John Hutton’s announcement today that lone parent benefits should be 
paid only until the youngest child is 11 instead of 16 could not have been timed more badly.
The front page lead story in today’s Times tells how parents are being charged up to £19,000 a year for nursery costs, that the price of daycare for babies and young children has increased by almost 30% in six years.
Now it’s hard enough for any working family to keep their head above water while faced with such a huge bill, so how much more difficult must it be for the UK’s 1.69 million single parents?
In Britain, just 56.5% of lone parents are in work, compared with up to 80% in Sweden and Denmark; I assume they are given more support in these Scandinavian countries, while the UK has lowest rate of lone parent employment in Europe.
Our single parents need more flexi working hours. And remember, 11 is still too young an age to leave a child alone at home, do we want to encourage a new generation of latchkey kids?
What jobs can these lone mums be expected to find, particularly if they have left school poorly educated? Are they going to be offered training in the interim to help get them back into the working market?
What has Ruth Kelly done to help lone parents? She is, after all, the Women’s Minister, she should be coming up with ideas to support them. And she appreciates how mothers just want the best for their children.
It remains to be seen how much support this plan will get. Tony Blair’s attempt to reduce single parent benefit in 1997 sparked a backbench rebellion and 47 MPs voted against the plans. Will that happen again?
How do you feel single parents can be helped to get back to work? Are the right kind of jobs available? Should their benefits be cut back until the youngest child is 11?
An interesting quote above, that the price of daycare for babies and young children has increased by almost 30% in six years. This comes as no surprise to me. In fact I’m amazed costs have risen so little.
My wife worked for sixteen years with a parent organised self help playgroup which looked after hundreds of children over this period whilst their mothers did part time work. Being largely voluntary, we charged about £12/week.
Along with many such initiatives nationwide we were put out of business by smothering attention from social services and state infant schools who muscled in to take the business. Needless to say, young working mothers we once helped are now probably paying the nanny state ten times more for the same service.
As for Hutton’s overall plan, it’s just more labour hot air. He’s a Blairite who will probably disappear when Brown takes over. This whole initiative, along with other recent statements fron Adonis concerning selection in education, is probably just the result of in-fighting and positioning within the party.
John, There doesn’t seem to be any substance behind this plan. What back up is there to give these women a foot on the employment ladder? What if they prefer being full-time mothers? Shouldn’t that be taken into consideration?
As usual, Labour have the wrong target. The key is to reduce the amount of lone parents by discouragain babies out of weedlock and tackling teenage pregnancy rates.
Targeting them when their kids are 11 is just vindictive. Imagine in the Major government had suggested this!
CityUnslicker, There would have been a riot had John Major suggested this. The government has failed to educate young people about teenage pregnancies, as a result they leave school poorly qualified too, how can they expect to find work without skills or adequate qualifications? Who is going to help ensure they have those so they can find a job and stand on their own two feet? That’s why I ask, where is the joined up thinking with this?