HC Deb 28 July 1997 vol 299 c17
16. Mrs. Anne Campbell

To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what representations she has received from organisations representing lone parents on the impact of the welfare-to-work proposals announced in the Budget. [9043]

Ms Harman

The national lone parent organisations—Gingerbread and the National Council for One Parent Families—have warmly welcomed the new deal for lone parents, which we announced in the Budget. They are working with us on that programme as it gets under way.

Those organisations know, as we do, that lone parents want the opportunity to work to provide a better life for themselves and their children.

Mrs. Campbell

Is my right hon. Friend aware of the warm welcome given by lone parent organisations in my constituency for her new deal for lone parents which she launched in my constituency last week? Will she also consider, however, that some parents are still experiencing difficulties, namely, those who work anti-social hours and who therefore have to use informal kinds of child care, which at present are not eligible for the child care disregard? Will she take that into account when considering the effect of her scheme?

Ms Harman

Certainly, we shall need to look at the opportunities available for child care and combining it with work governed by inflexible hours. As my hon. Friend will know, we are establishing a national child care strategy which will help to improve the affordability of child care through the child care disregard. That strategy will also help the provision of child care through after-school clubs, which will be funded by the national midweek lottery, and the provision of more places in those clubs and at nurseries through the use of the single regeneration budget.

It is certainly true that in terms of child care provision for those who work ordinary hours or more flexible hours, Britain's children are Europe's poor relations, because lone mothers in other European countries are able to work to support themselves and their children, and thus enjoy a better standard of living than their counterparts in this country. The absence of appropriate child care in this country is one reason why we have twice as many lone parents dependent on benefit as our European colleagues, and half as many in work.