Gah, what a stupid piece of legislation. Parents no more ‘scrounge’ off society than workers ‘scrounge’ off their employers; it’s in all of our interests to ensure that children, especially young children, have full-time care and adequate parental attention.

I suspect that this ties in with the whole demonisation of the ‘underclass’ – the logic is that benefit-dependent parents must be a bad influence on their kids, so it makes sense to force the parents into work to pay the taxes/lose the benefits that fund state-approved/run childcare, which must obviously and always be better for the child. Forcing single mothers apart from their children isn’t an accidental by-product, it’s probably half of the point.

Yet another reason why benefits need to be set at a liveable rate, and why the structure of the tax-n-benefits system needs reform to avoid screwing over part-time, low-ish-paid workers with massive benefit withdrawals if they do actually manage to find work.

But, let us remember, Labour are clearly the best people to help the poor…

‘The majority of children in poverty have at least one parent in work’

That’s because the majority of children have more than one parent: if you compare the relative poverty of equal numbers of children with a single parent with those with two parents, at least one of whom is working, you might find meaningful statistics.

I’d agree that getting parents of one year olds is not exactly a brilliant idea, even if jobs were available, and I’ve also parodied this idea on an earlier thread when I said that these parents will have at least one marketable employment skill – child care – and that putting them into childcare work will simultaneously create a need for childcarers for their own kids, thus solving the problem of a lack of suitable vacancies – but lets not pretend a household with no wage is poorer than a household with one.

And if you really did meet someone financially worse off because she took up employment you should ask her if she had a Better Off Calculation before she accepted the job.

The London Coalition Against Poverty is organising a week of action against the Welfare Abolition Reform Bill in conjunction with single parents’ action groups across the country, and I’ll be updating here with details.

Good stuff!

Purnell deserves all the abuse he gets. And, in fact, it will soon get much heavier.

Sorry, that should read ‘lets not pretend a household with no wage is better off than a household with one’

I love the “Marx himself…” there – as if he were a recognized authority on economics!

Are poorer families having more children?

I’m not very conservative normally but social responsibility has to spread to include family size.

What I find the most worrying about this is that aged 1 children may still be breast feeding. To try and force mothers back to work that early strikes me as totally irresponsible.

Hi Laurie,

Agree with the general argument here, but the DWP isn’t planning to ‘compel single parents back to work by the time their children are one year old’.

Parents with children aged between 1 and 6 will be placed in a ‘Progression to Work’ group. They have to meet with an adviser every so often (either monthly or quarterly, depending on individual circs) and agree an action plan including ‘work-related activity’ (which includes things like joining a Children’s Centre, getting debt advice or doing a basic skills programme). The bill specifically says that sanctions will “never be used to force clients to apply for specific jobs, attend job interviews, take any particular form of employment, or place a pre-school child into inappropriate childcare against the will of the parent.”

These meetings with the adviser will range from a complete waste of time to quite helpful – lots of these meetings will be pointless box-ticking, whereas some, particularly with a good adviser, might be really helpful in terms of making parents aware of all kinds of help and support they can get and giving them the confidence to get a job which they’d really enjoy.

There need to be safeguards, of course, and some more detail about how these will work in practice (e.g. the ‘very limited situations in which direction by an adviser will be required’). But I thought it was kind of funny that this was the only aspect of the legislation which the Tories objected to, when in fact it is one of the few bits which seems mostly harmless and possibly even quite helpful.

While I loathe and detest the Welfare Reform Bill, I do think it is worth being clear about what it does and doesn’t propose, not least in cases like this which can cause unnecessary alarm and distress.

What’s most worrying about this article is Laurie’s assumption that single parents who go back to work are somehow plunging their children into poverty while simultaneously depriving them of love and affection.

Forcing parents of one-year olds back to work would, of course, be unacceptable but that is not what is being proposed here, as donpaskini explains above.

And the situation as it has been for decades has meant that single parents could spend their children’s entire school career on benefits – meaning those with several kids could be effectively out of the job market for twenty years or more. Those who had children in their teens could find themselves looking for work for the first time when they are pushing 40. Chances are, they’d have abourt 20 years in a poorly paid job with little chance of career development, then retire into the poverty of a state pension. That may be the SWP’s idea of a life but its not one most people would look forward to.

Most women do not see their entire purpose as baby making machines turning out the next generation of workers for capitalism while consuming as little as possible for themselves. Marx wasn’t holding this up as a prescription for life.

What underpins Laurie’s whole argument is the presumption of an automatic and absolute right to state benefits for all who want them and the assertion that there is no requirement for single mothers to contribute to their own family’s welfare (or the welfare of society) by working. Or even to think about the possibility of working in six years time.

Such attitudes unfortunately play into the hands of those who want to dismantle the welfare state completely. They would rightly point out that benefits are not paid with magic money that falls out of the sky but by the taxes of those who do work. They would correctly argue that the pot is not limitless and that the taxpayers are entitled to have some say in how their money is allocated.

Perhaps if Laurie spent less time at Gender Race and Class conferences she might have a stronger grip on that reality.

