Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Second sitting)

Paul Scully Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Order. This is not a discussion; this is evidence taking. We will now call Paul Scully, followed by Hannah Bardell—you have let me down slightly there, Hannah, if I may say so. Then we will move to Peter Heaton-Jones and Corri Wilson. Neil, you can come in after that.

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

Q 50 When you were talking about sanctions, did you say that single parents were wrongly sanctioned?

Octavia Holland: Single parents are much more likely to be wrongfully sanctioned, yes.

[Paul Scully]

Q 51 What are you basing “wrongfully” on? You talked about some thoughts when you spoke about not being able to take particular jobs. Are you basing that on appeals statistics?

Octavia Holland: Yes. It is based on sanctions that were applied and then overturned. That is the evidence.

[Paul Scully]

Q 52 Fair enough. You also mentioned work coaches at the beginning. Do the rest of the panel believe that the additional help that the Government are giving in terms of additional work coach resources and flexible support funds allow parents to participate better in the labour market?

Tony Wilson: Lone parent personal advisers, as they used to be called, or lone parent work coaches, are one of the great success stories of Jobcentre Plus over decades. The work that Jobcentre Plus advisers and contractors pioneered on engaging with lone parents in a specialist and intensive way, and joining up access to childcare, training and reskilling and employment support has been fantastically good. We need more of it, and we need to cherish and protect it. The problem is that the flexibilities within Jobcentre Plus mean that we are seeing an increase in generalist rather than specialist advisers. We are seeing some loss of lone parent specialist resource. We are not seeing the same approach to having lone parent advisers in every office, for example. However, Jobcentre Plus has done a fantastic job over the years supporting lone parents into work.

[The Chair]

The clock is ticking, and I have four colleagues to get in.