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Childcare – lessons from Denmark

July 3, 2012 2:13 pm

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As we begin NationaI Childcare Week, hope history will show that the most important talk on welfare reform last week wasn’t from the prime minister, but from Christine Antorini, the Danish minister for children and education who is visiting London.

David Cameron wanted a bit of red meat for a slathering backbench furious about Lords reform, and some newspaper editors, furious about the Leveson enquiry. It wasn’t much of a surprise when many of the ideas didn’t last the day.

Ms Antorini’s story could not be more different. It’s a tale of a social security revolution that raised living standards, employment rates, levels of equality – and middle class buy-in to the welfare state. It’s frankly far more inspiring than the Prime Minister’s speech.

Last week I had a chance to see first-hand the extraordinary day care services which have helped revolutionise the Dane’s economy and society. Walking round the brand new Damperen daycare centre in Copenhagen with Thomas Hjortenberg, the city’s Childcare coordinator, I detected a degree of quiet pride in the latest addition to the city’s network of 500 plus centres. Arranged over four floors, with high class kitchens, rooftop play areas surrounded by high glass walls and an en suite youth centre, the team at Dampern look after 140 children.

It is a shining example of what the Danish Daycare Act has created. Every municipality has to offer parents a Childcare place from 8-5pm from the age of 6 months, or risk a heavy fine from the government. The local council sets the average monthly price and parents only have to pay 25pc – around £200-250 a month. The municipality pays for the rest. In theory parents could place their youngsters in local childminders, regulated by the council. But in practice they don’t. They want their children to have the best. Copenhagen builds enough centres to cater for 90pc of demand. The council runs the admissions system and advises parents on childminders.

The Danes don’t have a lot of regulation of day care services hard-wired into legislation. But in practice, staff to child ratios are not much different to the UK – but what’s hugely different is that team leaders are generally qualified to at least degree level.

Danish childcare is not of course cheap; around £8,000 per place for the over 3s. But it has revolutionised the economy, and helped to raise the level of female employment. That’s why everyone I met from the Prime Minister to Danish parents to the Danish CBI thinks they are getting it right on childcare.

By contrast in Britain, it’s women who are facing the brunt of the Tories’ double dip recession. Women now account for three quarters of the rise in long term unemployment over the last year.

This is precisely why we should be looking to great global leaders like the Danish Daycare for inspiration in the British welfare debate. For a very simple reason. If we want an alternative to the politics of austerity then we need welfare reform that helps high deliver a high growth, high employment economy. High employment economies automatically bring more tax through the doors of the Exchequer because there’s more people actually paying it. That makes deficit reduction easier and less risky.

But this kind of welfare reform also helps solves a political conundrum: what Brendan Barber calls the ‘nothing for something problem’. Working families today pay in a lot of tax and national insurance – but often don’t feel they get out the services they need to help juggle the realities of modern life, from shifts at all hours to the need to save more into a private pension.

In this 70th anniversary of the Beveridge Report, now is exactly the right time to reflect on just how much life has changed since 1945. Those changes mean families need very different things in return for paying ‘their stamp’ to help them get on in life. The Danish Daycare Act has a lot more to tell us than the prime minister’s appeals to his core vote.

Liam Byrne MP is the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

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  • treborc

    I still cannot stop laughing to really write to much, but this from Byrne it’s hilarious.

  • Amber Star

    Good luck getting the British public to pay for this. According to polling, they support limiting Child benefit to a maximum of 3 children per carer. That’s about £800 per year; so there’s not much chance they’ll support £8,000 per child, is there?

     I’d also be interested to know, given it’s Liam Byrne writing this, is the care mostly provided by private firms who are paid £8,000 per child by the LA?

  • The Prophet

    “But Jesus said, Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me…”  (Matthew 19:14) 

    But Liam said, Suffer the little children, and forbid them to come unto me, for their parents art on benefits.

  • Quiet_Sceptic

    I don’t doubt that £8k per child per year buys you very good quality child care. Buying good quality services has never been a problem; it’s finding the funding to pay for them which is the difficult part.

    The obvious question which the article fails to answer is where did the municipalities get the funding to pay for the services?

    What services were cut to pay for childcare, what taxes were introduced or raised? What was the public response to those cuts/tax increases?

  • hp

    Great idea.
    Now, what do we cut to pay for this?
    And what is the second thing we also cut because we also need to deal with the deficit?

    On second thoughts, is it better for an infant child to be cared for by a parent?
    Just asking.

    • DaveCitizen

      Taking the Danish model in the round, as we must if such examples are to mean anything, we should cut extreme inequality through the tax system like the Danes do. To create a competitive workforce with high living standards rather than one with low wages we have to do what the Scandinavians do – i.e tax extreme wealth hard to release land and property to raise workers’ living standards, to bring down the costs of productive labour and to fund the kind of social provisions needed to run a high skilled economy. Not great for international finance though so don’t hold your breath!

      • treborc

         I do not think Byrne is talking about that, he more then Likely spelled America wrong.

      • hp

        The Danes have an interesting ploy in taxing beer at a far lower rate than in neighbouring Sweden.  If you stop off at the garage before crossing the bridge, you’ll see crates of beer stacked high, and they will take Swedish currency.

    • Cari_esky

      Ideally it is best for an infant child to be cared for by a parent but most households need two incomes now, to get by.  Not unless we are prepared to pay for stay at home mums or dads. 

  • John Dore

    If we introduce regional benefits, as Liam Byrne has suggested, we can claw back a lot of money from benefit claimants in poor areas of the country by driving them out of their current homes and forcing them to move to cheaper accommodation, just like the Tories are doing with their “bedroom tax”. (We can also deny social housing to the unemployed amongst them as Ed Miliband suggested, allocating the few new social tenancies which become available only to members of the working poor who “do the right thing”.)  Then we can use this money to pay for childcare for the middle classes to enable both the father and the mother, who are doing “the right thing”, to go to work and enrich themselves subsidised by the cuts we make to the poorest of the poor. This could work for the Labour Party electorally speaking because we could appear to be sticking it to benefit claimants AND helping some members of the middle classes simultaneously by transferring money from the poorest to the better off. I bet Liam Byrne is working on plans like this as I type these words.  

    • John Dore

      Moderator please delete the above, I didn’t write the comment.

    • Lee Denham2

      <>

      this has got to be a joke, right?

      If it aint, then you’re in the wrong party mate

      • leeden

        If this guy is serious you can see why we will lose the next election – it sounds like the Sun

  • ThePurpleBooker

    I agree with Byrne. Let us scrap higher-rate pension tax relief to fund universal free childcare for all just like in Denmark. Let us also introduce Jobs Guarantee funded by an increase in the bank levy with people who refuse those jobs provided losing their benefits. A Danish model for welfare.

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