New dad wants election pledges to improve childcare

The issue is one which is being addressed by politicians ahead of the upcoming general election, but Mr Platts has not been impressed with what he has heard so far.

“I’ve not seen enough policies coming through in manifestos to improve childcare and encourage people to have children.

“A full-time parent works 40 hours a week, so 15 hours is nowhere near enough, and there are limited (numbers of) nurseries; everyone’s fighting for spaces in nurseries.

“We’ve had years of policies but it’s not helping the people who need it. Supporting families is just not talked about enough.”

The Conservatives said they would expand their free childcare offer. Parents  would be able to claim 30 hours of government-funded childcare a week, over 38 weeks of the year, from the age of nine months up to their child starting school.

Labour pledged to take this same plan forward, rolling out funding over the next year. They also announced a plan to open 3,300 new nurseries in primary school classrooms and create 100,000 more nursery places.

The Liberal Democrats said they want all parents to be able to access childcare that is flexible, affordable and fair. Their manifesto includes plans to increase maternity, paternity and shared parental leave pay along with an enhanced rate of child benefit for one-year-olds.

Reform has pledged to ‘frontload’ the child benefit system for children aged 1-4 to give parents more time to spend with their children.

The Green Party said it would abolish the two-child benefit cap and would extend the current government’s offer of childcare to 35 hours per week from the age of nine months. It also promised £1.4bn per year for local authorities to invest in Sure Start centres aimed at improving early years health and education.

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