As a card carrying* member of the middle classes I know a ‘middle class perk’ when I see one. If childcare vouchers are a middle class perk, then Nicholas Winterton is a member of the Fawcett Society. Childcare vouchers are a lifeline for struggling families who want to do the right thing and earn a wage. For many, they are the decisive factor between being able to work and a life on benefits. Two-thirds of the beneficiaries are standard-rate taxpayers. They are not going into the pockets of hedge fund managers and premiership footballers. They help people working for your local council, for the NHS, for small businesses. These are the fabled ‘hard-working families’ that so much of Labour’s rhetoric addresses.
The vouchers are the quintessential New Labour policy. They place a shared responsibility on both employers and workers. They are anchored in New Labour’s iron conviction that work is the answer to virtually every social problem, from poverty and inequality, to poorly maintained front gardens and an unhealthy reliance on Jeremy Kyle. They match New Labour’s zeal for the protestant work ethic to a degree that would make Martin Luther proud. Labour has told an entire generation to get off the sofa and into a job, and many have done just that.
Vouchers are popular, they work, and they save money in the medium term by keeping people productive. They’re another good reason to vote Labour.
All of which makes our government’s current policy of scrapping them all the more perplexing. It’s a real head scratcher, a proper three-pipe problem. If evil pixies had taken over the No.10 policy unit and devised a policy to alienate swing women voters in southern English marginal seats, then this would be it. It was announced by the prime minister at the party conference in Brighton that the money would be diverted to provide more childcare for two-year-olds in low-income families. So we’re proposing to take money from hard-working middle-income earners, driving many onto benefits, to help people er…on benefits. And the amount of childcare on offer is 12.5 hours a week. There are some jobs which can be conducted on the basis of 12.5 hours a week – taxi driver, freelance journalist, lap dancer – but not many.
Several colleagues have started to wave red flags, like Peter, Phyllis and Roberta in the Railway Children trying to get the attention of the train driver before the train piles into the fallen trees down the line. When someone as cerebral as Patricia Hewitt says you’re making a mistake, you have to take it seriously. When Labour aristocracy like Estelle Morris sound the warning, you must take note. This is not the awkward squad, nor a faction in search of a fight.
For once, the growing campaign against the scrapping of childcare vouchers won’t catch ministers off guard. Labour won’t follow its past formula of ARC: make an Announcement, have a big Row, then ignominiously Climb down. This doesn’t have to be a 10p tax, a Ghurkhas, or a territorial army budget. There’s no need for ministers of state to be wheeled around 4 Millbank defending the indefensible, their noses growing longer, before the inevitable disorderly retreat under fire. This time we can do the right thing – and get the credit for it.
It’s not too late, so no excuses for another Snafu, Fubar, or any other sweary acronym.
*Peter Jones store card