Training | 2009.07.05
Lone parents offered pay incentives to work
• Cooper softens some parts of welfare reform bill
• Up to £50 a week may be earned without benefit cut
Unemployed lone parents are to be offered increased pay incentives to work in a move which softens some of the most controversial measures in the welfare reform bill. It is one of a number of measures being taken by the work and pensions secretary, Yvette Cooper, that subtly change the emphasis pursued by her predecessor, James Purnell. She insists her changes are designed to protect the family.
The government\'s welfare reforms have created controversy, since they require lone parents with children as young as three to prepare for the world of work during the recession, or lose benefits.
Cooper also promised that no sanctions will be taken against a lone parent with a child younger than seven if no appropriate or affordable childcare is available, in concessions made at committee stages of the bill in the Lords.
The sanction applies if the lone parent refuses to undertake work-related activity, or to prepare for work. Ministers are to table amendments spelling out that jobcentre advisers will be required to take into account the welfare of the lone parent\'s children, regardless of age, before considering any sanction.
Cooper has also decided that parents who have been victims of domestic violence and are claiming jobseeker\'s allowance will be exempt from the requirement to look for work for three months.
In addition, ministers are now spelling out that the requirement to prepare for work in the group with children aged between three and six may be as limited as seeking advice on debt.
Cooper has also abandoned imposing benefit sanctions on those found to have breached a community order, a form of non-custodial sentence. She found that a pilot scheme introduced in 2001 only led to a small number of extra people complying with their community order.
Cooper has bowed to pressure from child welfare lobbyists and the former social security minister Baroness Hollis to allow lone parents that undertake part-time jobs lasting less than 16 hours a week to earn a "disregard" of up to £50 a week without it affecting their benefits.
Until now lone parents have been allowed to earn only £20 a week before it impacted on their benefits, which meant they had no financial incentive to work for more than three and a half hours a week.
They could only start to make money after working over 16 hours, at which point the wage and tax credit system allows them to more than double their take home pay. It is estimated that more than a quarter of jobs advertised at job centres are jobs lasting less than 16 hours.
Hollis has described the current system as not one of ladders, but snakes. She said it could not be good or sensible public policy to have a disregard which equates to merely three and half hours work.
She argued: "The evidence shows mini-jobs are the best preparation for a proper job. Working nine hours a week, sorting out the transport and child care and learning the appropriate skills, are a far better way to prepare a mother for a more conventional full time work than all the the interviews, action plans, CV training and skills courses and newspaper adverts."
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/[...]ne-parents-pay-incentives-work
