TORIES AND LIB DEMS ARE PENALISING PARENTS

Government’s recent childcare announcement won't mean a penny more help for parents already struggling on childcare tax credits.

The Government has been forced to admit that it will cut parents' entitlement to childcare down to £123 a week for one child - nearly £900 a year less than under Labour. Parents with two children will lose nearly £1,600 a year.

Universal Credit is now set to lock in a 'parents' penalty' that cuts back childcare payments so hard that many parents will be forced to give up work. With parents struggling to make ends meet, it beggars belief that the Tories are stopping parents working the hours and shifts they need by taking away their childcare.

Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Liam Byrne MP said:
“The Tories are out of touch with most people’s lives and unable to address the big challenges facing Britain in the future.”

The Government has made its announcement ahead of Labour's childcare protection amendments, about to be debated in the House of Lords this week and the 'extra' money has been secured from existing Universal Credit funding.

This news comes at a time when even the Governor of the Bank of England is warning that we are facing the biggest squeeze on living standards since the 1920s. Iain Duncan Smith has failed to win any new money from the Treasury, and has been forced to raid other parts of the Universal Credit budget.

Last weekend, Liam Byrne said that childcare will be Labour’s key battleground for the Welfare Reform Bill as debate begins in the House of Lords. He has challenged the Tories to accept a raft of amendments Labour will be tabling, which are designed to ensure that parents don’t lose out on childcare entitlements when Universal Credit is introduced.

Highlighting new figures from the House of Commons library, he will point to lost tax of £47 million from 32,000 parents – mainly women – who have given up work in the last year mainly because they can no longer afford childcare.

The Government has already slashed family’s entitlements to childcare support from 80per cent to 70 per cent of costs – the equivalent of a 12% cut. The new money will simply plug a black-hole in child care funding which emerges in two years time when eligibility for childcare is widened. Today's funding does nothing to make up for the new 'parents' penalty' introduced over the last year.

Labour’s childcare protection amendments first tabled by Stephen Timms in the Commons establish a principle that families working more than 16 a week should not lose out. Tory Employment, Chris Grayling, brushed aside concerns saying “…we do not intend to make any further changes to the amount of money available for child care”.