Daily Bulletin: Wednesday 31 January

Today, Julie is in London. The business in the House of Commons will include oral questions to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Hillary Armstrong, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and Tony Blair (watch live here from 11.30am). The main business will be motions relating to the police grant and local government finance reports.

Headlines

Eight people have been arrested in Birmingham in anti-terror raids; auditors have said that reconstruction money in Iraq is being wasted; and watchdogs say that police and prosecutors are not implementing measures aimed at boosting rape convictions.

Politics

Gordon Brown believes that people will be "satisfied" once the "full facts" of the current police investigation into Lords appointments is completed; the Audit Commission has said that councils should do more to ease tensions between migrant workers and local residents; and the Welsh Tories have suspended their ex-chairman.

Tackling child poverty

Labour's Secretary for Work, John Hutton, addressed the issue of getting lone parents into work in a speech about child poverty. He said: "We know the difference that helping lone parents into work can make. A significant proportion of our progress so far in tackling child poverty is due to helping lone parents move into work. Our reforms to childcare will be one crucial part of breaking down the barriers to work and helping lone parents to stay in work for longer."

Due to action taken by Labour, there is now more help available for lone parents through child care and support from the state and providers than ever before. However, as John Hutton said, there are still issues that need to be addressed such as tackling child poverty and what we know is that work is the best route out of poverty.

Currently, the UK has one of the highest proportions of families headed by a lone parent in Europe. And yet despite the progress Labour has made in increasing the lone parent employment rate since 1997 — now up over 11% to 56.5% — we still have the lowest long parent employment rate of any major European country.

Julie said: "It is important that we support lone parents, including, where possible, helping them to get into the workforce. Today there are twice as many registered childcare places as in 1997. Under the Tories there was a registered place for 1 in 8 children under eight; now it's already 1 in 4. We have Sure Start, the expansion of early years education and child tax credits. We must not lose this bedrock of support for lone parent families."

Have we missed a story? Want to discuss these issues? Leave a comment below.