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| Version 0 | Version 1 |
|---|---|
| Welfare change for single parents | Welfare change for single parents |
| (30 minutes later) | |
| Single parents will have to seek work to get benefits once their youngest child is seven from 2010, under welfare changes announced by Peter Hain. | Single parents will have to seek work to get benefits once their youngest child is seven from 2010, under welfare changes announced by Peter Hain. |
| At the moment single parents do not have to seek work to get benefits until their youngest child is 16. | At the moment single parents do not have to seek work to get benefits until their youngest child is 16. |
| That age is to fall to 12 from October 2008, and then seven from October 2010, the work and pensions secretary told MPs in the Commons. | |
| Mr Hain said by 2010 "wraparound" child care would be available to parents. | Mr Hain said by 2010 "wraparound" child care would be available to parents. |
| Mr Hain said there was a need to "re-ignite the jobs crusade" from when Labour came to power in 1997. | |
| He said: "We propose, first and foremost, a renewed partnership with employers to ensure those on welfare applying for jobs have the skills and work attitude employers need, underpinned by a new jobs pledge aimed at finding opportunities for 250,000 people currently on benefit." | |
| Child poverty | |
| Mr Hain said the government would introduce a "more personalised, flexible and responsive" New Deal programme to help welfare claimants into work. | |
| He said lone parents will be "expected to make an eventual move into the labour market in return for new and more personalised support". | |
| Mr Hain said children of unemployed lone parents were five-times more likely to be in poverty than children of lone parents in full-time jobs. | |
| Mr Hain added: "Because we are serious about tackling child poverty, we intend that this age will be reduced to seven from October 2010, backed up by the local availability of high-quality wrap-around childcare." | |
| Mr Hain said the proposals were at the forefront of the government's drive to eradicate child poverty and "in reaching out to the hardest to help, aims to offer true social mobility". | |
| For the Conservatives, Chris Grayling said the "changed approach to lone parents" was something they had been arguing for. | |
| But he said there was a "distinct sense of deja vu" about the statement, as it was the government's 11th announcement in 10 years about getting people off benefits and into work. |