failure to undertake such work-related activity. The only issue that we are apart on is the use of financial sanctions in some circumstances. As I have said, we believe that financial sanctions with appropriate safeguards have a role to play in underpinning work-related activity. The amendments made in this House put crucial additional safeguards for lone parents and parents in the Bill and enable them to ensure that the well-being of their child is taken into account so that they can fulfil their caring responsibilities. They will ensure that where there is no suitable childcare available, a lone parent will not be required to undertake work-related activity or will be able to restrict their hours of availability to those which are suitable for them. Starting the work-related activity process when a lone parent’s youngest child is aged three is right. A strong foundation of childcare provision is available for children in this age range and these measures will allow them gradually to build their confidence and skills at a pace that suits them over a four-year period. As to the amendment laid in the other place, as noble Lords are aware, the Bill served to set out the framework of the work-related activity proposals and that the detail of these proposals will be set out in regulations. The amendment proposed in the other place has the effect of requiring all work-related activity regulations, insofar as they relate to lone parents with children under seven, to be brought back to both Houses for further affirmative debate. This is a sensible proposal. It gives the assurance that the passing of the Bill will not have the effect of shutting the door on further debate on work-related activity for this customer group because any regulations made within five years of Royal Assent will come back to this House and noble Lords will have an opportunity to consider how work-related activity is working in practice. As I have stated before, it is right that lone parents who are beginning their journey towards work do so in good time so that they are not distant from the labour market for longer than they need to be, with all the disadvantages that that would bring, and that they have the encouragement and the support they need. With this explanation and the changes we have made both in this House and the other place, I hope noble Lords will agree that these proposals offer the best chance for lone parents to begin their family’s journey out of poverty. I beg to move.