Finance (No.2) Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 8th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Burrowes]

I am grateful for that robust intervention. There is obviously cross-party support for recognising that child care is a central and significant issue in dealing with parents’ ability to manage their budgets and go out to work.

The lack of affordable child care is one of the reasons for the increasing numbers of relatives looking after children, especially grandparents. Two thirds of grandparents—well over 5 million—regularly look after their grandchildren. It is important to recognise the wide variety of child care. As we properly extend formal child care, I encourage the Committee, and the Minister, to recognise the role and value of informal child care for the millions of parents and grandparents who are out there saving a lot of money—thousands of pounds a year—for working families. Yes, the cost of child care is one of the reasons for the increasing number of grandparents taking on this role, and it is an important factor in parents’ decisions, but the significance of grandparental child care cuts across many areas. One in three families relies on it; one in two single-parent families particularly relies on it. It is relied on especially by families with disabled children. Often they may be living nearby, perhaps on the margins of poverty. Grandparents play a very significant role in providing emotional, financial and practical support, often through short-term care in times of crisis which then extends into long-term care.

Black and minority ethnic households are more likely than other households to have a grandparent living under the same roof as the parents and the child, taking on caring responsibilities. As we extend formal child care, it is important to acknowledge the calls from vulnerable families in particular for more flexibility in terms of tax-free relief and, as has been said in other debates, unpaid leave for grandparents who are in work.

It is important to talk not just about pounds and pence, but about child care and development. A review on child development conducted by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Nuffield Foundation asked parents to rank the factors that motivated them to ask grandparents to care for their children. The top-ranking factor was trust and just below it was love. We have to recognise that. Yes, more affordable child care is needed to relieve the strain on grandparents and other family members, but at the same time what parents want is for the person looking after their child, particularly in their early years, to have a trusting, loving relationship with them. The report was published in 2012, but it still holds good. It provided evidence that care from grandparents often results in high vocabulary and socio-emotional development.

It is obvious to parents and, indeed, those relatives and friends who know their children best, that the love and general interest shown by grandparent carers is invaluable. It is hard to quantify in financial terms, but it is certainly valuable. Relatives put themselves out on a personal level and that is what we want for all our children. We want them to have that type of care, whether it be in a nursery, from a childminder or, more often than not, from a grandparent or relative. We want them to receive that extra support on a personal level, which is of immense value to the child’s development and care.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am not knocking grandparents, who obviously play a valuable role in many cases, but there are studies that clearly show that grandparent care does not necessarily mean a higher level of early-years education for children, and that care in a formalised or trained setting can be better for child development.

[Mr Burrowes]

I appreciate that and I have looked at various parts of that evidence, but it is important to recognise that the Nuffield Foundation and IFS report noted that, while being in formal child care appeared to make children initially more school ready,

“being cared for by grandparents did not significantly put children at a disadvantage in school readiness compared to children not in formal childcare”.

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[Meg Hillier]

This is such an important issue that I hope we do not end up with a false party political divide. The new clause is a sensible and proportionate measure that we should all support, because it would not tie anyone to anything much. It simply suggests that we should assess the impact of changes to the tax and tax credits system, to ensure that we all work together to make the system fairer, simpler and more cost-effective for parents and better for children.

The issue of child care is about both supporting supply and ensuring that it is affordable for the user, and both parts of that need to be simple. We have seen problems in the system, because without subsidy at the supply end there is a disincentive to provide supply. I have suggestions about how we might address that through the tax system, which I will come on to later.

Governments of all parties often talk about the difference between child care and early years education, and we have heard a little of that divide in this debate. However, I am sure that all of us who have had experience of the matter would like to see the two combined in most cases. When Governments talk about early years education, which is inevitably expensive, they mean providing 15 or 25 hours a week, not the number of hours that would be needed for somebody to work full time. I recognise that that is unaffordable at the moment, although I have ambitions on the matter—I do not speak for my Front-Bench colleagues, but I have aspirations for what they will achieve in time.

Child care needs to be different for different children. I will come to the issue of older children, but whether it is after-school care or pre-school care, flexibility is the key. I concur with the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), although not completely—she decided to rubbish the Labour Government’s achievements, and I will make no apology for what Labour achieved through Sure Start, with a massive increase in the quality and availability of child care and reductions in cost in many places. As she, I and other Members recognise, flexibility is vital, because people, particularly in London, do not work nine-to-five as much as is often believed.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am moved to intervene as the chair of the all-party group on Sure Start children’s centres. I once wore a hat in the Chamber so that I could take my hat off to the Opposition for having created Sure Start. However, I hold to the fact that, brilliant as the idea was, there is still a huge amount to be improved on. I urge the hon. Lady to agree that we do not do nearly enough to focus on the developmental needs of the very young.