Well, looking after children of pre-school age is a job for someone.

From a crude economic point of view – possibly one the Tories might buy into – if the amount of cash a single parent can earn in the job market is likely to be less (or not much more than) than the cost of their childcare, it’s generally not in the interest of the state or the single parent to force the single parent to get a job.

And I think there’s big question marks over whether there’s currently enough subsidized high quality childcare to enable all the single parents who really want to get a job when their child is one to make that choice.

That said, I agree with Don Paskini that in theory this is not the worst part of the Bill. Assuming ‘Progression to Work’ is useful, it seems more sensible than leaving people alone until their child is seven then suddenly expecting them to come back into the job market unsupported with a seven year gap on their CV.

For info, here’s Madeleine Bunting on the arrival of Workfare in the UK. Oh, and for don @ 9, I’ll just quote the following:

Lone parents with children as young as one will be expected to start “preparing for work” and actively seeking work when their youngest child is seven. The presumption throughout is that everyone – with the exception of only the severely disabled and parents of very young children – should seek paid work. If they don’t comply, they could lose their jobseeker’s allowance, although parents would be able then to apply for a hardship allowance. (If that sounds complicated, wait until the harassed jobcentre employee has to handle all the applications, appeals and complaints.)

To howls of anguish from anti-poverty campaigners, Purnell offers reassurance that sanctions are a last resort. But in evidence to the select committee last month his bluff was called. He was asked what would happen if a mother rejected a jobcentre personal adviser’s offer of childcare because it was too far away and poor quality. Purnell liked the example. It showed, he said, how “the system will be able to be personalised”, but “in the end it will be the personal adviser’s decision with the possibility of appeal, because if we did it the other way round that would clearly have the potential to drive the cart and horses through the conditionality regime”.

…which think could be summarised as: They’ll axe your benefit, which you might be able to get back…if you’re lucky. If they placed such ‘conditionality’ on employees, it would verge on constructive dismissal.

The current system means that anyone who refuses to accept employment because they believe it is impossible to take up would have their case referred to a decision maker, so why should parents be an exception?

Do PA’s and decision makers suddenly turn into unfeeling monsters where single parents are concerned?

Do PA’s and decision makers suddenly turn into unfeeling monsters where single parents are concerned?

If Purnell had his way, I suspect the answer is ‘yes’. Given David Freud’s switch to the Tories, their answer would be ‘yes – with knobs on’.

Bunting’s article is excellent.

I hadn’t seen that Purnell quote before, but it really highlights the point about the need for safeguards to prevent abuse by advisers. The bill is very vague about how sanctioning decisions will work in practice – if it really is going to be that advisers get to decide to sanction benefits and people immediately lose the money and then have to appeal, that is abhorrent.

When it comes up for its Third Reading an amendment to put into place that there is a right to appeal and to get independent advice if an adviser recommends sanctions is needed.

That Purnell thinks this ‘would drive a coach and horses through the conditionality system’ makes me really hope that someday he gets personal experience of having all of his pay stopped at the whim of a bureaucrat and told that if he thinks it is unfair then he can appeal and might get the money back a few weeks later.

“Perhaps if Laurie spent less time at Gender Race and Class conferences she might have a stronger grip on that reality.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Laurie, I think (and there has been massive amounts of evidence) that women are having children that they cannot afford and are expecting those around them to pay for them. How do we stop that happening? We tried by trying to make their lives better with free housing and benefits and free courses in self esteem and plumbing in the hope that they can lift themselves from the poverty that they have been born into. It didn’t seem to work so now they are trying a different track. You are not making any better suggestions so why not be supportive?

don: I hadn’t seen that Purnell quote before, but it really highlights the point about the need for safeguards to prevent abuse by advisers. The bill is very vague about how sanctioning decisions will work in practice – if it really is going to be that advisers get to decide to sanction benefits and people immediately lose the money and then have to appeal, that is abhorrent.

Don, as Bunting suggests: the system isn’t there to help you find work, any more than they expect you to live off £60 a week – if David Freud claims he can cut the IB claimant count by two-thirds (to what it was in 1979), what makes you think Purnell’s is going to bother with ‘safeguards’?

And if you really did meet someone financially worse off because she took up employment you should ask her if she had a Better Off Calculation before she accepted the job. Shatterface

I took up a job when my children started school full-time. It devastated my finances and I ended up in debt (despite the Better Off Calculation) mainly because of the way my local council runs Housing Benefit. The calculation does not take into account the cost of working i.e. there is less time to shop cheaply and to cook cheaply and many other hidden expenses.

Additionally, it was not good for my children to have a stressed over-tired mother who no longer had the time or patience to be a proper mother to them!

This bill is a terrible thing and should be stopped. I cannot believe there are any single parents who have positively chosen to be single, but because of errant ex-partners they are single handed bringing up children in the face of ridiculous attitudes shown in some of the comments made above.

Bringing up children IS a full-time job, and I do think I have a right to claim benefits at this time to enable me to bring up my children – the welfare system was designed for those at need – and I have paid a lot of tax in the past and will pay again in the future when my children are old enough to allow me to return to paid work.