Proposal #14: Create universal childcare

By Jessica Asato / @Jessica_Asato

The Jesuit saying “give me the child until he is seven, and I will show you the man” has much basis in truth – what happens in the early years of a child’s life determines their later outcomes. Research shows that even by the age of 22 months, a child born to professional parents will have a higher cognitive ability than a child born to working class parents from a poorer background. By the second year in primary school, a bright poor child will be overtaken by a less talented child from a middle class family. A child’s physical, emotional and cognitive development depends crucially on the support they receive from family and society in the early years. This led Labour to introduce subsidised nursery places for 3 and 4 year olds and Sure Start centres in disadvantaged neighbourhoods while free childcare places for 15% of the most disadvantaged two-year olds was announced earlier this year in the ‘New Opportunities’ White Paper.

But this will not be enough if we genuinely wish to see a break between parental inheritance and a child’s future life course. The UK still invests three times as much per child in higher education as it does for children under five, yet investment in the early years reaps financial rewards too by reducing child poverty costs, remedial education costs and even the costs of crime, which can often be linked to neglect in the early years.

One major policy shift to remedy this would be to introduce high quality free universal pre-school childcare.

There are three reasons why this is desirable: current provision is often patchy and low quality which impacts on child development; lack of affordable childcare restricts particularly mothers’ choices to go back to work; and Labour’s welfare to work plans depend on there being affordable childcare which parents trust to look after their child.

So why is current provision not adequate for the needs of parents in the UK? Most studies show that there is a failure in market provision because of high fees, which many parents – not just those from very poor backgrounds – cannot afford. For example, in a recent Daycare Trust report, over half of the parents interviewed said they struggled with childcare costs and 21% said that upfront fees affected their decision to go back to work. There is also a lack of flexibility in the availability of care and poor information for parents about provision. By making childcare available to all, the government would reduce the need for means-testing which, as most research shows, will lead to a take-up of childcare amongst the poorest parents. It would also engender a sense of solidarity among parents of all classes.

The second reason why it would be a desirable policy is so that women are given a genuine choice about whether they can return to work or not after their child turns one or two. Given that women are still the main carers for children, the lack of affordable childcare hits them more unequally and damages their earning potential leading to both an income and pension pay gap. This is exacerbated for lone parents where being out of work often spells high rates of child poverty.

Finally, Labour’s welfare to work plans rely on encouraging mostly single mothers to find work when their child reaches the age of two. The major stumbling block to this is that most mothers would be hard pressed to find 8 hours provision of affordable childcare to be able to take up offers of work. Universal childcare would remedy this problem and allow mothers to get off benefits and into work which is not only better for the household income, but often for a mum’s mental health too.

While it is true that the introduction of free pre-school childcare would be highly costly, another report for the Daycare Trust predicted that in the best case scenario, the “value of the benefits generated by enabling more parents to work and boosting the long-term productivity of children would exceed the costs of the additional childcare provision by around £40 billion over a 65-year period.”

It may not be the best time to introduce universal provision of childcare given the recession, but as a medium-term aim, the Labour party couldn’t do better if ending child poverty, female empowerment and greater equality of outcomes are its goals.