Benefit changes 'could help poor'

As many as 200,000 parents and their children could escape poverty through simple changes in benefit rules which might save the Government pounds 500m a year, according to a report published today.

Becoming a Breadwinner, published by the child-care charity Daycare Trust, highlights how single parents who want to work are stopped by disincentives in the benefits system and by a lack of child care.

It claims that by introducing a child-care allowance, improving means-tested in-work benefits and increasing one-parent benefit, almost one in five of Britain's single parents would be freed to work.