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Lone Parent Employment

The Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform (Margaret Hodge) : I am delighted to have the opportunity to debate, in this elite group, an important issue—lone parent employment. It is a central element of our welfare reform proposals, but in my view it has not been properly debated so far, or attracted as much attention as our proposals on incapacity benefit. I hope that this afternoon we can help to stimulate a discussion on the issues in the Green Paper as they affect lone parents.

There are many reasons for our developing the provision of effective support to lone parents in moving into work, but I shall pick out those that I consider the most important. The first is our ambition to eradicate child poverty. When we came into government in 1997 the