Supporting Single Parents into Work

Debate between Rupa Huq and Patricia Gibson

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.

Covid-19: Support for Aviation, Tourism and Travel Industries

Debate between Rupa Huq and Patricia Gibson

Thursday 24th June 2021 Westminster Hall

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

We can all agree that of all the sectors affected by the pandemic, aviation, travel and tourism have been hit particularly hard. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has indicated that the aviation sector has been the hardest hit of the entire economy, with hundreds of thousands of jobs lost or under threat. The latest data also shows that travel agencies and tour operators suffered an 89% decline in output in the first year of lockdown, when severe restrictions were imposed across the travel industry.

If the traffic light regulations continue to have the impact that they are having, more support will be desperately needed. We need to retain the existing furlough scheme and self-employed income support for businesses operating in aviation and international travel, without tapering, for a minimum additional six months, with future reviews built in. Also needed is the creation of a new sector-specific recovery grant regime for travel agents, tour operators and travel management companies that rely on international travel for their revenues. Travel agency businesses receive all their income through commission paid close to their clients’ departure dates. Given the cautious restart of travel, they need additional financial support to help them through the coming months. The issue of travel agents carrying the cost of refunding card payments was raised earlier in the debate, and I raised it specifically with the Chancellor last April. It has still not been addressed.

International travel is extremely important to our tourism and hospitality sectors, but we also know that it is important to reduce the risk of importing new cases and new variants of the virus. Indeed, the new delta variant entered Scotland while Scottish restrictions were at their highest levels because the UK Government would not engage with concerns expressed by the Scottish Government. They were too slow to act. That could have undone all the hard work and sacrifice that populations across the UK have made to help beat the virus. That is not good enough.

We need to reinstate a four-nation decision-making approach to international travel, which was suspended by the UK Government as the Scottish Government urged more action. It must be recognised that the aviation industry faces one of the longest periods of recovery, given the impact of covid-19 on route networks. The French and German Governments have given more than twice the financial support for every aviation and aerospace job than the UK Government have.

The Minister will be keen to tell us about the support that his Government have already provided, but there is no escaping the fact that the French and German Governments have provided double the support that those jobs have had in the UK. Clearly, those Governments are backing their travel industries now to help provide a driving force in the economic recovery of their countries. I urge the Minister to do all in his power to provide further support to these sectors at this challenging time.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

The penultimate Back-Bench speaker is another Scot, but in the Boothroyd Room this time. I call Neale Hanvey.

Private Members’ Bills

Debate between Rupa Huq and Patricia Gibson

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Patricia Gibson]

I sincerely wish that the hon. Gentleman were correct. When I watched what happened that day—admittedly, as a new MP with fresh eyes and all the rest of it—I said to myself and a couple of my colleagues, “If this is the mother of Parliaments, God help the others.” The hon. Gentleman was present in the Chamber that day and I know that he knows that there was a clear attempt to talk out the NHS reinstatement Bill. That is evidenced by the fact that 17 minutes were allocated to the debate of that Bill, and 17 minutes is not even a proper debate.

[Dr Huq]

I am a London MP so I do not have the Scotland problem, but even I have found the situation frustrating. On one of those frustrating Fridays, I went into a TV studio with a Conservative Member and explained what had happened. He sort of said, “You should have known better. That’s our hit squad. We send them every Friday.” For us, as new MPs, the honeymoon should not be over yet, but we are continually being frustrated on Fridays.

[Patricia Gibson]

I understand exactly the hon. Lady’s point. I am afraid that the honeymoon was over very quickly in terms of parliamentary procedure because what we see, and what we saw on that day, are shenanigans and parliamentary games, which do this place and our constituents no credit. It matters in the wider sense because the public do not understand the outdated procedures of this place. And why should they understand? I have been here for almost a year and I do not understand. I do not know what is going on because it makes no sense.

I know we are under time pressure, but I will leave hon. Members with this thought: this place is detached from the people it seeks to represent and we have to be very careful because this place is in danger, if we are not already quite there, of becoming an absurd and grotesque carbuncle on the face of the UK. If we seek to represent people, we must take it seriously. We must treat serious debates that aim to do serious things with the respect that they deserve. Our constituents deserve better.