Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has made an estimate of the number of adults who have left the workforce as a result of the cost of childcare.

We know that the cost of childcare remains a significant barrier for people entering and remaining in work. For this reason, the government announced a series of measures at the Spring Budget to support parents with these costs.

The number of people with dependent children who were working in Jan-Mar 2023 (12.100m) is slightly higher than in the same quarter in 2019 (11.825m), before the pandemic.

The number of 16- to 64-year-olds who were economically inactive due to looking after family or home in Feb-Apr 2023 was 1,640,000, down 199,000 on pre-pandemic period (Dec-Feb 2020), and down 728,000 on the 2010 election