Rishi Sunak warned he will pay at ballot box for ditching Liz Truss’s childcare support plans
Liz Truss has warned Rishi Sunak against scrapping her wide-reaching childcare reforms as senior backbenchers said it could cost the party votes at the next election.
Ms Truss was considering increasing free childcare support by 20 hours a week and ending mandated staff-child ratios in an attempt to help parents with spiralling costs.
But Mr Sunak abandoned his predecessor’s “big bang” shake-up last week, with the scale of reform now expected to be much smaller and he is no longer expected to change rules around provision for several months.
Ms Truss wanted to make a series of announcements before Christmas, but was ousted by her backbenchers in October after just 49 days in Downing Street.
Reforms will ‘boost growth and opportunity’
“Excessive bureaucracy is making childcare in England increasingly unaffordable for many parents,” a source close to the former prime minister told the Times.
“The system needs to be reformed in order to boost growth and opportunity. Junking Liz’s plans for this critical policy area seems economically and politically counterproductive.”
Four prominent Tory MPs who spoke to The Telegraph told Mr Sunak not to duck the issue and called on him to pursue far-reaching proposals.
Siobhan Baillie, the MP for Stroud who co-authored a report last autumn calling for radical reform, insisted childcare represented a “key kitchen table issue” for voters.
She said: “My view is we can’t go into another election unless we have a decent set of childcare reforms.
“If we’re trying to help people on a cost of living basis, and they’re telling us this is a second mortgage type expense, we’ve got to look quite carefully about whether we can make changes in the spring budget.”
Tories ‘should not run and hide’ on the issue
Robin Walker, the Tory chairman of the education select committee, urged Mr Sunak to make a “strong new offer” to the electorate and signalled he would have welcomed the extra 20 hours of support considered by Ms Truss.
“It would definitely be welcome to have a strong new childcare offer, both from the party perspective but more importantly from a government perspective and for the country – getting people back to work and helping to make sure that children are more school-ready.”
Nigel Mills, the MP for Amber Valley who sits on the work and pensions select committee, said his party should not “run and hide” on the issue, while Miriam Cates, the MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, called for “blue sky thinking”.
The cost of childcare has soared in the past decade amid a stark drop in the number of facilities offering places, and is often cited by MPs as one of their constituents’ biggest concerns.
A Department for Education spokesman said: “We continue to review all options to improve the cost, choice and availability of high-quality childcare for working parents, which remains a priority for this Government.”
