Jeremy Hunt has defended the speed of the rollout of his Budget offer of free childcare for working parents with children under the age of five.
The policy, announced in Wednesday's budget (March 15), will not be rolled out in full until September 2025. Mr Hunt said it could save families around £6,500 a year on childcare.
He told Sky New on Thursday morning (March 16): “This is the biggest transformation in childcare in my lifetime. It is a huge change and we are going to need thousands more nurseries, thousands more schools offering provision they don’t currently offer, thousands more childminders.
READ MORE: When will extended free childcare for all under 5s start and who is eligible?
“We are going as fast as we can to get the supply in the market to expand. But it is the right thing to do because we have one of the most expensive childcare systems in the world and we know it is something that is a huge worry, for women in particular, that they have this cliff-edge when maternity leave ends after nine months, no help until the child turns three and that can often be career ending.
“So I think it is the right thing to do for many women, to introduce these reforms and we are introducing them as quickly as we can because we want to remove those barriers to work.”
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The extended childcare policy will start with parents of two-year-olds given 15 hours of free care from April 2024. Then from September 2024, that 15 hours will be extended to all children from nine months up, until all eligible parents can access the extra support from 2025.
The news has not gone down well with all parents, with those tackling expensive childcare bills hoping for some immediate help. Samantha Meehan and her husband Michael both work full time and currently have a childcare bill of £12,000 a year for their 14-month-old son Joseph.
They had hoped for some immediate change from the Chancellor's announcement, but instead say it's 'gone down like a lead balloon' and will leave them struggling for another year. Samantha, from Hyde, Tameside, said she was 'ecstatic' when she originally heard about the plans.
She added: "We recently got notification that our nursery was increasing its fees by £5.10 a day. We physically don't have the additional £125 a month so I had a complete breakdown about it. We don't have family that can help with childcare so were in a headlock with it.
"We are absolutely desperate for help and I honestly thought with it being announced now, it would be this April. It's just another year we will struggle."
Samantha, a civil servant, said: "I am completely aware it was our choice to have a child, but the fees are increasing to the point it's making us consider whether it's worth working at all, and we're not in minimum paid work. We've worked hard to be in a good financial position to have a child, but it's just not enough."
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