Has Labour rowed back on its promise of universal free childcare? Coming so soon after Rachel Reeves tempered the green new deal pledge, telling the Today programme that “everything we do must rest on these pillars of economic and fiscal responsibility”, it sounds like the kind of thing it would do.
Labour says it never promised universal free childcare in the first place, and I went back to the primary text, a Bridget Phillipson interview from April: it’s true. She talks about reimagining early years care as part of the education system, which makes it sound universal and free. But she also references Estonia as a model, where parents are guaranteed nursery places, but pay according to their means. The quality of the care is high, wages and qualifications are higher, and the sector is seen as a critical element of child development. This is in contrast to the Liz Truss and Jeremy Hunt model, where nursery is a place to park your child while you earn money, so the drive in the sector is to keep wages low and child:staff ratios high.
