Child Care (Hansard, 11 January 1999)

§ 13. Mrs. Sylvia Heal (Halesowen and Rowley Regis)
What plans he has to assist those parents wishing to work with the costs of child care. [63200]

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Angela Eagle)
Parents need access to affordable, good-quality child care to help balance work and family life successfully. We have already increased the help available for child care costs through in-work benefits, and the Government have introduced the Working Families Tax Credit Bill, which will provide for a much more generous child care tax credit.

§ Mrs. Heal
I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Is she aware, however, of the particular difficulty of lone parents in finding affordable good-quality child care? In the Rowley Regis ward of my constituency, one in seven families with children are lone-parent families who have 19 to pay, on average, £15 a day for private full-day child care. Will she tell me what help the Government will give to lone parents in my constituency to solve that problem?

§ Angela Eagle
The help takes a variety of guises, the first of which, as I said earlier, is a new national child care strategy. That strategy will create many more child care places across the country, to ensure that affordable high-quality child care is available to all who need it. Secondly, the new child care tax credit, which is part of the working families tax credit, will replace the old Tory disregard—which was used by only 5 per cent. of people—and provide tax credits of up to 70 per cent. of child care costs. Therefore, not only will we make child care available across the United Kingdom to those who need it, but we will make it affordable.

§ Miss Julie Kirkbride (Bromsgrove)
The Minister might remember that, at the end of 1998, the Government produced a White Paper on the family which brazenly declared that, on balance, it was better that children were brought up in two-parent families than in any other form of family. Why then do the Government seek to discriminate against two-parent families in which the mother chooses to stay at home to look after the children? Under the Government's proposals, those families will 20 receive absolutely no help or money from the state, whereas all the other alternative forms of family will receive help with child care.

§ Angela Eagle
The idea is to make work pay and to give extra help to those who are low paid, so that they can go out to work and support their family, and so that they are more better off than they could ever be on benefit. All our policies are focused on that very clear aim.

§ Mr. Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford, South)
It is clear that this Government are doing more on child care than the previous Government, who did nothing to address the problem. Will my hon. Friend consider the need to reassure single parents, especially mothers, who worry about what will happen when their children are ill? It is all very well having child care places, but the problems caused by a child's illness can act as a disincentive to going out to work.

§ Angela Eagle
Our fairness at work legislation will incorporate the European directives on family policy, which will introduce parental leave and family leave to allow for such eventualities. The Government are committed to more family friendly employment policies and, increasingly, employers are realising that it is better to allow their labour force to balance work and family more appropriately than the Conservatives' policies allowed.