Childcare Payments Bill

Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I absolutely take that point. However, as my noble friend will be aware, the chairman of the committee wrote to my honourable friend and she replied to the chairman of the committee a couple of days ago, I hope giving useful information which will be for the benefit of the committee.

[Lord McFall of Alcluith (Lab)]

My Lords, on the issue of childcare, as chairman of a civic welfare and benefits group in Scotland, along with my colleagues in the churches, trade unions, local authorities and charities I visited a food bank in Drumchapel last week. We were informed there that over 25% of the clients were working poor, mostly women with childcare needs. That supports research for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which stated last year that there were more working poor in the UK than non-working poor households. Given that situation, if the Government are to live up to their rhetoric of helping hard-working families, is there not a case for Iain Duncan Smith—who, incidentally, visited Drumchapel—to look at this situation urgently so that we can indeed help the working poor and so that the Government can live up to their promises?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, the Government are doing a whole raft of things to help the working poor. One of the main reasons why the working poor are quite so poor is that they are not working as many hours as they would like to work. One of the interesting findings from recent survey evidence is that nearly a quarter of employed mothers said that they would increase their working hours if they could arrange reliable, convenient, affordable and good-quality childcare. Many of those are exactly the kind of parents to whom the noble Lord referred.