Welfare Reform Bill

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I apologise for coming so late into this Committee debate. Earlier in the discussions on the Bill, I referred to research in the United States which looked at the effect of parental employment on educational outcomes for children. It found that within the younger group, five to 12 or so, outcomes were better when parents were in employment, but that in the older age group—and I am not quite sure of the cut-off point—outcomes for children in school were poorer when their parents were in employment.

I do not have the details, and I am sure there is much more context to it than this. Does the Minister know what the research says about the impact of parental employment on children’s outcomes at school, and is there separate research into the impact of lone-parent employment on the outcomes for children in school, post-13?

[Lord Freud]

The first point I make to the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, is to assure her that full-time is not the default setting. The default setting is that we look at the circumstances of the claimant, particularly taking into account their caring responsibilities and available care, and reach a reasonable position. That is the position. On that basis, a lot of her concerns surrounding her point fall away. Of course we are not looking to have latch-key children.

On flexible working, I made the point earlier that we understand that when we look at the value of a job, the monetary implications are not the only measure; and that the gains of flexibility, in terms of how the employer behaves, and the relationship, are key and critical factors and have to be taken into account.

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[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I add a couple of lines to my noble friend’s eloquent introduction to this issue. What we know from all our research about getting lone parents into work is that those lone parents stay in work if they have childcare they trust. Trust is key. As one lone parent told me when I visted, “I would never leave my child with strangers”. Childcare they trust tends to be associated with schools and extended hours. That is highly trusted. If they live in an urban area, it may be the availability of a nursery which is acceptable to them and which is trusted because of scrutiny. They may have neighbours or friends, and so on, who are childminders.

The biggest resource in my experience has always been grandmothers, particularly the maternal grandmother. The reason the maternal grandmother could do the childcare and often would do so once or twice a week, particularly over holiday periods, allowing a lone parent to hold down a job, was because she was herself not caught by conditionality. Can the Minister assure us that he has taken into account that, as we see the retirement age rising to 66 from 60 and that she as well as he in the 60s bracket are expected themselves to be available for work if otherwise they would be claimants on UC, that that unpaid resource will be taken out of the caring economy which has made it possible for that grandmother to permit her daughter to work? In other words, there is interaction going on here with other fields of government policy.

I am sure that the Minister has taken this into account, but one thing that I was most pleased that the right honourable James Purnell was able to introduce was the substitution: where a lone mother did not need her HRP because she was in the labour market and getting her own NI, a grandparent did not lose her entitlement to a state pension by virtue of not being in the labour market for wages, but was in the unwaged labour market, allowing her daughter to remain in full-time paid work.

That resource will come out of the system, if I understand the double interaction, of the raising of the retirement state pension age for women and the conditionality that the Minister will expose her to while she waits in that twilight decade to draw her pension, while she is perhaps not an attractive option for many employers. Can he reassure us that this has been taken into account and that there is lateral thinking here because 40 per cent of lone parents have relied on grandparents to provide informal care? We have never recognised this, except in so far as we have been assured that she does not lose out in terms of a pension. Can the Minister advise us on how this will be handled in future?

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, before I speak to my amendment in this group, Amendment 51FZA, I thank the Minister for asking his officials to provide me with information in this area. I also apologise for being absent from the discussion of the first grouping today which was relevant to this debate now. I apologise if I repeat information raised then. I also remind your Lordships of Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child:

“In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration”.

I should be grateful if the Minister could make his best endeavours to demonstrate how the Bill is considering the best interests of the child in relation to this debate.

My Amendment 51CED states:

“It is not a failure sanctionable under this section if a claimant falling within section 22 does not have guaranteed and predictable access to high quality, flexible and affordable child care acceptable to the parent and child or children”.

The lack of widely available, affordable and acceptable childcare has been referred to. The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that claimants with a dependent child will not face sanctions if they are unable to work or participate in work-related activity due to a lack of suitable high-quality, flexible and affordable childcare appropriate to the parents’ and children’s needs. As we have heard, most lone parents want to have the opportunity to combine paid work with the vital job of being a parent. However, so far the Bill seems to fail to recognise that the required childcare infrastructure is lacking in many parts of the UK, including Scotland. There also continues to be a serious lack of childcare settings that are properly equipped and which have staff who are properly trained to deal effectively and positively with children with disabilities, learning, communication or behavioural challenges or who have a wide range of additional support needs.

