Peter Lamb MP: Making childcare accessible again

Childcare has become increasingly inaccessible to many. The demand for spaces is now such that I know of parents in Crawley who are booking nursery places before their children have actually been born, and for those who do have a place the cost involved is hard to afford.

Following decades of declining real wages, most households are now reliant upon multiple salaries, so the cost of childcare poses a real problem for families trying to work out how to earn enough to live while ensuring their children are taken care of.

With the housing market preventing couples from being able to afford a home of their own until much later in life, it all forms part of the picture as to why the UK’s birthrate has declined so far below replacement level. It is hard to overstate the impact that this will have upon the nation’s quality of life long-term, suffice to say that a country without children is a country without a future.

While the last government committed to increasing the number of free childcare hours, making it possible for parents to go back to work, many providers have struggled to remain afloat on the income they now receive with a number of local nurseries going under over recent years. A commitment to free hours is meaningless without the nurseries to provide them.

To address this, the new Labour government are stepping in to ensure the hours are provided, by delivering an extra 3,000 new or extended nurseries, making use of spare places in primary schools. Beginning this month, schools will be invited to bid for capital funding from a £15m pot allocated for delivering the first 300 new or expanded nurseries.

As a country, for far too long we have failed to act to increase access to nursery provision, limiting parents’ working options and depriving children of the early boost to education that childcare can provide. Labour is committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity, we know that this starts in the earliest of years and our plan for accessible childcare is an important step along the way.