Joblessness 'bad for family health'

Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain will tell a conference in London that being unemployed is bad for the health of parents as well as their children.

He will say the notion that life without work is stress-free was wrong.

A recent study showed that the death rate for children of parents who had never worked or were long-term unemployed was 13 times that for the children of professional employees, according to Mr Hain.

He will say: "Also the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among children in families whose parents have never worked is around five times greater than those with parents in professional occupations.

"While the rates of deaths from injury and poisoning in children have fallen in England and Wales over the last 20 years they have not for children in families in which no adult is in paid employment.

"This is shocking and underlines for me even more starkly why our crusade for full employment in our generation is so important."

Mr Hain will tell the conference, organised by Child Poverty Action Group and One Parent Families, that the Government was right to do what it could to help long-term benefit claimants, including lone parents, to get a job, adding: "It is also right for us to expect people to take advantage of that help for their families' sake."