That the draft regulations laid before the House on 20 January be approved.

Relevant document: 7th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.

My Lords, the focus of these regulations will be familiar to noble Lords from our discussions during last year’s Welfare Reform Bill, which is now an Act. They provide a guarantee that lone parents with a youngest child aged 12 or under who are receiving jobseeker’s allowance will have the right to restrict their availability for work to their children’s school hours.

The regulations augment other flexibilities, some pre-existing and others added by the Welfare Reform Act—in a large part due to discussions in your Lordships’ House—that help us strike a sensible balance between the requirement on parents to undertake work or work-related activities and the need for children to be raised in a secure environment with an involved parent or parents.

Before outlining the provisions, it might be helpful to remind the House of their context. Our requirements on jobseekers are clear and well known. They are normally expected to be available for work for up to 40 hours a week. There are, however, a number of existing flexibilities that qualify this requirement for certain customers whose personal circumstances may inhibit their ability to work full-time or to look for work on a full-time basis.

In particular, when we introduced the lone parent obligations in 2008 we strengthened the flexibilities specifically for lone parents claiming jobseeker’s allowance. These flexibilities allow lone parents to limit their availability for work, in discussion with an adviser, to a minimum of 16 hours a week in order to take account of their childcare responsibilities and to allow them to refuse a job or leave employment if this childcare is not available.

Meanwhile, we introduced a further safeguard in the Welfare Reform Act 2009, which places a requirement on Jobcentre Plus advisers to take into account the well-being of any child affected when drawing up a jobseeker’s agreement. These agreements frame the jobseeking action that follows, so this is a significant addition to our safeguards.

Such flexibilities and safeguards are essential given this Government’s aim of ensuring that lone parents who are able to work and are claiming benefits should be expected to look for paid work to support themselves and their family once their children become older. We understand that our efforts to help people back into work would be counterproductive if we failed to recognise the difficult social circumstances in which many customers found themselves.

Noble Lords here today will be familiar with our still relatively new lone parent obligations, which is a staged regime designed to get lone parents back into work or work-related activities as soon as they are able. Since November 2008, we have required our income support customers who are lone parents with children aged 12 or over to move off this passive benefit regime and on to jobseeker’s allowance. From last October, those with children aged 10 or over have had to do the same, and from this October those with children aged seven or over will follow.

Since the lone parent obligations were introduced, more than 15,000 lone parents claiming JSA have moved into work. We predict that 45,000 lone parents will move from income support to JSA between October 2009 and October 2010, with a further 60,000 moving on to JSA after this October. The findings of an early evaluation of the lone parent obligations will be published later this month.

During the passage of the Welfare Reform Act, the main focus of our discussions on lone parents was on those with younger children, who will not be subject to the lone parent obligations and will not have to comply with the requirements of jobseeker’s allowance. There will be stepped requirements on these lone parents to engage with Jobcentre Plus and work-related activity, but their obligations will stop short of the full jobseeker regime.

It is worth stressing that the regulations do not apply to this group. They refer only to those lone parents who are on jobseeker’s allowance. A number of separate safeguards and flexibilities exist for this other group of lone parents, including the ability to limit work-related activity to school or nursery hours. But the focus of our discussion today is those lone parents subject to the full jobseeker’s allowance regime.

These regulations are being created using existing powers in Section 6 of the Jobseekers Act 1995. They strengthen one of the existing flexibilities for lone parents on jobseeker’s allowance and provide lone parents in eligible circumstances with an automatic right to limit their hours of availability to their child’s school hours. This new right puts the power to determine their availability back into the hands of lone parents because they are the ones who are best placed to make judgments about their responsibilities and lifestyles.

The Government are committed to helping lone parents back into work. We want to help them find sustainable employment. But this regulation represents an acknowledgement that lone parents have specific and difficult caring obligations. The new right will apply only to lone parents with children of 12 years of age and under. We feel that, by the age of 13, children are less dependent on their parents for intensive support and their move into secondary education will have been accompanied by resulting shifts in their lifestyles and those of their parents.

These regulations do not attempt to define school hours. They are subject to a wide variation across the country. In any case, our intention is to fit the provision with regular attendance at school, whatever that might mean in individual cases. Neither do they attempt to define school holidays, nor provide the right for such lone parents to limit their hours of availability during them. Regulations 13 and 14 of the Jobseeker’s Allowance Regulations 1996 allow for customers to discuss with their adviser anything which may hinder their ability to work. School holidays would certainly fall under this should there be an absence of free or affordable childcare.

