A COALITION of charities and campaigners have criticised the lack of support for parents in the Autumn Statement.
Parents groups and women's charities including Pregnant then Screwed and the Fawcett Society have called on the Chancellor to increase funding to early years childcare and education providers to prevent the cost of childcare increasing further.
They stated that while they welcome the increase to the living wage, a failure to also increase funding for childcare may push up fees for parents and result in more providers closing their doors as they struggle to pay their staff.
Clarity has also been requested over whether parental leave payments will increase in line with benefits.
We have written to Jeremy Hunt, following yesterday's Autumn Statement, as it did not consider the needs of parents. In fact, it will make things even more difficult for working families, triggering higher levels of economic inactivity amongst this group https://t.co/pK14otAlKS
— PregnantThenScrewed (@PregnantScrewed) November 18, 2022
In a letter to the Jeremy Hunt the coalition stated: "Across the developed world, parents in the UK pay the highest proportion of income for early years childcare and education, while Government investment per child languishes behind Estonia, Slovenia and Latvia.
"Yet, there was no mention of this in the Autumn Statement. According to the Centre for Progressive Policy there are 1.7 million women who are prevented from taking on more hours of paid work due to childcare issues. Fixing this could boost the economy by £28 billion.
"Yesterday’s statement included many references to those who are economically inactive.
"The Government’s own data from 2018 found that there were 870,000 stay at home mums who wanted to work but couldn’t due to childcare costs and availability.
"Increasing the national living wage, but not increasing the funding to early years childcare and education providers, and failing to increase childcare tax credits, will only see more parents become economically inactive."
In Scotland, funding for early learning and childcare is free to parents due to funding from the Scottish Government.
At present, parents of 3 and 4-year-olds get around 30 hours per-week of funded childcare, with some 2-year-olds also being eligible.
The Scottish Government also supported families with childcare costs over the summer holidays, with one local authority providing more than 8000 hours of free childcare to families who would otherwise struggle to afford it.
However, the First Minister has also criticised the Chancellor's budget for failing to account for the inflationary pressures on Scotland.
