5 November 2008

(Click here to see the full debate)

I gave the following speech to the House of Commons during the debate on work and welfare.  An intervention I made earlier, during the speech of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions, is appended at the end:

Lynne Jones (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab): On the evidence of this afternoon’s contributions, I am sure that it is right to say that all Members share the Government’s aim that no one should be written off. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Mrs. Dean) that that aim should not be dismissed even if we are entering an economic downturn. However, the economic situation must be taken into account as we seek to achieve that aim, and there is some scepticism in all parts of the House about whether the programmes in place will be sufficient to achieve it in the current economic climate.
I agree with the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Scott) that there is little evidence that there are significant numbers of people who are unwilling to work if they can do so. Hard cases make bad law. As my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) said, we should have a system that supports and encourages people, and that helps people—many of whom will have been in a very depressed state, often spending excessive periods at home—to regain their confidence and to be included once more in society.

I entirely support the concept of the flexible new deal, but I am concerned about how flexible the support offered will be in reality. I earlier gave the example of a constituent who is working 14 hours a week. Although he would like full-time work he has been unable to get that, but his current employer says he will give him full-time work as soon as he can. In the meantime, my constituent is being forced to attend the jobcentre to sign on at a time when he should be in work; the appointment is at 4 o’clock, which is when his work finishes. He has found it very difficult to be able to leave work early and get to the jobcentre on time to sign on. He has asked his advisers whether he can sign on at a different time, but they have refused point blank to be more flexible. I wrote to the Secretary of State expressing my concerns about the implications of this lack of flexibility for other people—for people who may be more vulnerable than this individual. There is considerable concern among those in the welfare-to-work business that the cash available and the targets being set are so unrealistic that those who find it hardest to get jobs will face long periods of inactivity while under pressure to find work, and that they could spiral into depression.

I am particularly concerned about people with mental health problems or other fluctuating conditions. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry) emphasised that although the new deal for people with disabilities and pathways to work have been successful in helping many people into work, they have been less successful in helping people with mental health problems. The Secretary of State acknowledged that to me and said he is concerned about it, but it is unclear what measures are being put in place to ensure that people with such conditions will not be placed under even greater pressure than they are at present.

Debbie Scott is the chief executive of Tomorrow’s People, and she has said that
“with the budget on the table, it is a struggle to see how we would be able to get the hardest to help into work”.
At present, Tomorrow’s People receives between £2,500 and £6,000 per case, depending on the complexity of the needs of the person it is seeking to help. However, she says that significantly less money is being proposed under the new system—down to some £1,500. Dave Simmonds, chief executive of the Centre for Economic & Social Inclusion, a welfare think-tank, says that a further £1 billion is needed to allow for the likely increase in the long-term unemployed, now that we are entering a recession.

I am particularly concerned about the policies relating to lone parents, who are already subject to conditionality and have to attend work-focused interviews. David Freud acknowledged in his report that lone parents “want to work”. Although he advocated conditions on their receipt of benefits, he said that that should be dependent on adequate child care arrangements being available. Conditionality is justified by pointing to countries such as Sweden and Denmark, where more lone parents are in work, yet there are several different factors at play in relation to lone parents in this country. They are younger and likely to have children, and they are more likely to live in poverty than their European counterparts. Crucially, UK parents contribute some 75 per cent. of the costs of child care, compared with 11 per cent. in Sweden. Parental contributions across the EU are between 25 and 30 per cent.

I, too, thought that my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) made an excellent speech. She referred to people feeling crushed by the system, and I am concerned that that could be exacerbated by the move from income support to a system in which lone parents have to sign on compulsorily. I have seen the benefits of the new deal programmes and of supporting people into work. I have spoken to people who have been helped, and to staff at Jobcentre Plus and in the private sector, such as those at WorkDirections. They get tremendous satisfaction from the work they do in supporting people to achieve their ambition—most people have such an ambition—to contribute through the world of work.

However, if these programmes are worth while, conditionality should be a last resort. The threat of losing up to 40 per cent. of benefits, which are not generous in the first place, is going to make life very difficult. It will make vulnerable people’s lives more difficult. My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli explained very effectively the pressures that lone parents face in trying to take their responsibilities seriously. Some lone parents have a disabled child or a disability themselves. In fact, the statistics show that very few lone parents whose children are over 11 are not in work, and those who are not usually have a disabled child or a disability themselves.

The DWP is well aware of the problems faced by lone parents. In its 2005 five-year strategy, it discusses the failed work test in New Zealand, introduced without a good child care infrastructure. It said that
“we think it would be wrong simply to move lone parents from Income Support onto the Jobseeker’s Allowance regime: an unrestricted requirement to search for work is inappropriate, given the complex and difficult circumstances many lone parents face...such an approach would be expensive, unfair and ineffectual.”

That is why I ask the Government to look again at the recommendations of the Social Security Advisory Commission, which says that, although it has supported the programmes for lone parents in the past, it feels that the proposed changes will make life more difficult for lone parents. It says that, at the very minimum, those changes should not be introduced until a comprehensive system of wrap-around child care is available. This is not just about the availability of child care; it is about the quality and reliability of that care. Although the Government have said that they will be flexible and that no lone parent will be sanctioned if it is clear that child care is not available, no detail has been provided about exactly what will be regarded as suitable and reliable child care. I would like the Government to address that point.