[Meg Hillier]

There is cross-party support for all of that, because I agree that Sure Start was a revolution in early years support. I felt that it should continue so that there was Sure Start at the ages of five and 11. We would stray off the debate if I got into that territory, but my constituency still has 37% of children living in poverty and it is a young constituency. Families of all backgrounds have used Sure Start, learned from each other and got support. Whatever their background, people have challenges with their children at an early stage, and children really have got a sure start. Titles of Government initiatives often become glib, but Sure Start meant something to me and to many of my constituents.

The London assembly Labour group carried out a study on the London cost of living, and it found that flexibility in child care was particularly important in London, where there are long commute times and variable hours. One of the benefits of the child care voucher system, which is not universal, is that where it has been taken up it has provided a good deal of flexibility for parents to buy into properly qualified, registered child care. Again, the study proposed by the new clause could investigate how to support quality through a tax voucher system. Of course, we have seen a reduction in tax credits, although I welcome and support what my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) said about the U-turn on universal credit paying 85% of child care costs. The key point is that we can have Government initiative after Government initiative, but parents want the system to be kept simple. They want to know what money they have to play with and where they can spend it, which means that both the supplier and the purchaser of a service, in this case the parent, can understand the system.

We need cross-party agreement so that we have a system that sticks and is not tinkered with time after time so that people do not have to work out, “Does that apply to me? My child is going to be that age on that date, so does it apply to them? Oh, they have missed that cut off by one day, so that whole term will be more expensive than it will be for the neighbouring child, who got in by one day.” There are all sorts of silly little bits of the system that make it complicated for people to understand. Such things can be disincentives for accessing child care and ensuring that people get the right support, particularly mothers who are going back to work.

I am a London Member, and the new clause would particularly benefit people in London, because child care costs in London are inevitably higher. The costs of premises are higher. Although there is a minimum wage, child carers are rightly paid more, and in London their wages will be higher than in other parts of the country. Research by child care site Findababysitter.com found that a quarter of parents in London who were not in work were prevented from getting a job because of high child care costs. The Resolution Foundation found that one in five mothers who were already employed would like to take on an extra 10 hours’ work a week on average but could not do so because they would need the commensurate extra child care—not just 10 hours extra but enough child care to allow them to travel to and from work.

A parent in London buying 50 hours of child care a week for a child under two would face an average annual bill of nearly £14,000, if they can find a child care setting that opens during the hours that they need to work. In the current climate, in which people are expected to work longer and harder for their money, 50 hours of child care is the bare minimum. Anyone who is not working regular hours, as the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire said, would need the flexibility of having someone come to their home, or a very flexible childminder. That might be manageable for a child under two, but things get much more complicated with children above that age who are looked after outside the home.

Just over a year ago, I called for child care to become a top priority, and it is heartening that we are having more debates on the issue, but talking about it does not mean that the Government are getting it right with the offer of so-called tax-free child care. I will not repeat the arguments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North, but the Government’s offer depends on how much people spend, and it is complicated for people to understand. I know a number of people on low incomes who have a simple approach to the tax system and who will find the proposal complicated. They will not benefit to the same extent because of the amount of child care that many of them will access because of their working hours.

I represent one of the youngest parliamentary seats in the UK. More than a fifth of residents are under 16 and more than a third, about 34%, are under 24, so child care is a big concern. I am stopped on the streets of Hackney South and Shoreditch by mums, childminders and others who want to raise that concern. When I ask any working parent what the toughest part is, they say that it is sorting out the child care, which is a logistical challenge as well as a financial challenge. I know that, because I am a working mother of three, and I am lucky to be well paid enough to buy in that flexibility. For anyone who does not have a salary as generous as mine, buying in that flexibility is very difficult.

