Doubt of the benefit
- 30 Jan 07, 11:15 AM
Ever since Peter Lilley - Margaret Thatcher's social security secretary - put single mothers on his "little list", British politics has been neuralgic about the issue of lone parents and benefits (Surely you remember his excruciating rendition of Gilbert & Sullivan at the Tory Conference - if not you can watch it here).
When Labour came to power its . So why is the Work and Pensions Secretary, John Hutton, ?
Actually, I'm not sure he is. Time, I suspect, may have moved the argument on. What Hutton is doing this morning is trailing the results of a review into the "can work, won't work culture" - which has been carried out by - a former city banker and FT journalist. It is focusing on two facts about lone parents in Britain - firstly, we have one of the highest proportions of families headed by a lone parent in Europe and, secondly, the lowest lone parent employment rate of any major European country.
In his speech Hutton insists that he is not talking about cutting benefits. He's talking, instead, of increasing the obligations on claimants. This is the approach he's taken to cutting Incapacity Benefit bills. It is already government policy that lone parents should attend what are called "work focused" interviews. Over time the number ministers are increasing the frequency of those interviews.
Given that Britain only requires lone parents to work when the youngest child reaches 16, whereas many other countries treat them just like any other benefit claimants, it will be interesting to see if anyone believes and has the political courage to argue that benefit cuts are actually part of the answer.
UPDATE 1330 GMT
The personal is so often the political.
John Hutton was himself brought up by a single Mum. The welfare state, he says, saved his family from going under. In a recent interview in the Times he went on to recall that "We became more isolated as a family, because my mum, she was worried about my schoolmates coming back home and seeing the hole in the carpet and the threadbare sofas. She didn't want Johnny's mates to see that there was a hole in the sofa.
"I understand that now, I didn't understand it then. It was, 'Mum, why can't I bring my friends home?' And that kind of thing, when you are little, is quite difficult. So we became more isolated as a family, and that is true for many, many lone parents. Where do we get a lot of our social networks from? From the workplace."
