On the last day of the Parliamentary session in November saw a remarkable battle between the Conservatives and the Government over how lone parents should be treated. We had been supportive of the welfare reform bill (indeed, as previous readers of this blog may remember, my own report on welfare-to-work was the inspiration for much of it).
However, we were concerned to avoid casualties from the extremely rapid change in expectations surrounding lone parents. A year ago, lone parents were not expected to find work till their youngest child was 16. That age has been brought down to 12 this year and will move to seven shortly. At the same time the Government was aiming to engage with lone parents when their youngest was aged three.
In the Lords we put in an amendment to ensure there would be no financial sanctions imposed on lone parents while their children were below school age, or five years old. We won the vote on this issue, and I was surprised when this eminently sensible protection was resisted by the Government and reversed when the issue was tested in the Commons.
Our arguments that there were other ways of sanctioning lone parents who were obdurate were dismissed by the Government as “bizarre”. We pointed out that financial penalties were a particularly odd sanction to lean on, when many lone parents were anyway subsisting on the breadline and by removing funds the Government was effectively taking resources from the children it was trying to protect from poverty.
On the last day we had to decide whether or not to attempt to reverse the amendment. As a newcomer, I was amused to learn that this process – of continuing disagreement between Lords and Commons – is labelled ping-pong, batting the disputed clause back and forth.
We decided that we would be better off making an explicit commitment that if we are in a position to form the next Government, lone parents with children under five will not face financial sanctions as a result of the progression-to-work regime. I was particularly pleased to re-emphasise David Cameron’s powerful point in this context: that the Conservatives, not Labour, are best placed to fight poverty in this country.
( 3 comments ) Tags: lone parents, poverty
Comment by frances on December 13, 2009 at 11:26 am
I am glad that you are thinking of protecting some people from the new harder regime.
However please think also of the severely and enduringly sick. Schizophrenia, cancer, MS, Parkinsons – a whole spectrum of severe illness. Surely the protection of the support group where back to work help can be accessed in a voluntary way is the respectful way to treat people who are very ill. There is no question of fraud with these diagnoses and how you respond to this kind of diagnosis is surely a personal journey.
Back to work help is wonderful but when they are this ill they need to keep control of their own decisions. They are facing severe prognoses. Limiting the protection only to people with less than six months to live is far too harsh.
Comment by john shurie on December 13, 2009 at 4:13 pm
David, just wondering what if anything, you’re going to do with ‘raiding the pensions’. If you now claim before the election that pension funds will no longer be ‘raided’, thats going to be worth an awful lot if votes. Regards JS
Pingback by Carer Watch.com / THE WELFARE REFORM BILL – MENTAL HEALTH – Blogging the fight! on December 14, 2009 at 4:21 pm
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