It is expected to announce today that it will introduce an on-line voucher system that will subsidise up to one-fifth of childcare costs.
By one of those remarkable coincidences that brings a smile to a minister’s face, the day this happy news was judiciously leaked also brought a report that more than two million women are their family’s main bread-winner, equivalent to one in three of those who work.
With the cost of childcare going up and up, some might therefore hail the announcement of the voucher as an inspiring example of how ministerial hearts beat as one with the interests of the nation.
Unfortunately, however, there are one or two reasons why such hosannas would be wildly inappropriate.
First, this subsidy will be available to those on incomes of up to £150,000 a year. That means that even households with two working parents bringing in a joint income of £300,000 could end up receiving this support.
This is odd indeed for a Government that, at a time of supposed austerity, never stops telling us the better-off must bear a disproportionate share of the national pain.
Punished
The real downside of this childcare voucher, however, is that it is a subsidy for working mothers alone.
More than one million households in which mothers choose to remain at home to care for their children will get nothing. Far worse, this is part of a pattern in which such households are being punished financially. Read on and comment » | Melanie Phillips | Sunday, August 04, 2013
Related »
