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Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has said that Labour will not commit to continuing the Government’s £4bn plans to expand free childcare.
The plans, which saw eligible parents of one and two-year-olds offered 30 hours of free childcare a week by 2025, were first announced by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in his 2023 spring Budget.
But concerns have been raised over the future of the plans due to staffing shortages in the sector, with some estimates suggesting that around 100,000 extra staff will be required to meet the additional demand as a result of the offering.
Ms Phillipson, who announced last year that Labour would carry out a review of early years provisions in England if the party wins power, told BBC Newsnight on Tuesday that she did not believe that the sector would currently be able to provide the additional places needed.
“This is Liz Truss all over again. They’ve got no plan about how they make it happen. I think they risk crashing the childcare system just as they crashed the economy under Liz Truss,” she said.
“We’ve heard from providers that they are just going to really struggle to make this happen.
“And what we hear from parents right across the country is that when they go and try to access these entitlements, these commitments that the Conservatives have made, the places just aren’t there.”
She declined to confirm to the programme if Labour would adopt the Government’s scheme if it wins the next election, claiming that the current plan is “just a tacking on of additional commitments that I don’t think is working, either for providers or for parents”.
Currently, working parents of children aged three and four are entitled to 30 hours of childcare a week, but from April, working parents of two-year-olds can access 15 hours of childcare support, with the rollout expanded to 30 hours for children aged under five from September 2025.
Last month, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan was unable to guarantee the Government’s promise of free childcare for working parents will be delivered on schedule.
She said she was “confident” the childcare pledge would be met but argued that she was “not in control” of the individual childcare businesses responsible for expanding childcare provision.
“Guaranteeing something in the future is something that you can never do. All you can do is put all the plans in place and then react if you need to,” she told Sky News.
“I am really confident that all the things that we have done will mean that every parent who wants to have a place is going to have a place.
“But what you are asking me is to personally guarantee something on behalf of tens of thousands of businesses that are working out there to grow the capacity and to make sure that we have got the people in place.”