Nationally, we know that 70% of working parents do not work nine-to-five Monday to Friday, and in London, because of the journey times, doing a full day’s work means long and expensive child care, if parents can get it. We have the most expensive system in the world. The review proposed in new clause 1 could consider examples from around the world. In Denmark, a day care Act means that local councils provide child care for all between 8 am to 5 pm, with parents and the Government—this is where new clause 1 would come in—contributing to the cost. Child care is free for families on the lowest incomes. The subsidy is tapered, depending on the family income—in this country, it would need to be done sensibly through the tax and tax credit systems—which means that three quarters, 76%, of Danish women are working. That is a huge improvement on the number of women working in the UK. I will touch on the points made by the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) on women wanting to stay at home, but we need women to be economically active. This is not just about child care, but about giving women their rightful place in the work force. Hearteningly, women outnumber men in the Chamber at the moment. I applaud my male colleagues of all parties for being here, because this is not just a women’s issue. Women who play their equal role in society and in the work force are more satisfied, better role models and better parents as a result, if we make things as stress free as possible, which is about providing flexibility.

[Andrea Leadsom]

That is such a sweeping statement. It completely undermines those women who choose to do the utterly groundbreaking and profoundly valuable job of staying home to raise their children. The hon. Lady is not being fair to those people.

[Meg Hillier]

I will come to that point in a moment. I am saying not that women who want to stay at home and who can afford to do so should not make that choice, but that it is important that women have the choice to work and to be economically active and play their full role in society in that way. Even women who stay at home to look after their children for a period of their child’s early years may well need or want to work at a later stage. That choice is therefore important whatever stage we are talking about. We should not conflate being at home with a very young child under five with being at home all the time. Under the hon. Lady’s Government’s benefits system, parents have to work or they will seriously lose money, and their children will be pushed into greater poverty.

In Hackney South and Shoreditch, women’s average earnings are higher than men’s, which shows what could be achieved if that was applied across the workplace. A decent universal system of child care will pay for itself in the long run. More parents working and paying taxes, and not claiming tax credits and benefits, more than pay for the state’s investment. I do not speak for my party on this, but I hope that those who do take that mantle and look towards the overall goal of a universal free child care system that will pay for itself. That is an aim we need to work towards. If the Government agree to new clause 1, we will be set on a cross-party basis along that route. It would not solve the problem overnight or mean that things will be easy, but it would mean that we can look closely at the options.

As I have said, child care costs in London are higher than in the rest of the country. I will not go into the details but, for instance, a nursery place for an under two is £140 a week typically in London compared with a UK average of £109. I know many people who pay a lot more than that. There is an idea that people have choice, but it is not often the case. Many parents take the option of what is available at the time, which is why we need to provide incentives at the supply end.

I have a couple of suggestions that the study proposed in new clause 1 could consider. It could examine the idea of a London weighting in universal credit for the provision of child care. It could also consider more family-friendly approaches by employers. Practices such as working from home arrangements and on-site nurseries could be fuelled by tax breaks. Speaking as a member of the Public Accounts Committee, we would clearly need to monitor that to ensure that it was not abused, but the brilliant brains in the Treasury, including the Minister’s, could probably work through such a system.

We need to push private and public sector providers to extend the hours available to parents, particularly late in the evening and weekends. That could happen through a tax incentive or a tax break system. There are an awful lot of opportunities. The Minister is nodding. I am sure that she, as a working mum, will recognise the challenges and needs.

I commend to colleagues the London cost of living report by the London assembly Labour group. Although it is a Labour report, it can be read by other parties. I read it as a cross-party report. The Institute for Public Policy Research has done a big bit of work on child care. It has found that directly funding child care facilities, which happens in other European countries, can function better for parents and be more cost-effective, because there is a guarantee of a place. We have to monitor and ensure that the money is not wasted, but it would mean certainty for the supplier, which means certainty for the parent trying to buy.

I want to pick up on some of the comments made by other hon. Members. The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate talked about the importance of informal child care and I think we would all agree with that. Any parent will use informal child care at some point, whether for an evening out or as part of a longer-term arrangement with grandparents. Let us be honest, though. Not every grandparent wants to take on child care. I meet grandparents, and those whose own parents are caring for their children, who say that they do not necessarily want to take on child care but feel they should to support their child. Many of those grandparents are young and give up work to look after their grandchildren. That is fine if it is a matter of choice, but it is a real issue if they feel they have to step in because of the lack of availability and options. There is a danger of creating generational issues. For every individual who wants to work but cannot, we reduce the tax take. We need to bear that in mind.

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[Andrea Leadsom]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), with whom I agree on many aspects of early years.

