Labour Sets Realist Tone for Childcare Policy Roll Out

Labour Sets Realist Tone for Childcare Policy Roll Out

Keir Starmer’s Labour Party may never have really aspired to be exciting. If anything, after years of political turmoil, the incoming government has sought to make a virtue of dullness. In her first financial statement, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, set out a large number of previously eye-catching policies that would be scrapped under her watch. Her reasoning, generally, is that they had not been properly budgeted for, and if the country can’t afford it, it can’t have it.

However, one big policy has escaped the chopping block; the expansion of the childcare entitlement in England. This is no surprise, it is a popular policy that many parents have been expecting to rely upon in the coming months and years. In fact, some believe that the previous Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, announced it in order to scupper similar plans Labour was formulating. Still, while they are committed to delivering the policy, that decision does not mean the new government will be adopting the Conservatives’ relatively chipper optimism. 

Instead, writing in the Sun newspaper, the new Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has said the roll out will not be the ‘sunlit uplands’ the Tories promised. Citing the staffing shortage in particular, she admitted there are ‘enormous gaps to fill’. Delivering the policy, she says, will mean that in some parts of the country, parents will only receive the hours promised if they accept a place somewhere other than with their first choice of nursery or childminder – and she acknowledged that this would leave some parents feeling ‘cheated and let down’.

Across a number of policy areas, the detail of Labour’s strategy has yet to be revealed, but it is at least apparent that they are not seeking to sugar coat the extent of the challenge they have inherited.