Children’s commissioner Anne Longfield said single parents had been “disproportionately affected” by universal credit, which rolls different benefits into a single monthly payment, as well as broader welfare reforms.
“There is a great risk here that the government looks like it’s going back to an outdated viewpoint ... which is demonising both single parents but also families claiming benefit, and working mothers,” she told The Times.
Nearly half of children from single-parent families live in poverty across the UK, compared to around a quarter of those raised by two parents. This gap has grown wider in recent years, with poverty rates for single-parent children rising about twice as much than those from two-parent families within five years.
Shelter said they were “deeply concerned” about the rising number of single parents being tipped into homelessness.
Government figures show that over 70 per cent of the households that have had their housing benefit capped are single-parent families, while the Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated that out-of-work lone parents have lost over £3,000 every year since 2015.
A report by the Resolution Foundation set to be published next week predicts that while 400,000 single parents will be better off under universal credit, 600,000 will lose out.
The cumulative effect of these policies amounts to an effective war on single parents, according to chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, Alison Garnham, akin to past Conservative policies that have targeted this demographic.
“The anti-lone parent rhetoric has gone but policies are doing the job alone,” she said.
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