§ Mrs. BrookeTo asks the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what discussions he has had with providers of subsidies for child care places; and which three sources provided the highest subsidy for child care places in the latest year for which figures are available. [168367]
§ Margaret HodgeWe hold discussions with a range of organisations that help with the cost of child care in variety of ways, on both the supply and demand sides. Government provides the following substantial support for key groups of parents with their child care costs
The working tax credit where working parents can receive help with up to 70 per cent. of the costs of child care, subject to limits of £200 a week, or £135 a week for one child. This is paying out well over £700 million a year and can help families with incomes up to £42,500, where the family has two or more children;The Care to Learn scheme for teenage parents that can provide up to £5,000 a year for those returning to education;The new deal for lone parents can cover child care costs for lone parents going on training, attending interviews or working up to 16 hours a week, up to the same limits as the child care element of the Working Tax Credit;The Childcare Grant pays full time HE students with dependent children up to 85 per cent. of actual child care costs up to the same limits as for the WTC;The national health service provided over £70 million since April 2001 for child care for NHS staff, with a significant amount of that being capital costs for building nurseries or direct subsidies to parents to help with child care costs.Help with the cost of child care was considered as part of the child care review and in the Budget we announced that:
From April 2005 a new tax exemption will apply to both employer-contracted child care and child care vouchers to encourage more employers to support their staff with child care.Government will be consulting in Summer 2004 on a voluntary light touch approval scheme extending access to the child care element of the working tax credit to users of a broad range of additional types of child care, to be implemented by April 2005.It is not possible to make meaningful comparisons between organisations that subsidise the cost of child care but the recently published National Audit Office report (Early Years: Progress in developing high quality child care and early education accessible to all, HC 268, 1747W 27 February 2004) provides a helpful overview of the situation, showing, on page three, how much different sectors contributed to the total cost of child care across the country in 2002–03:
£ million Percentage Private individuals (parents) 3,010 45 Local government 2,540 38 DfES and Sure Start 680 10 Childcare Tax Credit 315 5 Private companies 140 2