Families: Work Incentives

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

It is clear that when you put up people’s rights, the provision has to catch up. It has been doing so, but there is some way further to go and we will be working on that.

[Baroness O'Cathain (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is surely right. You cannot just manufacture people from the ground and say, “you will be a childcare assistant”. If this 30 hours of free childcare is to be a new thing—and it seems to be—it will be an incentive for people to go into childcare. However, you cannot ask the Government to guarantee it.

[Lord Freud]

It is important that we have a dynamic economy with real work incentives. That is what we are trying to create, and childcare is part of it. My noble friend is right; we need to set up the incentives to make sure that that part of the market grows. In a dynamic economy, guarantees are something that you cannot necessarily time.