On the flexible implementation of these regulations, I also wish to highlight the situation faced by lone parents who educate their children at home. The Government policy is that such people have made a lifestyle choice. That may be the case in some instances, but I have had drawn to my attention an example where it has not been a lifestyle choice but a necessity. One of my constituents has written to me about his sister, who has a child with diabetes and Asperger’s. She decided to take her child out of school when his blood-sugar level was discovered to be dangerously low because he needs four injections every day and he had not been receiving them in a timely manner while he was at school. He also had to deal with the added disability of Asperger’s. She is very worried that she will have difficulty in continuing to support her child when the new regulations come into force.

Will the Government make it clear that they will make a distinction in respect of those parents who are educating children at home out of necessity and thus exempt them from the need to sign on for work? The Government’s argument is that when someone is being educated at home, the school week and the school year can be disregarded. That is true to some extent, but one would hope that those children might have at least some relationship with other children in the locality and might not be treated completely differently. In addition, it will be more difficult for those lone parents to get wrap-around child care, because that is often associated with the school that the child attends. I hope that the Government will pay more attention to the needs of such parents.

Finally, I wish to flag up the fact that income-based employment and support allowance is more generous than contributions-based ESA in relation to permitted work. Permitted work is very important in helping people to move into the world of work. The permitted work regulations and the therapeutic work regulations need to be more flexible. I understand that people can continue on such programmes for only a limited time—12 months—whereas many people who have disabilities, particularly those with fluctuating conditions, may find that only small amounts of work can be coped with on a regular basis. Such programmes should be encouraged on a long-term basis if longer hours are inappropriate, and there should be no automatic cut-off. Again, the flexible new deal will perhaps address the issue—I hope so. I must apologise for the fact that I will have to leave the Chamber shortly to attend a Select Committee meeting, so I will not be able to hear the Minister’s response. I will, of course, read it with great interest tomorrow when I collect my copy of Hansard.

Here is the reply to the debate given by Work and Pensions Minister, Jonathan Shaw (decide for yourself whether the points I made were adequately considered):

Jonathan Shaw:  My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) mentioned fluctuating conditions and her conversation with the Secretary of State in acknowledging that the issue is difficult and we need to improve it vastly. I am certainly committed to ensuring that the issue gets the attention it deserves. I shall be closely watching the contracts in the roll-out and how they ensure that they do not cherry-pick and provide employment opportunities only for what my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood referred to as the low-hanging fruit; the issue is also about those who are more difficult to place. That will be the test of our reforms.
 

My earlier intervention in the preceding debate

Intervention on the Under-Secretary of State

5 Nov 2008 : Column 262

Lynne Jones (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab): I very much support the flexible approach to the new deal. Given the current economic climate, however, and today’s news that the Engineering Employers Federation in Birmingham is receiving 40 calls a day from employers seeking advice on making workers redundant or reducing their hours, would it not be a good idea to accept the advice of the Social Security Advisory Committee that we should not implement the regulations that will make it compulsory for more lone parents to sign on for work, at least until the recommendations on comprehensive, wrap-around child care have been implemented?

Kitty Ussher: I understand the difficulties that my hon. Friend’s constituents are facing; she makes a valid point. However, I do not agree with her conclusion. The lone parents regulations were approved by the House last week, and they are currently being considered in another place. We would be making a terrible mistake—a mistake that was made by the Conservative Government in the previous downturn—if we did not keep as many people as possible as close as possible to the jobs market at a time when there is a net effect of people leaving work, so that, when things turn around, they are ready to take the opportunities that are available to them. The longer that people are away from the jobs market, the harder it is for them to return to sustainable employment, if that is appropriate to their needs.
We have changed the regulations on lone parents and child care. Once they have been fully implemented, if a lone parent with a child of seven years of age or older cannot find appropriate child care that would allow them to take up a job offer, that will be considered all right and they will not face sanctions as a result. There is a kind of feedback loop between the Jobcentre Plus and the local authority, in the form of a child care partnership manager, to ensure that the legal obligation that local authorities now have to provide appropriate child care for everyone seeking work is adhered to in practice, and that there is an understanding of where more child care places could be made available. We believe that we have met the concerns of the Social Security Advisory Committee in that regard, which is why we are pressing on with those measures.

Lynne Jones: I thank my hon. Friend for that response, but will she assure me that Jobcentre Plus will have the capacity to deal with these increased work loads and that it will be flexible in how it operates? I encountered a case recently of a man who was working 14 hours a week and who hoped that his employer would increase the number of hours that he worked. However, it was demanded that he sign on during the very hours that he was at work, which caused all sorts of difficulties with his employer. We must ensure that there is flexibility in such situations.

Kitty Ussher: Our staff have been trained to deal with the new regulations, which are being rolled out in a phased way precisely so that there will not be a capacity constraint on our side. Obviously, I do not know the specific details of my hon. Friend’s constituent’s case, but if she would like to write to me, I will certainly look into it for her.
 

I also tabled the following Early Day Motion on this topic:
 

EDM 2434                       

06.11.2008

SOCIAL SECURITY (LONE PARENTS AND MISCELLANEOUS AMENDMENTS) REGULATIONS 2008

That this House notes the report by the Social Security Advisory Committee on Social Security (Lone Parents and Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2008 that will force lone parents with children as young as seven to seek work or suffer benefits cuts of up to 40 per cent.; endorses the Committee's view that in the absence of high quality and reliable `wrap around childcare' this could increase hardship and be detrimental to family life; further notes that the report states that `Lone parents who are sanctioned face financial penalties that will increase child poverty - an outcome at odds with the primary rationale that the Department for Work and Pensions has put forward'; and further notes that the reforms could also damage lone parents' health by causing worry and stress and have negative wider social impacts including on children and considers that the Government should accept the Committee's recommendation not to implement the regulations.