The current legal entitlement for working fathers is paid at a flat rate of £138.18 a week – equivalent to just £3.45 an hour for a 40-hour working week, little more than half the minimum wage.
"Our reforms are raising the quality of early years education and childcare, and by doubling the [childcare] entitlement for working parents we are helping to ensure more children are ready to make the transition to school," the spokesperson said.
Last November, the Department for Work and Pensions said: "From April 2013, housing benefit entitlement for working-age tenants in the social rented sector will reflect household size.
One of the exceptions to minimum wage entitlement, for example, is work experience placements not exceeding one year undertaken by students as part of a UK-based higher education or further education course.
The former No 10 economics adviser Jonathan Portes told The IoS that the proposal was likely to increase immigration into the UK – because foreign jobseekers would no longer fear losing their welfare entitlement when considering moving abroad for work.
President Obama was on the stump the other day accusing the Republicans of pulling their critical ideas out of the "swamp". How shameful that he does not concede the point that from the 2009 stimulus on, it has become passing impossible for people in the entitlement state to shake handouts for work.
The government must also step up by restoring funding for high-quality careers advice, reinstating the entitlement to work experience for all young people, and provide high-quality training and apprenticeships.
Do family-friendly work practices – offering flexibility in case of unexpected childcare emergencies, job sharing schemes, subsidy for childcare, entitlement to work from home, switch to part-time work, etc. – enhance the performance of the firm that adopts them?
Calculations are also being made to work out compensation entitlement for each former borrower who has already paid off their loans.
