Supporting Single Parents into Work

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Dr Huq]

It is great that the hon. Lady has been to her local job club in a church; I have been to mine and I would advise all hon. Members to do the same. The figures are encouraging, but there is often a “but” hanging around. I will come on to part time and full time; she has slightly anticipated what I will say.

As I said, single parents are more likely to work part time: some 50% of them work part time compared with 25% of coupled parents. I thank Gingerbread, which arose from the film “Cathy Come Home” and is the main pressure group on these issues. Throughout the pandemic, it has undertaken four research projects: in December, February and May—and there is an ongoing one. The previous projects looked at debt and poverty, and the current one is a longitudinal study of qualitative interviews funded by Standard Life. It is due in September 2022, but I have some of the findings and I will draw on them.

Gingerbread found that the unemployment rate of 12% for single parents is double that for main carers in couples—the non-single-parent variety. The labour force survey does not completely capture the effects of the end of furlough, because it is published three months behind, so that will be interesting to see.

I will turn to the number of single parents on universal credit since the pandemic. As we know, universal credit is an in-work benefit paid a month in arrears. It causes a whole load of problems and its rate was recently cruelly slashed.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady is perhaps about to tell us that a child of a single parent family is much more likely to grow up in poverty. She also pointed out that single parents are much more likely to work part time. In view of that, does she agree that it is important for young single parents to have the same standard allowance for universal credit as parents over 25 years old?

[Dr Huq]

Yes, the hon. Lady makes a very good point. There are a lot of anomalies with universal credit; I think our last manifesto said to do away with it because it is not fit for purpose. The differential rates are not fair on the children. We called our group the all-party parliamentary group on single parent families because it is about the families and is not just a parent support club.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huq]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. He is an officer of our APPG on single-parent families, and it is interesting to hear his own experience. I hope that the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children did not cart him away. The readaptation programme into work can be a big deal when someone has taken time out, and more tailored support needs to be provided.

There is a legal challenge under way to prevent childcare costs from being paid in arrears, which was initially won but was then lost on appeal. We are still hopeful that the Government will see sense on that. I have often heard the flexible support fund touted as a way to get people back into work, but looking at the sums involved, it is for something like getting a pair of shoes or a bus fare to an interview. I do not know whether the Minister has had to pay childcare costs recently, but they are blooming expensive. We need a distinctive fund for childcare costs or, better still, for them to be paid upfront. We could take a leaf out of Northern Ireland’s book, where just last week a £1,500 non-refundable lump sum was announced to help people who have found a job get back into work.

All of those options would be much better than the current skills underselling we appear to have. The Government’s flagship 30-hours policy seems to be very elusive in terms of finding a provider which can offer it, as there are such complex eligibility criteria for that entitlement. Only 20% of families at the bottom third of the earnings curve are eligible for that at all. That policy needs to become reality.

Universal credit being paid in arrears means many parents are caught in a trap, as shown by many of the rich, qualitative studies in the Gingerbread findings. One woman found her dream job, correct for her skill level, but she could not do it because the childcare costs would have left her unable to pay her rent. I hope that the Minster will look at redressing those things.

Some parts of the Budget, I must confess, are welcome. However, tinkering around with the taper rates, although an improvement, is not as good as the money that was taken away—£1,000 a year for the poorest, or £20 a week. I urge the Government to look again at reinstating that. There is nothing to address the high upfront costs of childcare that make moving into a job difficult for parents. We need more support to help single parents back into work that reflects their skills, with specialist single-parent advisers, as there used to be in job centres. That would be a good starting point.

[Patricia Gibson]

Does the hon. Lady agree that as well as the measures she is talking about, organisations such as the Department for Work and Pensions and the child maintenance service need to get better and more robust at supporting single parents who are fleeing domestic abuse?

[Dr Huq]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. One sad by-product of the pandemic is the rise in domestic abuse, with people locked up at home more. Yes, those organisations need proper domestic awareness training and to be sympathetic; they tend to have very much a “computer says no” mentality. In the civil service—the Minister’s officials might know about this—job sharing is incentivised, and there is even a register of jobs. Perhaps we could universalise that across all workplaces.

I have not had time to go into the mental health issues that we have seen post pandemic, or rocketing food bank use. Pre-pandemic, the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty, Philip Alston, found that 14.2 million of our fellow citizens are in extreme poverty. Who knows where that is now? With safety nets such as furlough and the £20 uplift now gone, single parents and their children are more vulnerable than ever to being pushed into poverty. Gingerbread estimates that 1.1 million single parents will be hit by the loss of the uplift, losing £1 billion over the next 12 months. Remember: the Government used to champion the just about managing. They need to do so again.

The APPG’s point is that all families matter. That is why we champion single-parent families. We heard from Adrian Chiles, Robert Peston and Shappi Khorsandi, and we would love one day to welcome that well-known opposition politician and son of a single parent, Marcus Rashford, to our APPG. We live in hope. We want to show that it is not always only the man from the Ministry who should make policy; some things get flagged as anomalies, but the single mum at the school gates often knows best. As we steer out of this pandemic, although the Government go on about the plan for jobs, they need to address the 1.8 million single parents—a quarter of all households. That really would be levelling up.