Labour’s childcare confusion has gone on for too long

For parents with young children, it’s been a game of grandmother’s footsteps. First they heard from the new Labour government that they will open 300 new state nurseries in England to cater for the 30 hours of free childcare that families with children aged nine months and upwards are eligible for. Now they hear Naomi Eberstadt, high priestess of New Labour’s early years programme Sure Start, proclaim the home, not the nursery, as the best place for a child under one.  

The ‘yes but no but yes’ approach of policy makers risks further confusing working parents. The 30 hours of free childcare was the previous Conservative government’s response to the UK’s crisis-level economic inactivity. It might prove tricky to meet the mental health needs of the millions who had dropped out of the labour force, their thinking was – far easier to place babies as young as nine months in a state-run nursery to free their parents to find, or return to, a job.