Thank you, Chair.
Welcome to our country, Mr. Smith.
I don't want to avoid discussing the early childhood education, which is so vital, important, and fundamental, but my question goes to another place. It goes to the place of the relationship of work to poverty.
We've always believed throughout history that people who worked were people who were not poor. If you worked, then you obviously made a little profit at the end of the year and you were not fundamentally poor. But what we've seen in the last few years, and from our standpoint we saw it in the United States first on a larger scale, is what we call the “working poor”. That is, people who have a decent job, who work, have a five-day-week employment, but who cannot afford to pay the rent, or cannot afford to buy a house, and live under bridges. So they are poor even though they are earning a decent salary.
My question addresses the phenomenon of the working poor. I'd like to hear from you on the experiences that you know of in the U.K. where you've actually tried to do something across the country to get people to continue to work at their own job, or at another job, but get them into a higher bracket of salary, which would then allow them to then pay their rent, or buy a house, or whatever. What initiatives have been presented in the U.K to make sure that people work full time, work the whole year, and as a result of that therefore have a decent living standard?
Particularly concerning women who raise children by themselves, lone parents, what sorts of initiatives are there that have worked that you know of? Could you tell us about not just these women, but the larger clientele, and more specifically the women who have children who live on their own?