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Thursday, September 9, 2010 |
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Lib Dem conference: Childcare shakeup plans outlined by Kramer |
by Helene Mulholland www.guardian.co.uk - added 15/09/2008 |
This article is a discussion of the Liberal Democrats ideas for the shake-up of childcare provision in the UK.
The Liberal Democrats are considering radical plans to extend parental leave to 18 months and provide up to 25 hours of free universal childcare a week for children between 18 months and five years old, it emerged today.
Susan Kramer, the Lib Dem's spokesperson on families, outlined her plans in a move that goes further than proposals laid out by Labour and the Conservatives.
Plans under consideration would allow parents to take a total of 18 months' parental leave between them. The maximum either parent could take would be one year to allay industry concerns about the impact on business.
That means single parents could lose out, although a party aide said Kramer was considering extending the extra leave to someone close to the parent in such cases.
Kramer told delegates she was considering a plan to provide "at least 20 or 25" hours of free weekly childcare for every child from the age of 18 months until they start school to boost early years development.
In a radical move, the benefit would be targeted at both working and non-working parents.
Admitting it was a "challenging target", Kramer told delegates that
instead of treating childcare as "just watch over baby", the free provision would help children in workless households. They are seen as the most likely to lose out on education because of a lack of stimulation and opportunities to develop at home.
She told delegates 96% of children aged three already used the early years education provision on offer.
"The 20-hour childcare provision would bring to a much younger group the commitment to early years education," she said.
"In effect we would be extending the early years development focus, which today starts at the age of three, to all children from 18 months."
Kramer said the free childcare "took seriously" the desire of parents of young children to work part-time.
"Mums who are in work full-time would often leap at the chance to cut back to part-time if only it was an accepted career strategy, treated as a normal work pattern by employers," said Kramer, who was appointed by Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg to take a cross-departmental role looking at the needs of families.
She told delegates the Lib Dems had suffered from a "strange
inhibition" about its family policies because of a strongly held belief
that the power of government to interfere with the personal lives of
individuals should be strictly limited.
While Liberal Democrats did not believe the role of government was to select one family structure as the "ideal choice", said Kramer, the party did believe it should provide support and opportunity for "real families as they exist in all their variations and complexity" – traditional or cohabiting, gay or straight.
She contrasted her proposals with the "slow and stilted" progress under Labour, and attacked the Conservatives' talk of families she said was always prefixed with the term "traditional".
Kramer said Labour had achieved "little" for fathers, despite the fact that the absence of fathers was seen as a major cause of social breakdown in Britain.
"Labour has made progress but it has been slow and stilted and has failed to do anything beyond tinker at the edges of a system that is failing families every day," she said.
Under government plans, maternity leave is due to be extended to 52 weeks by 2010. After the first 26 weeks, parents can choose whether the mother or the father stays at home.
Citing Tory leader David Cameron's focus on tax breaks for marriages, Kramer said: "They are stuck in a mid-20th century time warp."
The Conservative party announced flexible parental leave plans in March that would see parents free to divide up the maternity leave allocation as they want after the first 14 weeks.
Couples could either split the remaining 38 weeks between them or both could stay at home together for as long as 26 weeks. |
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