Free Childcare Entitlement
Danielle Rowley Excerpts(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Danielle Rowley (Midlothian) (Lab)
I have a constituent who is struggling to pay for childcare because of the way universal credit works. She is a working single mother and is expected to pay for her childcare up front—it is over £800 in her case—and then to claim it back, which does not make much sense to me. The cost is more than she earns from her job, and she may need to give up working. How does this system help people such as my constituent get back into work?
Mr Goodwill
This system helps people precisely like that, because it is not a system where people pay and reclaim—the money is reimbursed to the nursery by the local authority. Indeed, staff at one of the nurseries I spoke to in York said that one of the best aspects of the scheme is that they would not have to chase parents for money or, on occasion, withdraw childcare because the parent had not paid their bill. This scheme makes the administration easier for nurseries, which are already collecting the 15 hours’ funding from local authorities. That will exactly solve the hon. Lady’s constituent’s problem.