Hansard

I was a member of the Welfare Reform Committee when evidence was being taken on this topic in June and, during the evidence sessions, we learned that inequality for women still exists within our society and that the recent welfare reforms have increased that inequality. Women are disproportionately affected by the welfare reforms.

A recent report produced by Engender found that women are twice as dependent on social security as men, with 20 per cent of women’s income coming from the benefits and the tax credit system, compared with 10 per cent of men’s.

The committee heard evidence that tax credits provided essential support for women who work, and I had real fears that the tax credit reforms would add to the pressure on women. While I am delighted with George Osborne’s U-turn on tax credits, there is no doubt that the £12 billion cuts to welfare, which are still to come, will have an adverse effect on women and families over the coming years.

The Engender report found that 92 per cent of lone parents are women and women make up 95 per cent of lone parents dependent on Income Support. In committee meetings, I highlighted the shocking statistic from Inclusion Scotland that, at the time of giving evidence, sanctions for lone parents on JSA had risen from under 200 per month prior to 2008 to 4,700 per month. While I would like to say that that figure has fallen, I am afraid that it has not. Tory ministers seem to be in denial over the damage they are causing, especially to women and families, across the country.

I agree with the committee’s recommendation of a complete and comprehensive overview of the sanctions regime. It is clear to me that sanctions are not encouraging people to find work; rather, they seem to be demoralising people. The committee also found that many people do not even understand why they were sanctioned; you cannot promote a change in behaviour if a person does not know what they did wrong, or feels that they have been wrongly penalised.

For example, during evidence we heard the story of a lone parent, a mother of three, who went to sign on during the summer school holidays. She was sanctioned because she had to bring her children to her interview as she could not get childcare; the jobcentre officer said that, if she did not have childcare, that meant that she was not available for work. Can anyone honestly say that sanctioning that mother of three was the right thing to do? That is a case in which sanctions, in my view, have been wrongly applied; it might have been more helpful for jobcentre staff to assist the mother to find flexible and affordable childcare, rather than placing her and her children in further hardship and distress.

That example leads me to my next point: the importance of flexible and affordable childcare and the barriers that lack of childcare can present. Close the Gap have argued that childcare can be prohibitively expensive and that it is one of the most immediate barriers for women returning to work. The situation is worse for those on low pay, part-time hours or a zero-hours contract, as they might not know how much they will get paid that week or even when they need childcare, but they still have to pay to keep the child’s place open.

Provision of childcare is also a major issue, the Family and Childcare Trust’s “Childcare Costs Survey 2015” tells us that, in Scotland in 2014, only 23 per cent of local authorities reported sufficient childcare provision for parents who work full time and that, in 2015, that fell to 15 per cent. The figure for those with a disabled child was 18 per cent in 2014, and that fell dramatically to 7 per cent in 2015. For people in flexible working, the figures were even worse. In 2014, only 9 per cent of local authorities reported sufficient provision for them, and that fell to a shocking 4 per cent in 2015.

I acknowledge the work that the Scottish Government has done on access to childcare and provision, but the statistics show that not enough is being done to support that across our local authorities and that the situation is getting worse.

It is good that we have childcare places for all three to four-year-olds for up to 600 hours a year, but it is not so good that those places are not available in reality. That was further emphasised by One Parent Families Scotland, who said in evidence that:

“Lone parents are trapped in the sense that, when children are under five and the parent wants to access training and education, it is a challenge for them to get childcare … When the child reaches five, the doors to access training, education and higher education are closed, because the parent has to be available to work and to sign on.”—[Official Report, Welfare Reform Committee, 1 April 2014; c 1403.]

It is clear that, if we want to develop a transformational childcare policy, we need to do much more to tackle the lack of places and the lack of flexible, affordable wraparound childcare. That is one barrier that we know that we can break down, and we need to redouble our efforts to do so. With the further social security powers that are coming to this Parliament, it is clear that we can do things differently to improve the situation for women in Scotland.