In Parliament ...
contents:
Parliamentary Question ~
Danny Alexander, MP:
http://www.dannyalexander.org.uk/
(lib-dem spokesperson for DWP and MP for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey,) has tabled the parliamentary question outlined in the letter below re lone parent benefits.
Dear ,
Thank you for your email outlining your concerns regarding the conditionality of benefits for lone parents. In response to this, I have tabled the following parliamentary question to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions:
Whether he thinks that lone parents receiving income support should be subject to increased conditionality in cases where they are a) parents of disabled children b) carers of both disabled children and adults c) mothers fleeing domestic violence d) parents who choose to home educate.
This question will be tabled when Parliament returns on the 21st April.
Yours sincerely,
Danny Alexander MP.
(Due to an oversight, this question was tabled in May.)
~~~~~
Tom Clarke, MP:
Tom Clarke
(Coatbridge, Chryston & Bellshill, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
(1) if he will exempt lone parents providing full-time home education for their children from the planned requirement that lone parents be actively seeking work to receive income support;
(2) what support will be available for lone parents providing full-time home education to their children when the requirement for such parents to be actively seeking work to receive income support comes into effect; and if he will make a statement.
Written Reply ...
Stephen Timms (Minister of State (Employment and Welfare Reform), Department for Work and Pensions; East Ham, Labour) | Hansard source
Details of the Government's proposed changes to benefit conditionally for lone parents, together with a set of draft regulations, were presented to the Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC) on
7 May 2008
. The Committee will shortly commence a public consultation exercise seeking views on the proposals from interested organisations before formally responding to the Secretary of State. After considering the SSAC report, the Government will respond on the arrangements for lone parents, including those who educate their children at home.
In the documentation provided to SSAC, the Government outlined their proposals on lone parents who educate their children at home. While recognising that lone parents can choose to do so, it is not the purpose of income support to fund them to educate their children at home. Therefore, the Government consider that they should be required to look for paid work when their youngest child reaches the relevant threshold age.
Lone parents who educate their children at home and who apply for jobseeker's allowance will need to fit in their home education activities around their obligations to look for work. Unlike lone parents who send their children to school, lone parents who choose to educate their children at home do not have to observe school hours, days or terms and may have greater flexibility to fit paid work around their children's education.
They may, however, need to find alternative care for their children when they undertake work related activities or take up a job. The draft regulations presented to SSAC also include an amendment to allow Jobcentre Plus advisers additional discretion so that a lone parent claiming or receiving jobseeker's allowance will not be penalised if they cannot access appropriate and affordable child care.
Public Comments ...
Here are comments within the first day of the written reply being notified to users as having been posted on "They Work for You."
1.) Posted on 21 May 2008
Barbara Stark.
Or maybe I should just sue both schools for their monumental neglect of their duty of care which would cost the taxpayer a hefty sum (much more than it would cost them to maintain my children and myself at home)?
How can the government treat the most vulnerable adults and innocent children in such a disgraceful manner?
Can the Minister possibly imagine what hardship and devastation these moves to 'force' people onto conditional benefits will ensue from this ill-thought-out cruelty? Probably not.
I will point out that home educators save this government a fortune in school place support and receive not a jot of funding from anyone. For taking up the right to educate my children myself, and home education has been found to produce a superior education in many cases, am I now to be punished for being a good mother and trying to do the best I can for my babies? Yes, I am.
While I am not against people working for a living, I do think that there are many things more important than money and the economic health of the nation. Children who are raised by interested and involved parents have been shown to thrive economically, socially and in all ways. Children's health and welfare are supposed to be dear to the government's heart. Let the government strive to remember that in future.
Diane Varty.
No wonder the education system is in much a mess when it is run by someone who believes that a parent who educates their child (full time as they legally must) outside school (certainly not solely 'at home') has more flexibility than one who dumps their child in school for a large part of 5 days most weeks.
Deciding to home educate is never a trivial or easy one and is not only a great commitment in time and effort but also one with major financial implications as it stands now, particularly for lone parents. It is though often a lifesaver for the child who is either being bullied or inappropriately dealt with the one-size-fits-all system that for all the fake initiatives schooling still is.
This is an opportune attack on home education. Government, particularly the current one, cannot tolerate anything which diminishes it's chances to mould, monitor and control the young (and indeed the rest of us). Home education does that, by making it close to impossible for many people, lone parents being a particularly case, to home educate they can not only try to contain the accelerating rate at which HE is growing but also project it as a purely middle-class idealists pursuit.
HE is a valuable right, whether a parent chooses to use it or not. Ill-informed and/or malicious decisionmaking as this is should not be tolerated.
Home educating parents already bear sole financial responsibilty for their decision, saving the government thousands of pounds per child per school place. We are already committed to providing a full-time education and 24 hour care for our children and it would be both impossible and impractical to be available for additional work.