The first thing I want to say is that children are everything to those of us who have them, and to those of us who have young nieces, nephews and grandchildren. Children are at the centre and heart of our world. They make incredibly selfish human beings become extraordinarily unselfish. It is when a child is about to get run over that a parent gets superhuman strength to push them out of the way. People are capable of the most enormous sacrifices for the sake of their children. It is clear to us all that top quality child care is vital.

In my case, with three kids of my own—aged 18, almost 16 and 10—I have had just about every form of child care that can be imagined. I was fortunate to start off with my stepfather acting as my nanny until my second son was five years old. Therefore, I thoroughly recommend informal child care. There are not many childminders who will take two little boys out—one in a backpack, one in a frontpack—and explain to them for hours what a worm cast is, build little toy forts and play with toy cars. Even today, I cannot get to Parliament until I have dropped one off at a friend’s, sorted out another with some A-level revision and got the third out of his bed, basically. For us, particularly mums, our children and the child care at whatever age they are—I talk to people with older children who are still looking for food, money or a taxi service—are at the centre of our lives. We all spend a lot of time thinking about the safe and happy lives of our children. Child care is a vital part of whatever we can offer to support those at work in our society.

We also need to support thoroughly the choices that families want to make. They may want an au pair and to deal with someone who is living in and who, perhaps, does not speak very good English. I asked one au pair I had to make a salad. She peeled some parsnips and gave us the peel, nicely dressed, as a salad. That was an interesting one. There are also childminders although, sadly, not nearly enough of them. There is also the formal child care setting; some truly superb, others truly awful. Unfortunately it was the formal child care setting—the nurseries—that led to the old joke about “hair or care”; in other words, someone not smart enough to be a hairdresser could try to become a nursery nurse. That was the reality 10 years ago where some young girls—themselves barely out of their teens—would become the carers looking after our very young children in nurseries. Care for our children comes in all shapes and sizes.

I also want to say a word on behalf of those heroic mums—I would have loved to have been one—who have stayed home and looked after their children themselves, giving up potentially lucrative, satisfying and successful careers. They might feel very depressed about their lack of self-worth, certainly in the eyes of too many politicians. I want to pay tribute to those women who decide to stay home and raise their own children.

[Meg Hillier]

I just want to go back to the point about au pairs and others. Will the hon. Lady acknowledge that with the cost of housing and the overcrowding in many cases in London, the idea of someone living in your home is not an option, which is why the formal setting is particularly important in a city such as London?

[Andrea Leadsom]

Yes of course I agree. My point was merely that child care comes in all shapes and sizes. My real point is that we should support the choices that families want to make, which are the best choices for them. That is particularly why I am so delighted that the Government have introduced shared parental leave. What more choice could there be for a woman who perhaps is earning more than her husband than to be able to decide to go back to work in the knowledge that he will be doing that critical early part of the child care? That is a huge tribute to the Government and many families will be delighted. It will be life changing for them.

Another area for which the Government deserve a lot of credit is the introduction of the early years professional status, particularly to deal with the quality of child care. I have been told by the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson)—who is Minister for children—that early years professional status will require a great deal of training. It will involve learning about the importance of secure attachment, about how the brain of a baby develops, and about how vital it is for the baby to receive loving, attentive care, whether that care is provided by parents or in a formal setting. As the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) pointed out, when life at home is devastatingly awful because of domestic violence, bereavement or drug or alcohol misuse, the attachment needs of a baby may be far better met in a formal child care setting than at home. What is really important is choice and good quality.

Another enormous tribute should be paid to the Government for the creation of childminder agencies. I know that that has been a contentious issue, but I believe that children’s centres that adopt childminder agency status can serve as signposts for all families who seek child care. They can provide ongoing professional development for childminders, many of whom have felt unloved and uncared-for over the last few decades—which, along with over-regulation, has been their reason for leaving the business. The agencies can help childminders to understand regulation, to become established, and to provide the top-quality care that they so want to provide.

[Meg Hillier]

I thank the hon. Lady for being so generous with her time. Childminders have told me that their main fear is that childminder agencies could replicate the private sector company model for older people’s domiciliary care, creaming off a profit from childminders’ salaries and not delivering a good service. The hon. Lady has described an entirely different model. Does she have any inside information about what will be announced?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I do not, but I can tell the hon. Lady that I have been lobbying the Minister, and telling him that children’s centres could play a fantastic and very appropriate role if they became childminder agencies. I think that the support, encouragement, training and quality control that they could offer would be good for childminders, and it would certainly be good for families.

