I am one of the harshest critics of the UK’s Coalition Government. To claim otherwise would require monumental self-deception. However, I do place a good deal of emphasis on viewing my political opponents fairly, and accepting that most people have positive intentions- however misguided I consider them to be. And as such, I seriously believe that Coalition ministers think their Childcare Tax Credit scheme will help parents. However, I doubt that its introduction a month before the approaching General Election is a coincidence, and the way in which it favours high earners is a coincidence.
Under the scheme, the Government will allow parents to buy childcare vouchers up to the value of £4,800 per child (aged under 12) per year. The government will then top up the balance by 25%, provided both parents are in work and earn no more than £150,000 each. Unsurprisingly, this has provoked wrath from families with stay at home parents, full time carers, and those who are puzzled that the Government have taken cash Child Benefit from households on £50,000 a year only to subsidise childcare for those on up to £300,000 a year. Also, there are justified claims that 20% subsidy for childcare is far too little assistance for those who can only access Minimum Wage jobs, for example.
In Britain we have done a lot to encourage mothers in particular to return to work at ever shorter intervals after they have given birth. It is only right that women should have a free choice as to whether to resume their careers promptly after having a child or to care full time for their young children. However, we are now failing to provide that choice. Instead, through the withdrawal of financial and societal support for stay at home parents of either gender we are now forcing toddlers into full-time childcare regardless of their parents’ wishes. In my view, the state should support parents in either course they should take, and do away with the insulting perception of stay at home mothers as unintelligent and stay at home fathers as ‘unmanly’ as the unenlightened prevailing stereotypes suggest. It is not the role of the government to dictate how parents bring up their children, and yet sadly the Childcare Tax Credit is another step towards this. The obvious question to ask here is: why does a stay at home parent need childcare? That is because it is encouraged for both the wellbeing of parents and children that some part time attendance of nursery takes place before entry to school.
Then there is the unfortunate fact that the Coalition is robbing Peter on £50,000 a year to pay Paul and his wife on a combined £300,000 year. Childcare can take a large bite out of the income of even a middle class household, and such blatant redistribution of money from these people to well-paid City executives is simply unjust and should be challenged. Would it not be simpler and fairer to subsidise childcare- and properly, at more than 20%- at source? I advocate the Norwegian system in which parents are charged a flat rate of about £2 an hour on a pay-as-you-go basis, and offered further means tested subsidy where it is most needed. Local authorities would take over nurseries and after school clubs directly, and remove the often large profit margins which have helped inflate fees so much over recent years. Such a scheme would cost several billions of pounds a year, but the economic benefits of increasing the disposable income of hard up families are vast and would do much to boost economic growth. Is this not a better alternative to a token subsidy that discriminates against large groups of people in this country?