Rather belatedly I want to mention last week's speech by John Hutton, the Secretary for Work and Pensions. He flagged up the idea of requiring more lone parents to seek work in order to be entitled to welfare benefits. At present, they are not required to seek work until their youngest child reaches the age of 16. He suggested this age might be reduced to 12.
If this sounds radical, it is nothing compared to the situation in other countries. He mentioned that in Sweden, widely regarded in Britain as the place where welfare benefits are enormous and handed out without question, lone parents are expected to seek work. In America, I believe, lone parents are expected to seek when their youngest children reach the age of three months.
Britain has been amazingly lax about this with the result that we have an enormous lone parent population with millions of children disadvantaged as a result.
The fact that John Hutton is prepared to suggest this reform is a sign that common sense can break through from time to time. He must have been encouraged by the modest objections from the Left. The Guardian clearly did not like it much but did not make a great deal of it.
But the Telegraph points out that David Blunkett suggested something similar two years ago.
Let's see if Hutton goes ahead and puts this through. It would be one of the more significant welfare reforms of this government. It might also pave the way to reducing the age requirement much further.
This is part of the Guardian's coverage:
The work and pensions secretary, John Hutton, signalled his willingness to consider more stringent requirements for lone parents to look for work as part of a package of measures to encourage them back into employment and alleviate child poverty."Very little" is currently asked of lone parents on benefit with a requirement to look for work that begins only when the youngest child reaches the age of 16, Mr Hutton said in a speech in central London today.
Mr Hutton cited evidence which showed that when the youngest child reached 16, as many as a third of lone parents moved almost "seamlessly" on to incapacity benefit or made a further claim for income support within the following 12 months, he said.
The UK was at the bottom of the league of major European countries for lone parent employment rates, he said.Countries such as Sweden and Denmark make "little distinction" between lone parents and other benefit recipients in terms of their obligation to look for work.
Here is some of the text of Hutton's speech with a few useful statistics:
The UK has one of the highest proportions of families headed by a lone parent in Europe. And yet despite the progress we have made in increasing the lone parent employment rate since 1997 – now up over 11 percentage points to 56.5 per cent - we still have the lowest lone parent employment rate of any major European country.Coupled with this, we ask very little of lone parents on benefit – with a requirement to look for work that only begins when the youngest child reaches 16.
By contrast countries whose welfare systems are held up as beacons of progressive social values, such as Sweden and Denmark, make little distinction between lone parents and other benefit recipients in terms of the obligation to look for work. As a result, they have lone parent employment rates as high as 80 per cent.
Furthermore in the UK, when the youngest child reaches 16, there is evidence that as many as a third of lone parents move almost seamlessly onto Incapacity Benefit or make a further claim for income support within the following 12 months. None of this should come as a surprise. If a person has been out of the labour market for 10 or 15 years, during which time they have had little help or support, they are obviously going to find it difficult moving straight from Income Support on to JSA and being required to actively seek work. This just isn’t good enough.
We know that children of lone parents not in work are over five times more likely to be in poverty than children of lone parents in full time employment. And three times more likely to be in poverty than children of lone parents in part time work. Around 40 per cent of poor children live in lone parent households – the majority of which are non-working.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Parenting • Reform
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I too am skeptical over this move, albeit in the right direction.
For me the answer should be that no ADDITIONAL benefits (money, housing etc) if someone already getting benefits has another child, i.e. they have to find the extra or make economies, just like a taxpayer has to.
This 12 year old rule just means women may pop a new sprog earlier to maintain their "lifestyle".
Posted by: Roger Thornhill at February 7, 2007 10:17 AM
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Personally, I’m far too cynical when it comes to New Labour to assume they have finally seen the light.
With Blair shortly to depart his closest supporters are currently fighting a (probably ill fated) tooth and nail battle to tie Brown to the Blairite agenda and to stop the party lurching to the left. Like the surprising recent statement from Lord Adonis regretting the destruction of the grammar schools, I suspect this talk of welfare reform from one of Blair’s closest followers, who might be signing on himself in a couple of months time, is more to do with infighting than good government.
Posted by: John East at February 6, 2007 02:56 PM