The Treasury’s childcare trap

Announcements from Tory leadership pretenders have been noticeably light on big ideas. But one interesting policy suggestion was floated today by the Mordaunt camp who have said that frazzled parents of toddlers should be given ‘childcare budgets’.

This is likely to horrify Treasury mandarins who prefer schemes to get parents (in reality, mums) back into work and paying taxes as quickly as possible. Free nursery care for all is the fashionable go-to answer for every right-on lobby group hoping to reverse tanking birth rates. If we could only open up more super cheap nursery places, women would push out children to fill the places. The trouble is new mums don’t want this.

An annual poll of new mothers published by the Department for Education shows about two-thirds of mums with children under four would rather work fewer hours so they could spend more time looking after their children. Some quick sums reveal there are likely to be two million working mothers stuck in the workplace when they would prefer to be back at home with their children.

Why are we intent on pushing mums into work to pay other people to look after their children when they would rather do it themselves?

Why are we intent on pushing mums into work to pay other people to look after their children when they would rather do it themselves? Quite a few mums would rather give up work altogether if they could afford it and only three in ten working mums would increase their hours if they could arrange good quality childcare which was ‘convenient, reliable and affordable.’