Jobless parents of pre-school children must prepare for work or face penalties

The plans, which would see parents penalised if they fail to prepare for work when their children start school, are part of the Government’s proposals to overhaul the welfare system and were revealed in a White Paper published today.

Launching the White Paper, entitled Universal Credit: Welfare that Works, the work and pensions secretary Mr Duncan Smith said, ‘With five million people trapped on out of work benefits and almost two million children growing up in homes where nobody works, we cannot afford to simply continue tinkering around the edges of the welfare system.'

'Only root and branch reform will do. At its heart, the Universal Credit has a simple ambition – to make work pay, even for the poorest. This will finally make it easier for people to see they will be consistently and transparently better off for each hour they work and every pound they earn.’

The Government plans to introduce a new system of conditionality for benefit recipients backed up by sanctions for those who do not comply.

It also plans to simplify the current benefit system by introducing a single credit that would replace Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, Housing Benefit, Income Support, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance and income-related Employment and Support Allowance.