To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security, pursuant to her oral answer of 17 November 1997, Official Report, column 7, if she will make it her policy not to introduce compulsion for lone parents in order to get them from welfare into work. [17653]

Compulsion is not the issue. The real issue is effective help to get lone parents back to work. We are making significant steps to help lone parents back to work in the New Deal for Lone Parents, and by developing a National Childcare Strategy. With these policies, we are offering:

• personalised advice on jobsearch;
• training;
• help with childcare;
• and in-work benefits advice.

We believe that with the measures in the New Deal for Lone Parents, coupled with improvements that the Government is making in childcare, lone parents will decide for themselves that work is better than life on benefit.