Britain has a serious issue with the cost of childcare. I have been saying that since taking over the shadow children brief, as was my predecessor Lucy Powell before me. But now you do not have to take our word for it. Last week, a poll commissioned by charity 4Children found that one in five parents are planning to reduce the number of hours they work or even quitting their job completely because the soaring cost of childcare means working does not make financial sense any more. Around 16 per cent of parents say they are going to have to cut back on spending on other essentials so they can afford childcare.
How did we get into this astonishing situation, where choosing to go to work leaves so many parents worse off than staying at home? There are many factors, including stagnating wages, but key among them is the fact that ministers have been asleep on the watch for the past five years, taking only the most minimal action as childcare costs soared by 30 per cent since 2010. A childcare offer for two-year-olds that turned out to be 38,000 places short and a tax break that is likely to simply fuel cost inflation – half-baked action, while hundreds of children’s centres have closed and affordable childcare has become ever harder to find.
New parents need to be free to make their own decisions on when and how to return to work. If going back to work is going to end up costing them more, they lose that freedom. So long as childcare cost inflation continues to rapidly outstrip wages, we will not get to grips with the missed child poverty target, with the widening gender pay gap or build an economic recovery that works for everyone. But this government has no serious plan on how to do that – so it will be up to the next Labour government to reverse the trend.
That is why we will be putting radical action on childcare front and centre in our manifesto. The last Labour government introduced, for the first time, an entitlement to 15 hours of free care for three-four-year-olds. This was a major change for families and helped many parents return to work. It is clear, however, that the childcare cost situation is so grave that we now need to go further. For working parents, we will increase the free entitlement for three-to-four-year-olds to 25 hours per week, worth up to £1,500 per child, per year. At a stroke, this policy – funded by an increase in the bank levy – will make returning to work viable again for hundreds of thousands of parents, making a real difference to household budgets.
And we know that care cost worries do not end when a child reaches school age. Many parents either cannot work the hours they want to, or find their wallets hit heavily for childcare before and after school. So we will introduce a primary childcare guarantee, a legally binding pledge that parents will be able to access wraparound care from 8am to 6pm through their school – high-quality childcare when parents need it most.
These are radical and exciting policies. They can radically improve family budgets, they can help get parents back to work, tackle child poverty and put high-quality care within reach of many children who would otherwise miss out. The soaring cost of childcare means Britain’s families simply cannot afford more of the same.
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Alison McGovern MP is shadow minister for children and families. She tweets @Alison_McGovern
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