To conclude, this is a simple change which is relatively straightforward to implement and explain. It could have a valuable impact on the lives of lone parent jobseekers up and down the country. It is crucial that we facilitate a work-life balance within our jobseeking regime which can cater adequately for this large group of families. This change will involve only modest IT changes and staff instruction. We aim to implement it on 26 April to ensure that lone parents can benefit from it as soon as possible. Jobcentre Plus preparations are well advanced. These regulations are an important part of our efforts to make our welfare services more flexible and bespoke. I hope noble Lords will agree that this is a right and necessary change, and appropriate to the nature of employment and lone parenthood in Britain today. I beg to move.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for explaining these welcome regulations. Any measure which seeks to balance in a practical way a lone parent’s care and responsibilities with work or jobseeking must be a good thing. Under these regulations, it appears that what was just a flexibility has turned into a right. What is behind this subtle change?

At present, the adviser—presumably the personal adviser in Jobcentre Plus—has to agree with the lone parent of a child of 12 or under a restriction of working only 16 hours a week, presumably because of a lack of affordable childcare. As personal advisers in JCP offices must be under such pressure, particularly if they are in a pilot area for one or other of the new initiatives, it must make life easier for them if their discretion in this matter is removed. I understand that the personal adviser’s discretion will still be required during the school holidays. If a lone parent receiving JSA cannot obtain appropriate and affordable childcare they will still be able to obtain that benefit as they are still technically looking for work. Paragraph 7.5 is written oddly but I think that is what it means.

On the evaluations, I have acquired some relevant findings from research report 624, published last month. This found that, in the phase 1 areas where the jobseeker regime and Flexible New Deal had started, lone parents had definitely benefited from the increased help they were offered by JCP. This was compared in the evaluation with the phase 2 areas, which will not get this increased help until next month and where the outcomes for lone parents were not so good. With increased help, lone parents were not only much better motivated to seek work but a significant number actually found jobs. If I carry on with the findings of this part of the evaluation, I will be doing the Minister’s job for him, so I had better stop there.

While being in a complimentary mood, I was pleased that DWP officials sought the views of the Lone Parent Voluntary Group, who were content with the proposals. This group includes such old friends as Gingerbread, the Child Poverty Action Group and Citizens Advice. I gather the regulations were slightly amended to take account of their views. I have in the past been critical of the lack of consultation by the department so it is good to be able to redress the balance. Another welcome piece of information is that this instrument will be comprehensively monitored and reviewed.

A final point follows from one made by my honourable friend Paul Rowen in another place. He raised the problem of housing benefit and the fact that many lone parents in receipt of housing benefit find they are no better off in work if it means they lose the benefit. When the Minister reminded the Committee in another place that housing benefit was also an in-work benefit, she said that the Government were proposing to fix housing benefit at the moment at which a person takes a job for an extended period, to give people a transition period. When is this expected to happen? Can the Minister assure me that personal advisers will be able to make the point to their customers that housing benefit is at present an in-work as well as an out-of-work benefit?

My Lords, I thank the Minister for presenting the regulations. I am pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, in her observations on them.

As with the previous order, these regulations also fail to tell the whole story. We do not, of course, oppose them but I would like to take the opportunity to probe the Minister a little more on the inconsistencies that exist within the Labour Government on their attitude to lone parents. There is no doubt about the importance of supporting lone parents back into the workplace when they are able. Indeed, we have heard echoes of the debates that we had on the Welfare Reform Bill, where there was considerable agreement on this task. I know that the Minister will agree—indeed, he referred to this in his opening remarks—especially after several days of debate with my noble friend Lord Freud on the Child Poverty Bill, that the benefits for both the parent and the child are immense. Employment is not only one of the surest routes out of poverty but also important for general health and happiness.

In line with the principle of these regulations, I am sure that the Minister would also agree that parents without any other option should not be penalised. Given his stated concern for a lone parent of young children to be there for them when they come back from school, has any further consideration been given to the Conservative policy for parents of very young children? I am sure that noble Lords will regret that the very sensible amendment that this House voted into the Welfare Reform Bill last year, which would have prevented any financial sanction being imposed on a lone parent with children under school age, was removed in another place and never made it into law. Does the Minister not think it rather inconsistent to protect a lone parent of children under 13 from being penalised for not being available outside school hours but not to protect the lone parent of a child under five from the same penalty?

The Government are giving out a mixed message on childcare. Limiting work requirements to school hours is one thing, but the only long-term improvement for parents seeking to combine work with bringing up a child is genuinely flexible working. The Conservatives would extend the right to flexible working to all parents with children under the age of 18. In contrast, the Government recently attempted to remove tax relief for childcare vouchers—hardly a policy that would support the lone parent seeking to get back into work.

