Of course, it’s the right ambition, but there are so many gaps and inconsistencies, and the policies simply don’t add up. 

The core of the government’s strategy lies in the introduction of the universal credit to ‘make work pay’, and the delivery of the work programme by private and voluntary providers to get the long-term unemployed and those on inactive benefits into sustainable employment. Both sound plausible, until you see that there’s so much missing – or policies that outright undermine those intentions. 

First, as many have noted, where are the suitable jobs? Ministers make much of the number of jobs that have been filled in the past two years, accompanied by an analysis that the largest proportion of such jobs was filled by immigrant labour. Surely, they say, this shows jobs are available – we just need to make sure the long-term workless are equipped and accessing the opportunities. 

But not all of these jobs are in the right places, with the highest levels of unemployment unsurprisingly in areas where there are fewest jobs on offer.  Parents can’t always easily up sticks and move for work, given their family responsibilities. And, perversely, the government’s changes to housing benefit will likely move even more out-of-work households away from areas where jobs are to be found. 

Even where jobs are available, by no means every job will lift families out of poverty. You might be better off in work than out of it, but that’s because out-of-work benefits will be so low. With in-work as well as out-of-work benefits set to increase only by the less generous consumer price index in future, the gap between those in low-paid (or no) work and those not reliant on social security benefits will surely widen as wage growth returns. The failure to that ensure in-work benefits keep up with earnings will create more pressure on the relative income poverty target. 

Then there’s the question of working hours. The government’s own child poverty strategy document acknowledges that lone parents will need to work more than 24 hours a week, and couples more than 35 hours between them, at national minimum wage levels, if their children are to escape poverty. Yet at the same time, ministers are promoting the so-called ‘mini-job’. Such jobs, offering just a few hours of work a week, simply won’t be enough to get families above the poverty line. Unless they’re stepping stones to increased and better-remunerated employment, they risk leading to a dead end of working poverty. 

It’s true that the payment by results model built into the Work Programme envisages that jobs will need to be sustained for a period of two years for providers to qualify for full payment. If mini-jobs prove unsustainable, then providers will want to help people to progress and thus to stay in work. But it’s not the case that providers get no reward at all unless someone stays in work for the full two years – payments will be made monthly for each month that the jobseeker remains in work. It’s in that context that we should note the evidence from existing international payment by results models, which suggests that providers will determine the optimum ‘mix’ of those who are helped to progress, so as to maximise their profit, leading to so-called ‘creaming’ and ‘parking’. Indeed, there are already concerns that the design of reward structures in the Work Programme contracts means that not everyone will get the employment support they need. 

We’re still waiting to see the detail of the government’s plans for ‘in-work’ conditionality, but the fact that this will be covered in the welfare reform bill indicates pretty clearly that ministers themselves are sceptical about mini jobs. It seems likely therefore that we’ll be right back to some sort of ‘hours rule’ within the benefits system – the cause of the cliff edges and disincentives that Iain Duncan Smith has so forcefully criticised. At the same time, as Professor Paul Gregg pointed out during his evidence to the public bill committee last month, the design of universal credit means we could even see some parents reduce their working hours (or be pressed to do so by their employers). That is hardly likely to improve their families’ economic circumstances. 

What’s more, the government itself acknowledges that not everyone working over 24 or 35 hours a week will necessarily move above the poverty line, including those who are self-employed on incomes below national minimum wage levels, and those with savings of over £16,000 a year. What it doesn’t say is that these are problems caused by the design of the government’s own welfare reforms, and which could easily be avoided. 

Then there’s the question of how financial support for childcare will be provided, and whether parents will have to work a minimum number of hours in order to qualify for it. The government’s all over the place on this one – because it’s trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. If the size of the pot for financial support for childcare costs isn’t being increased, but the number of parents eligible to claim it is going up, there’s only one thing that will happen – the money will be spread more thinly, and many  parents will have to bear more of their childcare costs, eating even further into  modest financial gains from employment. I’d certainly like to see more children, and especially those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, able to access good quality childcare, but sadly that is neither the intention, nor the likely outcome, of the government’s plans. 

We still don’t know what’s going to happen to passported benefits either when parents move into low paid work. Loss of free school meals is one of the biggest financial shocks parents say they experience when they start in work, but the Department for Education certainly doesn’t intend to foot the bill for more working parents to get help with the cost of school meals. The potential consequences of some of the suggestions for how to deal with this problem verge on the bizarre. Children could find themselves in the situation where their meals are funded for part of the week – free meals for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but what do they do Thursday and Friday?  What if different children in a family attend different schools that make different charges for meals? What happens if the money’s not ringfenced and gets spent on something else? All this is such a hot potato that the government’s decided to pass it on as fast as it can. The social security advisory committee’s been asked to make recommendations on it – the terms of reference will make interesting reading. 

And what about ensuring that parents are able to find jobs that are compatible with their caring role? The government’s new child poverty strategy claims that ministers are committed to extending the right to request flexible working to all employees. That rings pretty hollow coming only a fortnight after the chancellor’s budget announcement that the government would do no such thing. 

Finally, with a more punitive attitude to sanctions, it’s clear that the government believes that it’s sticks, not carrots, that work. But the evidence on the effectiveness of sanctions is mixed at best, with parents likely to find it even harder to look for work if their meagre benefits are further depleted through the application of financial penalties. 

In sum, and deeply depressingly, none of this adds up to a convincing strategy to eradicate child poverty by increasing parental employment. This isn’t evidence-based policymaking, it’s just cost-cutting, ideology-led and half-baked.

Photo: RachelH_