HC Deb 02 July 1974 vol 876 cc91-3W
Mr. George

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services when the Finer Report on One-Parent Families will be published; and if she will make a statement.

Mrs. Castle

The report has been published as a Command Paper (Cmnd 5629) today and copies are available in the Vote Office. This is a long and wide-ranging report and I should like to express the Government's gratitude to Sir Morris Finer and his Committee for the comprehensive and thorough examination they have made of the issues involved.

The committee's recommendations cover the whole span of problems affecting one-parent families. In some spheres, in particular in relation to many of their recommendations on housing, employment, education and personal social services, the Government can readily assent to the case they make out in respect of central services, and will be consulting the local authorities' associations concerning the recommendations which fall primarily within local authorities' responsibility. In other spheres the committee puts forward suggestions for major reforms with substantial implications, both financial and in terms of skilled manpower. This applies to its recommendations for a new social security benefit for one-parent families, for changes in the court structure and for a new system of assessment and collection of maintenance payments.

The report makes it plain that absence of one parent—particularly the father —is a major cause of family poverty, and on that basis the committee put forward their proposal for a new social security benefit. I can now say that the Government accept in principle that additional support should be provided for one-parent families although I cannot accept commitment to the particular recommendation made by the committee. The committee's proposal for a new social security benefit comes at a time when the Government are preparing their promised scheme to help the low paid and other families in poverty by introducing child cash allowances for every child, including the first, payable normally to the mother. We shall therefore consider most carefully in the light of the report the appropriate form and scale of provision for one-parent families in relation to the broader system of family endowment as it is developed.

The committee see its proposed new benefit also as a guarantee of maintenance, and consistently with that view it proposes changes in existing maintenance arrangements by removing from the courts a major part of the work of assessing and collecting maintenance payments. The radical nature of these proposals will call for careful consideration on the part of my right hon. Friends the Lord Chancellor, the Home Secretary, the Secretary of State for Scotland, and the Lord Advocate, as well as myself. The very thorough examination on which the committee bases these interesting proposals provides an admirable basis for our consideration of this aspect of the matter and this is an issue on which my right hon. Friends and I are especially anxious to hear the views of interested organisations. In particular, my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Lord Advocate will wish to consider with those concerned the implications for the Scottish legal system of the committee's proposals —the application of which in a Scottish context raises issues of great complexity.

The committee also makes a number of recommendations concerning supplementary benefits, including disregards and the administration of the cohabitation provisions of the Supplementary Benefit Act 1966. I appreciate the importance of supplementary benefits disregards, particularly the earnings disregard, to one-parent families and I can re-affirm the Government's intention to improve them as soon as financial considerations allow. I can also say that the Supplementary Benefits Commission has already in hand a major re-examination of the administration of the cohabitation provisions to assist it to review its policies and will certainly give the most careful consideration to what the Finer Committee has said. I have also asked the commission to include in its consideration the question whether any amendment of the Supplementary Benefit Act is desirable and to report to me on its findings.