The Committee has today taken the exceptional step of publishing
a follow up report to the Government’s response to its
report on support for childcare as a barrier to
work under Universal Credit. The follow up emphasises the
considerable time and effort that witnesses to the original
inquiry—including several single parents—put into giving evidence
and coming up with constructive ways to improve Universal Credit
childcare support. It describes the Government’s response as
“skimpy and disappointing” and demands the Government provide a
new, second response, “which matches the consideration the
Committee employed in an attempt to help parents to move into
work.”
The Committee’s original report concluded that, far from helping
parents get into or back into work after having a child, the way
the “support” is constructed under UC actually acts as a barrier
to work. Today’s report notes that “the response gave the
impression that the Government was simply dismissing the very
serious problems (under UC) that are plaguing parents who are
trying to get into work. This was particularly disappointing
given that the Government is relying on working mothers to
contribute the vast majority of the additional hours of work
expected under UC” and because “the Secretary of State has
acknowledged the very serious problems that structural flaws in
Universal Credit are causing for parents who rely on childcare
support to be able to work.”
Rt Hon MP, Chair of the Committee,
said: “We on the Committee are frankly sick of
these disrespectful Government responses that treat us like dirt
and fail to engage with our robust, evidence-based conclusions.
It’s not clear they’ve even read this one. Worse, in responding
this way, Government dismisses the experience and evidence of the
individuals and organisations that have taken the time, and made
the effort, and are working with us to try to fix the unholy mess
that is Universal Credit.
“This response in particular is simply not acceptable, and that
is why we are taking the unusual step of issuing this report,
demanding that they go back, look at what we and our witnesses
have said, and come up with a second, decent response. This will
not do.”
Among those who gave evidence so powerfully to the original
inquiry was Thuto Mali, a single mum who was forced
to turn down a well-paid job offer because she could not
at that moment find the obligatory upfront cost of childcare so
that she could start work. The multiple problems of
Universal Credit also forced her to turn, with her young son, to
a foodbank at the Christmas before last. Save the Children
recently informed the Committee that Thuto just won The Sun’s ‘Supermum of the
Year’.
Today’s report says Government should now:
1) review its response and provide a response which matches the
consideration the Committee employed in an attempt to help
parents to move into work, as the Government claims it is
encouraging them to do. If the Government considers that the
solutions the Committee recommended are not practicable, it
should explain why and set out alternative means of addressing
those problems.
2) explain how, in the absence of plans to introduce direct
payments, it intends to address the serious difficulties that
both parents and childcare providers are experiencing with the
current system
3) explain the details of the pilots it is running to trial a
more flexible approach to the provision of receipts for childcare
costs, including where these pilots are being run, what options
for providing evidence of childcare costs are being trialled,
when the pilots started, how long they will run for and how they
will be monitored;
4) explain why it is so difficult to publish information about
the use of the Flexible Support Fund, what analysis it has done
of the additional administrative work that would be created, and
if it will be published in full;
5) explain its view on the recommendation that it should divert
funding from the schemes aimed at wealthier parents (Tax Free
Childcare and the 30 hours free childcare) towards Universal
Credit childcare to help more people into work.
6) commit to providing an analysis of the Government’s spending
on the 30 free hours free childcare by income decile, to show
which households are benefiting from this policy - in addition to
the analysis on the impact of UC childcare cost caps it has
already promised
By convention, the Government has two months from publication of
a Committee report to respond.
