Lack of childcare “threatening jobs at a critical time”, warns Labour

Labour’s Tulip Siddiq has warned that the government’s failure to provide sufficient childcare support for parents to return to work is “threatening jobs at a critical time for children and the economy”.

Responding to a survey carried out by the Early Years Alliance, the shadow minister for early years reiterated the opposition’s call for “targeted financial support to save the nurseries and childminders” in the Covid crisis.

The research by the largest early years membership organisation in the UK found that half of parents of under-fives feel that the government has not done enough to support parents to access the childcare they need during the pandemic.

Commenting on the findings, Siddiq said: “Having failed to ensure that childcare was available for many key workers at the height of the pandemic, the government is now asking parents to return to work without sufficient childcare support.

“This incompetence is putting working families in an impossible position and threatening jobs at a critical time for children and the economy.”

A third of respondents to the survey reported that difficulties in accessing childcare has had a negative impact on their work life, and one in ten said that they have not been able to access childcare at all since the easing of lockdown.

The shadow minister added: “Childcare is essential for our economic recovery and children’s life chances, yet the sector is on the brink of collapse after years of underfunding.

“Labour has repeatedly called for targeted financial support to save the nurseries and childminders that families rely on – now the government must listen.”

The party warned in July that the government needed to focus financial support on the struggling childcare sector, or risk seeing a “wave of nursery closures” as a result of the coronavirus crisis.

Analysis by Labour suggested that childcare costs have risen between two and a half and three times as fast as wages since 2010, and that 19,000 childcare providers in England are at risk of closing in the next year.