![]() 'Well, he was right in September when he said that.' He said it was crazy and it would save lives to get rid of that cap. 'He seems to have changed his mind overnight on that one. '(Shadow health secretary) West Streeting said we should get rid of the cap on pensions, the lifetime allowance. 'It is something, incidentally, that Labour advocated last September. Labour has vowed to reverse the move, with complaints that it only benefits the 'wealthy few'.Ĭritics say the policy will cost £1.2billion in revenue and only lift employment by 15,000.īut Mr Hunt shot back: 'I think if you talk to anyone in the NHS, they will say doctors leaving the workforce because of pension rules is a big problem. The Chancellor is also embroiled in a bitter row over abolishing the £1.1million lifetime cap on tax-free pension pots. 'There has been a big shift from spending on poor children to a universal offer for those with working parents.' 'While there are also welcome reforms to ease life for Universal Credit claimants making use of childcare, this is the logical end point of a journey which started by focusing on early education and reducing inequalities at the start of school, but has ended with an overwhelming focus on providing childcare to working families to reduce their costs and allow more parents to work. 'The main effect will be to reduce the cost of childcare for those working parents who would have paid for childcare anyway. 'The impact this will have on labour supply is highly uncertain, though the OBR score it as the biggest policy contribution to increasing numbers in work. 'But it also reflects a major change in both the scope of the welfare state and our expectations of what it should provide.' 'That brings risks for the childcare market, if provision is not funded appropriately. 'We will soon be spending over £8billion a year, with the government paying for over 80 per cent of all formal childcare for pre-schoolers in England. At the start of the century very little pre-school childcare was paid for by government. 'This is a major expansion of the welfare state. Presenting the IFS analysis this morning, Mr Johnson said: 'If this budget is remembered for anything, and it should be remembered for this, it will be for the extension of free childcare to working families with children under three. '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.' ![]() '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. 'We are going as fast as we can to get the supply in the market to expand. '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. 'This is the biggest transformation in childcare in my lifetime,' he said. Mr Hunt told Sky News that the government was going 'as fast as we can' on childcare. There is also a commitment for all schools to offer breakfast clubs and wraparound care, but that will not be implemented until September 2026. While higher-earner benefit the most from the change, universal credit rules will be tweaked to remove barriers to lower-income families accessing childcare. Most parents will get 30 hours free from when children are nine months old, instead of four years old, but the policy will be phased in - not taking full effect until September 2025. The assessment came as the Chancellor fended off criticism that the vaunted new childcare provision for under-threes will not be implemented fully for more than two years - saying ministers are moving as fast as they can. 'The main effect will be to reduce the cost of childcare for those working parents who would have paid for childcare anyway,' he said. In its traditional post-Budget analysis, the IFS pointed out that taxpayers are now set to cover 80 per cent of all formal childcare in England, at a cost of around £8billion per year.ĭirector Paul Johnson said there was a step change in the 'scope' of the state's involvement to a 'universal' system, highlighting that the impact on encouraging parents back to work was 'highly uncertain'. Jeremy Hunt's childcare bonanza amounts to a 'major expansion of the welfare state', according to a respected think-tank.
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