By Paul McGill from NICVA
Published on 01 Feb 2007
Government proposals to reform benefits for lone parents could throw more of them into poverty, two Northern Ireland groups have claimed.
They were commenting on a speech by Mr John Hutton, Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions saying that raising the proportion of lone parents in employment to 70% was necessary to meet the government's goal of ending child poverty.
To that end he is considering requiring lone parents to take steps towards employment when their youngest child reaches 12, rather than the present age of 16. Lone parents with children aged 12-16 who are not in work could lose benefits if the change is implemented.
“The recent proposals by DWP Minister John Hutton to make the cut-off point for benefits 11 rather than 16 is outrageous and will cause greater poverty particularly within one parent families,” said Marie Cavanagh, director of Gingerbread NI, the lone parent organisation.
“Mr Hutton’s claim that this measure will increase the number of working lone parents and help ‘eradicate child poverty’ is farcical. Lone parents are already well motivated to work outside the home. Over 90% of those asked have indicated that they would like to move into the labour market. What is lacking is the infrastructure to support this.
“Figures from the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister indicate that for the government to meet its target of 70% of lone parents into work an additional 30,000 childcare places and 10,000 new job opportunities would have to be created.
“Figures also indicate that over 60% of lone parents with a youngest child aged between 11 and 16 are already in work and 25% of the parents that would be affected are caring for a disable child or young adult. This is a regressive policy and will simply increase the hardship being felt by children living in one parent families,” Ms Cavanagh added.
Frances Dowds, director of the Northern Ireland Anti Poverty Network added: “Households where the respondent is separated have the highest rate of poverty in Northern Ireland 54%, followed by divorced households 46% and then single people 39%.
“Northern Ireland is one of the most unequal societies in the developed world and low wage employment is far too common. Simply getting a job does not mean you are no longer living in poverty. The DWP would make more of an impact on reducing child poverty if they paid the same amount of child benefit for all children and if they lobbied government to increase the National Minimum Wage to a level that reflects the ever rising costs of living.”
The Bare Necessities report calculated that there 185,500 poor households in Northern Ireland. There are 502,200 people living in these poor households and 148,900 of these are children.
This page has been viewed 8155 times since it was published.