To make a slight aside, I know how important it is to the Minister and to all your Lordships that we encourage a culture of independence and attack a culture of dependency. The kinswoman of the noble Lord, Anna Freud, whom I believe was a child psychotherapist and an early-years teacher, established in her work dating from the 1940s the absolute importance of the relationship between the child and parent in making the move from infant dependency—absolute dependence—on the parent to adult independent emotional maturity. The danger is that if we do not do all we can in this Bill to strengthen the relationship between parents and children we might inadvertently build in the problem of dependency in the next generation. For adults to be independent they need to have had strong relationships in their early childhood. That is what gives them the strength to be independent in their adulthood. The nature of the relationship between parents and children also colours the relationships that those children will have as adults with other adults. Therefore, the strength of parental bonds between partners is coloured very much by their early experiences in childhood.

I wish to cite a couple of case histories of lone parents in Scotland. I should say that this amendment is supported by 20 charities working in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Judy says:

“All very well and good expecting lone parents to work once their children are in fulltime education, personally I don’t have an issue with it. For me personally, voluntary work & eventually paid work turned my life around albeit not financially. However, where is the childcare to go along with this? Where is the flexible working? Where is the long term thinking? It’s all very well providing ‘some’ funding for childcare, what use is it if there is none? We now face a new generation of children who are ‘forced’ by the Government to be latchkey kids … These same children are often (not always) the ones who require the most emotional support and stability, in particular during difficult times (separation/divorce) … who is going to be around to support them at the times where parents have to be working?”.

I took part in the proceedings on the Childcare Act 2006. What was noteworthy about that was the recognition of how far behind our continental neighbours we were in developing an effective childcare strategy. We were 30 years behind Sweden in having our first childcare strategy. We start from a very low base in terms of thinking and providing for early-years and other childcare.

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[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, can the Minister give us an assurance that one possibility he could explore again is that great source of unpaid childcare: grandparents. I tried to get payment, but the deadweight costs would have been too huge. I hope that he will take the issue of her—and it is usually a her—responsibility into account in assessing her conditionality. We have already moved down this path, as my noble friend mentioned, in terms of credits for her pension and so on. It would not be difficult to do and it would ease the pressure on two or even three generations if her contribution to childcare was set against the conditionality on her in her late 50s—certainly in her 60s—and thus make it possible to keep all three generations afloat.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, sorry—

[Lord Freud]

No, let us take them all—

[The Earl of Listowel]

Before the noble Baroness withdraws the amendment, I want to take this opportunity to thank the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree, and the Minister for their very kind words. If praises are our wages in this House, I feel well paid today—I wish I were more worthy of what has been said. I am grateful to the Minister for his careful response. It is reassuring to be reminded how important it is to children and their success that their parents are in work. Shall I wind up?

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel)]

Is the noble Earl going to be very long?

[The Earl of Listowel]

Anna Freud demonstrated in her life’s work how complex child development is and how professionals working with children had to recognise that complexity. I am to some degree reassured by what the Minister has said, but there is great complexity here. Particularly in childcare, we have a very mixed provision and shortages in many areas. There may be things that we can think about before the Report stage that would be helpful in terms of future thinking—for instance, the work of the family information services might complement the work of Jobcentre Plus advisers, helping them to understand what is available in their local area.

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I am twitchy about one more thing, because I know that the Minister will say no. Although we are happy about the responsibility being put on local authorities with regard to childcare, I cannot let the moment go without saying that their funding has been cut. I know that that is not within his department, but some of these things cost money.

[The Earl of Listowel]

Before the noble Baroness withdraws the amendment, I should have reminded your Lordships that the Childcare Act 2006 applies only to England and Wales, so local authorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland are not under these obligations. I hope that that is helpful to the Committee.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I should have known that, but I did not, so I thank the noble Earl. Nevertheless, we have had some helpful reassurances in the Minister’s response to the debate and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.