High-earning parents would no longer lose state support under plans from Kemi Badenoch to scrap the £100,000 salary cap on funded childcare.
Under the Conservative proposal, any parent employed for at least 16 hours a week would qualify for 30 hours of free care weekly, with Mrs Badenoch insisting that “you shouldn’t be punished for working more”.
Party officials calculate the policy would cost £700m a year, funded through reductions in civil service headcount across arm’s-length public bodies. They suggest that shrinking organisations such as Arts Council England and the Environment Agency could generate £1.6bn in savings by the end of the decade, with NHS organisations excluded from the job cuts.
At present, parents of young children can claim 30 hours of funded care provided both earn under £100,000 annually. However, if a single parent’s income exceeds this threshold, the entire entitlement is withdrawn.
Unveiling the pledge ahead of the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham this weekend, Tory leader Mrs Badenoch described the rules as “absurd” and a disincentive to work more.
“Conservatives believe that you shouldn’t be punished for working more, but this childcare cliff edge does exactly that,” she said.
“I’m a mum of three and I’ve had to make the same choices many families have had to make on work and childcare. Those choices are difficult already; the government should not be making them harder.
“No one should be turning down a promotion or a pay rise because they literally cannot afford to earn more.
“It is often women who end up carrying more of the childcare responsibility so a system that makes it harder for them to progress in their careers is not helping families, it is not helping women and it is definitely not helping the economy.”
Asked if someone earning this amount would still get the entitlement, the Tory leader told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “As I said, it doesn’t matter what you earn. We don’t want you to be punished for earning, for working harder.
“What we’re trying to do is grow our economy. We don’t want people making choices that are actually stopping them from working.”
Asked why she was not considering a taper instead of abolishing the £100,000 threshold entirely, which could see taxpayers subsidising very wealthy parents, she said: “This cliff edge is at 100,000.
“The kind of people that we’re really targeting are a deputy head teacher who wants to become a head teacher. She goes from 85 to 110,000. She’s got three kids.
“All of a sudden, she’s losing tens of thousands of pounds.”
Asked whether some kind of means-test might be right to consider, Mrs Badenoch said: “I believe that the number of people who have very small children who are earning tens of millions of pounds is negligible.
“What I think we need to focus on is the reality of most people out at work today, and what you’re going to see at this conference is how we’re having policies for everybody.
“Whether you don’t earn, whether you earn a little, whether you earn a bit, whether you earn a lot, we want everyone in this country to know that if you are out there working, the Conservative Party has got a plan for you that we’re going to get fit and working again.”
In response to the proposal, a Labour Party spokesperson said: “No government has ever put so much focus or investment into the early years as this Labour government.
“It tells you everything you need to know about the Tories that the first of their own tax policies they want to unpick is one helping higher earners.
“They clearly don’t want to admit that they set the thresholds in the first place.
“Labour is already helping parents with 30 hours of government-funded childcare and expanding free primary school breakfast clubs, as part of our wider plan to give families more breathing space.
“Through our Childcare Review we will reform early years provision and further support working families.”
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