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31-10-2007
Lone parents of children as young as seven should not be threatened with benefit cuts to force them into jobs, Citizens Advice said today.
In its response to the welfare reform green paper, the national charity warned the Government against pressing ahead with plans to make benefits for lone parents conditional on looking for work.
Proposals in the green paper would mean that from next year, all lone parents on income support would have to attend work focused interviews and actively look for work once their youngest child is 12. From 2010 the same rules would apply to parents whose youngest child is aged seven. Currently lone parents are not required to look for work until their youngest child is 16.
Citizens Advice says that these plans should not go ahead until fundamental improvements are made in the delivery of benefits and tax credits, in access to affordable, high quality childcare, and in ensuring basic rights at work are enforceable and employers offer the flexible working arrangements parents need.
Citizens Advice Director of Policy Teresa Perchard said:
“There is no evidence that threats to take people’s benefit away will help deliver the goals of reducing child poverty and getting more lone parents into the kind of jobs that will make them and their families better off. A deeper understanding is needed of the barriers to work faced by lone parents before adopting crude rules to cut benefit at certain points in people’s lives.
“Many lone parents stand to be very little better off in work, and they may feel justifiably reluctant to take up a low paid job, lose entitlement to free school meals and have to rely on tax credits to supplement their earnings. These have not always provided a reliable source of income and hundreds of thousands of families have suffered hardship and debt after being expected to repay large amounts of money they were overpaid with little or no explanation.
“Add to this the difficulty for many lone parents in finding affordable, good quality childcare, and the fact that often the jobs on offer to them are with employers who do not provide the basic decent terms and conditions required by law, or the flexible working arrangements that parents need, and it is clear that much more needs to be done to address these problems before going any further with compulsion.”
Notes to editors:
- The Citizens Advice service is a network of independent charities that helps people resolve their money, legal and other problems by providing information and advice and by influencing policymakers. For more information in England and Wales see
 www.citizensadvice.org.uk
- The advice provided by the Citizens Advice service is free, independent, confidential, and impartial, and available to everyone regardless of race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, religion, age or nationality.
- Most Citizens Advice service staff are trained volunteers, working at over 3,300 locations across England and Wales.
- Advice and information www.adviceguide.org.uk
- Volunteer hotline 08451 264264 (local rate)
- Citizens Advice Guide to your rights, second edition: January 2008 - over 600 pages of practical, independent CAB advice. An invaluable resource for any bookshelf - available from all good bookshops; price £11.99; ISBN: 9780141034089
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