The Government is offering Britain’s lone parents a new deal that will deepen the poverty trap for many of them. From next April, new lone parents will get lower rates of Income Support, Job Seekers’ Allowance, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit. Those on IS, for example, will lose nearly £5 a week. In addition, their Child Benefit will be £5 less than that of existing claimants. And new claimants getting Family Credit — those on low wages — will lose some of their Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit. One of the last acts of the Tory Government was to freeze the rates of lone parent premium and lone parent benefit in April. So the value of these benefits will have already fallen for existing claimants.
Harriet Harman, Social Security Secretary, claims that these changes are part of the Welfare To Work programme, alongside giving lone parents special “advisors” and other help and “incentives” to get back to work. But what she is not giving are substantial increases in childcare nor is any government policy creating new real jobs. In fact, lone parents going to work could substantially increase their poverty after next April. Not only will they lose some of the benefits available to those on low pay, but also if they lose their new job after even a few days, they become new claimants subject to lower rates for all benefits.
So lone parents contemplating taking a new job would be well advised not to do so. In addition, the rate at which they will lose in-job benefits means that even if they keep their new job, they will be worse off than if they had stayed at the pre-April 1998 rates! Britain’s 1.6 million lone parents already make up one of the largest groups in poverty in this country. 80 percent of them fall into the bottom 40 percent of income groups.
Audrey Wise has put down an Early Day Motion calling on the Government to consult with the Social Security Advisory Committee — which is asking for a full investigation into the “relative costs, incomes and expenditures of lone parent and two parent families on benefit and in work” — before going ahead with the Bill that will make the required changes.
It is no wonder that the EDM is getting support from many Labour MPs and that Harriet Harman was attacked at the weekly meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party. When in opposition, Ms Harman, who could afford to pay for child care, attacked the Tory Government’s proposals — in essence those she is now proposing herself. The Government constantly says that getting people back into work is the best way to overcome poverty and social deprivation: true if the work exists and is well-paid, but this policy is being rushed through while the Low Pay Commission has not even met, much less come up with any proposals that will improve women’s lives; and true only if there are good child care arrangements throughout the years of dependency, not just pre-school.
It is cheering that the strongest opposition to New Labour’s Old Tory policies has come in support of a group that has been so vilified and which is one of the most vulnerable in our society — exactly the people whom a Labour Government ought to be supporting, not attacking.