What else have the Government done for families? They have done an enormous amount. Child care tax credit has been given a huge boost: a contribution of up to £2,000 per child will greatly help families to make the right child care choices. Even more significant is the increase in the tax-free personal allowance, which has put an enormous amount of money back into the hands of taxpayers, and which will benefit working families of all shapes and sizes. As was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), the fuel duty freeze has made the cost of living for families lower than it would have been under the Opposition.

But what have we really, fundamentally done for our children—the children who are at the heart of everything that we do? We have paid down the deficit by a third, which is no inconsiderable feat. Why is that so important? As a result of the financial crisis and the Labour Government’s overspending, we put ourselves in a position in which we stole not just from our children, but from our grandchildren. We mortgaged their future. This Government have paid down the deficit significantly, with the intention of clearing it altogether so that we can start to reduce the debts that our children and grandchildren would otherwise be paying. We have been able to keep the cost of borrowing down, because we had a credible plan for returning strength to our economy. That has enabled all families with mortgages to keep down their borrowing costs, and has been a huge boost to families that is never talked about.

What is the payback? Our economy is the fastest-growing in the developed world. Wages are rising faster than they have done for seven years—that was announced today—and the private sector has created 1.6 million new jobs. That means that well over 1.5 million new families are finding work, and are able to meet the needs of their household budgets.

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[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Nicky Morgan)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess, and I thank all Members who have spoken in this debate. After a rather partisan opening speech, the debate improved and we had a genuine discussion of views, which will no doubt carry on throughout the Committee stage of the Finance Bill. We will also be able to discuss child care measures in greater detail later in the year.

I take on board the comment of the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) that there is a certain irony in the fact that all of us in the Chamber debating this matter today have children yet we are discussing this rather than spending time with them. If my son were here at the Dispatch Box, he would be very opinionated and have plenty to say on the subject of what I get up to, and I suspect that applies to the children of other Members.

New clause 1 asks the Government to conduct a review of the affordability of child care, but while Opposition Members are proposing yet another review, this Government are taking action, and have taken action, to address the rising costs of child care faced by families.

Before I address the Opposition new clause, let me briefly set out this Government’s approach to supporting parents with their child care costs. As the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch said, we on this side of the House believe in the importance of flexibility. We do not want to prescribe any further the number of hours that families should have. We want there to be full flexibility, and that is one of the advantages of the tax-free child care provisions this Government are suggesting. Parents and families will be able to build up credits in accounts and will then be able to spend them in the way that suits them best.

[Meg Hillier]

The flexibility of provision is as important as the flexibility of payment. It is no good talking about flexibility if the child care provider does not provide it or does not provide the number of hours and length of day needed, whether long or short. What are the Government planning to do about that?

[Nicky Morgan]

I take that point on board. I shall come on to talk about the number of child care places, but the hon. Lady is right: flexibility in all sorts of different ways is what is important. Having the money in an account that the family can decide how to spend is an important part of the policies we have introduced.

My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) was absolutely right to say that this was all about choice. The hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) talked about maternal employment. That is a debate that we need to have in this country. We know from various surveys conducted by the Department for Education that some mothers want to work, and some need to work. Many of those who need to work find child care costs a barrier to going to work. That is why it is so important to have this discussion.

Child care costs are a major part of most working families’ budgets. Figures from the Family and Childcare Trust show that, between 2002 and 2010, child care costs increased by around 50%. The Government have therefore taken action to tackle those rising costs. We have funded 15 hours a week of free child care for all three and four-year-olds, and extended that offer to the 20% most disadvantaged two-year-olds. We are now extending it further so that, from September 2014, about 40% of two-year-olds will be eligible. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) pointed out, the Government have also increased child tax credit to £3,265 a year, which is £420 a year more than it was at the last election, representing a rise significantly above inflation. We have also introduced shared parental leave.

