§ 11. Mrs. Linda Gilroy (Plymouth, Sutton)What assistance his Department is giving to help lone parents find work. [129331]
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Angela Eagle)The new deal aims to make work pay, making it a practical choice for lone parents. The new deal for lone parents offers them help and advice on job-search, training, child care and in-work benefits. That is just one of a raft of measures that we have introduced, including the lone parent benefit run-on, the national child care strategy, the working families tax credit, and, of course, the national minimum wage.
§ Mrs. GilroyI thank my hon. Friend for that reply; I think that she knows that the legacy left in Plymouth by my Conservative predecessor was the poorest ward in 16 England. Indeed, such was the poverty that one of the two Oxfam projects in this country operates in the city. I thank my hon. Friend for the programme. Will she join me in congratulating the Benefits Agency and the Employment Service, which, with the active help of the local evening paper, the Evening Herald, have delivered the new deal to lone parents in such a way as to enable 238 of them to enter employment in the past year, and several hundred more to take the first steps on the pathway out of poverty, which the new deal for lone parents represents?
§ Angela EagleIt gives me great pleasure to congratulate the authorities in Plymouth. Their outreach programme has been very effective. I know that the Benefits Agency and various other authorities work closely together to ensure that the benefits of the new deal for lone parents are made as widely available as possible. They hire a bus, operate from community centres and playgroups and go where lone parents and their children are. That is one of the more effective ways of getting the message across.
§ Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham)Given the fact that, as was emphasised earlier, it would take 26 years for all participants in the new deal for lone parents to secure employment, and furthermore, that there is evidence that those outside the scheme have a better chance of securing work than those inside it, why does the hon. Lady not abandon her bluster, give up the unequal struggle, admit that the scheme is an expensive failure, and move to abolish it without delay?
§ Angela EagleThe scheme pays for itself and it is successful. I will not accept counsels of despair from a complacent Conservative party which caused the problem in the first place.