JK Rowling slams the government for not doing enough to help single parents

JK Rowling has criticised the government for not understanding poor people and single parents, and says they should be focusing on helping these people rather than facing them with yet more cuts.

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by Closer staff |
Published on

The author attacked the government’s characterisation of people as either strivers or skivers and says there is not enough help for single parents.

Writing on single parent support group Gingerbread’s website, she said: “The government mantra that work is the best route out of poverty is ringing increasingly hollow, with nearly 1 in 3 children whose single parent works part-time still growing up in poverty.”

And, as a former single mother who struggled, she finds the term strivers or skivers unacceptable.

“I find the language of ‘skivers versus strivers’ particularly offensive when it comes to single parents, who are already working around the clock to care for their children.

“Such rhetoric drains confidence and self-esteem from those who desperately want, as I did, to get back into the job market.”

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Gingerbread, which the Harry Potter writer is president of, claims that the government could save £436m a year by getting just 5% of single parents back into work, with 59% of them already working.

Rowling says that people would lose rather than gain under the government’s universal credit. The reforms to the benefit system will see all people under-25 receiving the same amount of money regardless of whether they have children or not.

It’s details like this that Rowling says means the difference between eating three meals a day or going without.

To get single parents back to work, she says, needs to be “Nothing outlandish: affordable childcare, decent training, employers embracing flexible hours, and a long, hard look at low pay.”

She said: “The government has the potential to change the lives, not just of single parents, but of a generation of children whose ambition and potential must not be allowed to dissipate in poverty.”

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