The Government are also taking action to drive up the supply of high-quality child care provision—for example, by legislating for childminder agencies, which will make it easier to set up a childminding business; making it easier for schools to change their school day and encouraging primary schools to open for longer; and reducing bureaucracy and red tape for providers. Encouragingly, the most recent information shows that costs in England have stabilised. The National Day Nurseries Association has reported that the average fee increase across all nurseries was 1.5%, which was well below inflation. The latest survey from the Family and Childcare Trust shows that the cost of after-school clubs in 2013 was £49.71 per week, and that in 2014 it is £48.40. Also, the cost of childminders’ after-school pick-up was £72.79 in 2013 and it is now £64.75—a 12.8% reduction in real terms. Opposition Members have talked about the availability of child care places, but it is worth noting that the number of child care settings rose from 87,900 in 2010 to 90,000 in 2011. This equates to 2 million early-years places, or a 5% increase on 2009.

My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate talked about informal child care, and he was right to suggest that that is an important subject. A number of families rely on grandparents and other family members to provide child care, and it is important that we recognise that. However, I also have sympathy with the view that formal child care settings are important. We need to know that our young children are ready and able to go to school. I am not saying that that cannot happen in an informal child care setting, however. As I have said, it is a question of choice and flexibility.

Let me now turn to new clause 1, which asks the Chancellor to publish a review of the affordability of child care costs. We believe that such a review is unnecessary, because in addition to the actions I have already outlined, the Government announced a new scheme in Budget 2013 to help working parents with their child care costs. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch really meant it, but she said that the review would “not tie anyone to anything much”. Actually, that is part of the problem with the proposal. We want to get on and bring in our provisions as soon as possible.

[Meg Hillier]

What I meant was that the review would not require the Government to act on its findings. However, it would give us all a basis on which to argue about what was best for local people and, I hope, reach consensus. It would not stop the Government doing what they were already doing, but it could open up other opportunities.

[Nicky Morgan]

I believe that some of those policy issues will come out in the debates that we are going to have on tax-free child care. Rather than postponing our activities while we have yet another review, I want to get on and make progress. I want families to know that we are serious about listening and helping them with child care costs and the availability of places.

We have consulted widely on the detail of the scheme. More than 35,000 responses were received to last year’s consultation, and we have listened to that feedback. On 18 March this year, we published our response to the consultation on tax-free child care. This was welcomed by families and child care providers around the country, and as a result of the consultation, we are rolling out tax-free child care more quickly than had previously been announced. It will be launched in autumn 2015 and rolled out to all eligible families with children under 12 within the first year of the scheme’s operation. That is significantly faster than previously announced, as children under 12 would have gradually qualified for the scheme over a seven-year period.

The Government will also now provide 20% support on child care costs up to £10,000 per year for each child via a new simple online system. The cap had previously been set at £6,000. That means that families could receive up to £2,000 child care support per child—two-thirds more than originally planned.

We expect that tax-free child care will be open to at least twice as many families as the current employer-supported child care scheme. At the same time, we announced that all families eligible for universal credit will benefit from additional support at 85%, rather than just taxpayers as previously consulted on. We have also announced £50 million for an early-years pupil premium to help improve outcomes for the most disadvantaged three and four-year-olds in Government-funded early education. Taken together, the Government’s child care offer will provide flexible support for all eligible working families while maintaining free, universal early education support.

The Government are also taking wider steps to support hard-working families. The income tax personal allowance will rise to £10,000 in 2014-15, and in the Budget we announced a further increase to £10,500 in 2015-16. That is a tax cut for 25 million people. Since 2010, this Government will have taken 3.2 million people on low incomes out of paying income tax altogether. It is worth noting that of that 3.2 million, 56% are women, which is something to be recognised and welcomed.

The Government have also helped local authorities freeze council tax in every year of this Parliament, and we have taken action on fuel duty, saving a typical motorist £680 by 2015-16. The shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury talked about the fuel duty cut being a theoretical cut. Perhaps he would like to chat to the shadow Economic Secretary who quoted from the Asda Index, which showed that families now have slightly more discretionary income to spend per week, and it attributed that to a fall in motoring costs—[Interruption.] I suggest that the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) read the press release, as it made encouraging reading.

The changes suggested in new clause 1 are unnecessary and would not help hard-working families with the cost of child care. The Government have already reviewed how best to improve child care through the Childcare Commission, which was launched in June 2012. We do not need another review. We need to take action now to support hard-working families, which is why we are supporting parents through tax-free child care and universal credit. More people than ever before will be eligible for that support. We have consulted widely on these changes, and our proposals have been welcomed by families and providers around the country. I therefore request that new clause 1, which was tabled by Opposition Members, be withdrawn.