Childcare Payments Bill

Ben Gummer Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Catherine McKinnell]

Indeed, the next sub-heading in my speech is “The Bill”, so thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. My point was that child poverty was the issue—the issue in front of us—with which I was dealing before I took a number of interventions. That issue is very pertinent, because we know that the provision of affordable child care is one of the key measures that will help children to be lifted out of poverty. We know that enabling parents to go to work and to be in stable, secure employment is the primary way of enabling them to bring their families out of poverty.

Let me reiterate—in the context of today’s debate and the Bill—that we support any Government action that will help families who are struggling with the child care crunch. However, as we know, this additional support does not do nearly enough to make up some of the ground that has been lost over the past four years. For a number of reasons, there is doubt about how effective it will be even when it arrives, in about a year’s time, and about how much better off families will be. The bottom line is this: the Bill confirms that there will be no help for parents who are facing a child care crunch until after the next election, which means that there will be virtually no help with child care for an entire Parliament under the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

I am glad that the hon. Lady has now returned to the issue that is before the House. She has talked about lost ground. In every single year of the previous 13-year Labour Government, child care costs went up. Last year, for the first time, they went down. Where was the lost ground in those two Parliaments?

[Catherine McKinnell]

Of course child care costs will rise with inflation, but we have seen a spiralling increase. Child care costs have risen much faster than wages, and the increase has been much faster than previous increases in terms of the natural economic cycle. When I talk about lost ground, I am talking about the support that is available to families across the board, which we know has been reduced on a range of fronts—not to mention the reduction in the working tax credits and child care tax credits that are available to working parents. I think that, in introducing the Bill, the Government have recognised that they have a problem, namely that there is not enough support out there for working families. We need to ensure that this Government support, although welcome, goes further. We need to ensure that it goes far enough, and is implemented properly. That is the basis of the questions that I now wish to put to the Minister.