Sunday 22 September 2013

Labour seeks bank levy for childcare

Source BBC News@ tienganhvui.com


Child playingLabour claims that families have lost £1,500 in childcare support since 2010


Labour is to announce plans to raise taxes on banks to fund free childcare for working parents of three and four year olds.


Shadow chancellor Ed Balls plans to raise the banking levy by £800m a year.


Parents of three and four year olds currently get 15 hours of free care a week, but Mr Balls wants to increase this to 25 hours for working parents.


Meanwhile Mr Balls has asked the government's spending watchdog to review his party's economic plans.


Extra 10 hours

At the Labour Party conference later, the shadow chancellor will claim families have lost £1,500 a year in childcare support under the current government.


The extra 10 hours of free childcare proposed by Mr Balls would be made available to households where all parents are in work - whether single parents or couples.


He is expected to say: "For the first time, parents will be able to work part-time without having to worry about the cost of childcare.


"Childcare is a vital part of our economic infrastructure that, alongside family support and flexible working, should give parents the choice to stay at home with their children when they are very small and to balance work and family as they grow older.


"But for many families, high childcare costs mean that it doesn't even add up to go to work. So to make work pay for families, we must act."


Bank levy

Mr Balls will claim the government's banking levy has raised £1.6bn less than expected.


Ed BallsEd Balls will say going to work "doesn't even add up" for some families


He will say: "At a time when resources are tight and families are under pressure, that cannot be right. So I can announce today the next Labour government will increase the bank levy rate to raise an extra £800m a year."


In June 2010, Chancellor George Osborne announced that banks operating in the UK would be subject to a levy - an annual tax on their balance sheets - in a joint move between the UK, France and Germany.


The idea was to raise more than £8bn for the Treasury over four years, and Mr Osborne it was "fair and right" that banks should contribute to the economic recovery given that the financial crisis began in banking.


Economic 'stunt'

Labour has already promised all parents of primary school children will be able to get "wraparound" childcare - meaning children can be left at school from 8am to 6pm - if it wins the 2015 election.


On Saturday, Ed Miliband said he would "legislate for a primary school guarantee that every school is an 8am to 6pm school", though party officials said schools could band together to offer the opening hours between them.


They said the scheme would be paid for from existing schools budgets, which Labour said had already been raised for the purpose by the last government.


In a separate move, Mr Balls said on Sunday that he had written to the Office for Budget Responsibility to ask it to review his pledges for the economy - but it said it could not under its existing remit.


Andrew Tyrie, Conservative chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, said such a review could "improve the quality of public debate" but Treasury minister Sajid Javid called Labour's request a "stunt".





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