Childcare: Affordability and Availability

Carla Lockhart Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) for securing this debate. It has been an informative and timely debate that really ticks the boxes of many of our constituents, who want to see real change on this issue. As an active constituency MP, probably one of the issues on which working families lobby me the most is the cost of childcare and how prohibitive it makes it to get back into work, particularly for mums who have just had their baby.

I suppose my mantra for this debate would be that work must always pay. It is important that the Government make it pay for those who want to get back into or continue in the world of work following the birth of a child, yet across the UK people are opting out of work because it does not pay to work. Their monthly childcare bill cancels out their net pay or leaves them with an amount that makes it not really worth the effort to work.

I want to mention a couple of Northern Ireland specifics. In 2021, the average cost of a full-time childcare place was £170 per week, while it was £186 per week for a day nursery and £166 per week for a childminder. Day nursery costs as high as £245 per week were recorded, with a range of childminders costing up to £300 per week. However, the median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees were £575. The Minister will be able to do the maths: for an average family with two kids, what is left is not enough to provide even a basic standard of living for a family.

We all know that the situation has got worse and been made more difficult in the past 18 months because of inflation. Indeed, providers themselves are feeling the pressure because of the increased costs that are in some instances leaving their businesses unviable. The situation is not helped by the bureaucracy and red tape they face on a daily basis.

The figures I have cited come from a local charity that operates in Northern Ireland called Employers For Childcare, which does an immense amount of work lobbying on childcare and supporting us politicians with data to prove that dealing with this issue will help the long-term economics of the country.

The most recent Employers For Childcare report, from 2021, cited some personal examples that speak even more powerfully than the figures. Let me read a couple of short quotes:

“Both my husband and I work full time. My husband is on minimum wage and so his entire wage goes on childcare. It is unaffordable when you have no alternative support. I have sleepless nights worrying about the cost of childcare. It is soul destroying.”

Another respondent said:

“Childcare needs to be more affordable. I’m in a reasonably paid part-time job but I couldn’t afford to go full-time as 90% of my wage would go on child-care costs which is pointless. One parent (usually the mother) of most families has to work part-time as they can’t afford full-time childcare.”

Those testimonies raise serious questions, including about alternative support. Throughout the debate, hon. Members have mentioned the importance of grandparents taking up the mantle in the home and having to step in, as my own grandparents did on many occasions, yet they do not receive a benefit for that. My ask of the Government is to support grandparents in that role, so that they can provide that wraparound service for working parents. Grandparents Plus has some superb ideas about helping grandparents in that way.

In many cases, it is the female in the family unit who sacrifices her career progression to stay at home in order to reduce childcare costs. Is that fair? No, it is not, and it comes back to the key point that work must pay. As we search for equality of opportunity in the workplace, that issue must be addressed.

The Government say they are on the side of working families. The forthcoming Budget offers the Chancellor an opportunity to demonstrate that, and I call on him to increase the tax-free childcare allowance. That would not only make a significant difference to the household finances of families across the United Kingdom, but encourage more people back into the workforce. That would be particularly beneficial to our public services, such as schools and hospitals, where it is simply not affordable for a parent to work. It would be making work pay—and we know that the money is there to do it.

I will finish by saying that our childcare providers are superb. As I stand here today, my son is being looked after by his childminder—she is an absolute star. I am so thankful for the support childcare providers give us as working parents. It is time to make childcare work for working families, and actually make work pay.