Contrary to Mr Timms beliefs, home educating parents are NOT at home all day, we are out and about educating our children. Unlike school, we are not limited to providing education between 9 and 3.30 but are required at all times of day, as mentioned previously, this making us LESS available for work.
Children who are home educated grow into well-balanced and successful individuals who contribute greatly to society. Studies have shown that even those from lower socio-economic groupings fair better than their contemporaries from state school.
Maybe it is because home education is growing in popularity that the government sees it as a threat to their unpopular and failing model of education.
The government is seriously losing touch with the electorate here. The State-run education system is failing abysmally, report after report is confirming this. If members of parliament are supposed to represent the wishes of their electorate, they seriously need to do some self-evaluation and look at what they actually do stand for.
If this measure goes through, I for one will be looking at ways to mount a legal challenge to get it overturned. I will not sit idly by and watch MP's, who incidentally are supposed to be working for me not against me, push me and others like me further into poverty because you don't agree with or understand my choices.
I speak as an ex teacher myself and I am appalled at what the government have done in the last two decades with the education system in this country.
Just to save money it has sold off all the schools which were of a decent size and made these huge comprehensives where children might as well have a number for all the care they are given. I know personally that many schools cannot even know if their attendees are even present in their schools.
In large comprehensives of over 1000 children it is the pack who rule. The children are having to organise themselves into gangs just to feel that they belong. Socially, it might as well be some nasty experiment that the government are testing on our children. Children deserve to be nurtured, not rounded up like cattle.
What do the government do to sort out their problem, they bring in testing, test after test after test. Our children deserve to be educated not brainwashed into little robots. The goverment have it wrong time and time again, they meddle in things they seem to know nothing about.
When is the government going to be accountable for all the mistakes it makes? When is the government going to take tests on it's ability to run things? Our children are made to feel failures if they do not fit the system. Well, our government are failing us and it's about time they were held accountable, instead of trying to make the figures look good by hounding the worse off.
Do they really think we don't know what is going on? Or do they just not care, or are they more interested in what financial gain they can get, in order to do up their second homes? I thought that was what London weighting was for? We are not stupid, so we shouldn't be treated as such!
They need to wake up before the people do!
Have you been able to observe those children in action ?
Well I have and they bear no harmful behaviours towards themselves or others and no domination complexes either. They are usually skilled and happy loving people.
On their behalf and because they cannot speak for themselves,
I would like to state that those children and lone parents
need financial support in its best form.
They are in such need of support and should get special devotion from
the evolved governments in evolved countries such as the United Kingdom or any other european state.
They should benefit from ample amounts of special fundings.
They are vulnerable and their sole parent very deserving in devoting heart and soul to such noble cause.
Those lone parents are aiming to offer the greatest possibilities for their precious children and they deserve all the help that it is possible to offer to them.
Funding is essential for them and should be provided as to reinforce
them and also to encourage other parents to engage and embrace
life in this manner. Home educating is a commitment to the child, to the future society and to the next generation as well.
Are lone parents the new "Undeserving Poor"?
Do you want to see benefits withdrawn and financial sanctions imposed on the poorest families?
Do you want to see lone parents penalised if they cannot combine paid employment and family responsibilities?
Do you support a forced labour regime under threat of extreme poverty?
Does your MP?
Ask them!
The consultation launched by DWP on regulations is very complicated. However, this issue is simple. What is your MP prepared to inflict on the children of lone parents?
Before the summer recess, 2008, MPs will vote on Social Security regulations now being pushed through. Will your MP support attacks on lone parents?
It must remain the responsibility of parents to decide if the need to be available for their children and the demand to take paid employment can be reconciled. In removing the responsibility for this decision from parents and putting it into the hands of advisors at job centre plus who will follow regulations about what is acceptable, the government will be dividing the poor from whom they consider the undeserving. The undeserving will face financial sanctions plunging them below the poverty line.
We have seen this attitude before...
In the workhouse!
It is now up to the nation's Members of Parliament. What do they have to say and what will they do for some of the poorest and most disadvantaged of our people?
Barbara Stark.
Alison Preuss:
Posted on 22 May 2008
Equally, his 'Children's Minister' colleague should be ashamed to have alleged that forcing lone parents out to work in the western equivalent of sweatshops, while dumping their children in schools and other 'child care' like items of left luggage, is not an issue of concern to him or his department when it will profoundly affect the wellbeing of children and families. What about those children the left luggage departments can't accommodate or accept?
Meanwhile, MPs still expect the taxpayer to pick up the tab for second homes and TV licences while the school system falls apart around them and leaves concerned parents (from all socio economic backgrounds) with no choice when it comes to their children's safety, never mind education. It's time this excuse for a government learned some lessons from families who put their children first.
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