Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the issue. One reason we have specifically recruited business mentors to work with women who want to set up their own business is that access to finance is often much harder for them. My hon. Friend the Minister for Equalities has had some constructive discussions with Noreena Hertz, on which we will be able to report soon.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

4. What assessment she has made of the effect on women's employment of providing support for child care.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

6. What recent discussions she has had with ministerial colleagues on the role of child care for working mothers.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)]

The Government fully recognise the importance of child care in helping parents—not just mothers—to move into or stay in work. Under universal credit, we will for the first time extend help with child care costs to those working under 16 hours, benefiting some 80,000 families who previously had no such support.

[Stephen Timms]

Since the Government cut the rate of support for child care a year ago, 44,000 fewer people have claimed support, women’s unemployment is now at its highest for 25 years and 50,000 more women are economically inactive than before the cut was made. Is it not now clear that cutting support for child care is a false economy?

[Maria Miller]

We have announced that under universal credit we will support an extra 80,000 families with child care, and that we are doubling the number of two-year-olds getting free nursery care. If the right hon. Gentleman is asking us to reconsider his Government’s policy of increasing support for child care to some 80%, perhaps he will explain where he will find the £600 million that the Daycare Trust feels it would cost to implement the policy.