These regulations do only half the job of providing a strategy to increase the opportunity for lone parents to engage in the world of work and, at the same time, to ensure that they and their dependants are supported and protected and their interests recognised.

My Lords, I am grateful for the strong support from the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, for these regulations and a degree of support from the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, although he would like them to cover other things as well. The noble Baroness is right that there are opportunities under the arrangements at the moment for flexibility to be introduced into the system, but making it a particular right in these circumstances is really to give added reassurance to lone parents of young children. We think that it makes it easier for them to access the labour market in a way that they can feel confident about if there are normal schooling arrangements for their children. It simply adds to existing flexibility, but that existing flexibility will continue and does not just focus on lone parents.

The noble Baroness referred to research report 624. I was not quite sure whether that was an evaluation relating to the Flexible New Deal. We think that it is too early in the evaluation to give an assessment of the operation of lone parent obligations. We are due to publish findings on the early implementation and experiences of the income support and jobseeker’s allowance regimes in the spring, so the impact of the lone parent obligations has yet to come. To emphasise the point that I made a moment ago, let me say that the right that we are covering in these regulations is intended to help lone parents to work around their children’s school hours. It therefore just applies during term times. Issues around holidays can be dealt with within the confines of the existing flexibilities. There will still be opportunities—particularly when there is no affordable, accessible childcare available during school holidays, for example—for advisers and claimants to agree on claimants not being available for work during that period.

I was pleased that the noble Baroness acknowledged that there had been good consultation with stakeholders. I think that that is a strong strand of what the DWP is about. As we announced in our recent White Paper, Building Britain’s Recovery: Achieving Full Employment, published in December, we have launched a family-friendly working hours task force to look at the support that employers need to make work much more family-friendly. That deals in part with the thrust of the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor. I agree with him about the importance of work for the health and self-esteem of individuals and that it is their best route out of poverty; I also agree about the importance of having such role models in families. We are determined to break the endless cycle of people growing up with nobody in the household working, which passes down through generations. I believe that we are making good progress on that.

I revert to the point raised by the noble Lord about sanctions and the disagreement that we had over the Welfare Reform Act in relation to the progression-to-work group—those lone parents with the youngest child between the ages of three and six. We intend, as we pilot that progression to work, to have a different sanctions regime on the Gregg model, which starts with people being notified and contacted with warning letters before we ever get to financial sanctions. The difficulty with the proposition of the noble Lord and his colleague the noble Lord, Lord Freud, is that it is illogical. They accepted that you could have a financial sanction for not turning up to a work-focused interview but could not be subject to a financial sanction for not undertaking an action that would have been directed under the action plan. Not only was that confusing, but it was illogical. The thrust of the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Freud, was that, even if he did not, in certain circumstances, want financial penalties, he did not preclude there being sanctions of some sort, although we never quite got to the bottom of what that might mean.

The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, talked about protecting lone parents with children under the age of five. Lone parents with younger children will have this protection if they are required to undertake work-related activity in the progression-to-work pathfinder areas. This will be introduced in October. Lone parents will be able to restrict their work-related activity to school and nursery hours.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, asked about the impact on lone parents. We know that around 15,000 lone parents on JSA have moved into work since the lone parent obligations were introduced. Around 900 lone parents have been sanctioned, so fears about the potential scope of the sanctions have perhaps been overstated. Approximately 51,000 lone parents were on jobseeker’s allowance as at December 2009. That was a small increase on the previous month. On-flows are still occurring, but off-flows are occurring as well, at a rate that is almost equivalent. According to the latest national statistics, from August 2009, 715,000 lone parents were on income support. This has fallen by more than 100,000 in the past five years. The early estimate for the working-age income support lone parent client group stood at 695,000 in December, which was down by around 35,000 since November 2008. There is a process whereby lone parents are moving from the inactive benefit to a benefit where they are helped to and required to engage.

The noble Baroness asked about housing benefit. We shall look at guidance to ensure that advisers make it clear that housing benefit is an in-work benefit. Lone parents, like other benefit claimants, are offered better-off-in-work calculations.

I cannot straightaway tell the noble Baroness quite where we are on the proposition of doing a calculation once and extending it for a six-month period, but I shall look into it and write to her. If recollection serves me correctly, I think that it was in the paper that we published in December, but to be sure where we are on it I shall need to check. If there are no further points, I commend the regulations to the House.