The nursery funding chaos exposes Britain’s fundamental weakness

Conservatives must prove before the election that their free childcare pledge is not just a soundbite

Working in a nursery must be one of the most exhausting jobs going. Five words into writing this I see the name of my daughter’s nursery flash up on my phone – she has just vomited so I have to collect her, forgoing the day of childcare and with it my deadline for this column.

I feel for the teachers who have to make these calls almost daily, trying to get an already difficult job done while battling a revolving door of viruses. I am hugely grateful to them, but often wonder why they put up with it given the low pay, enormous responsibility and relentless conditions. It’s hardly an original thought. More than half (57pc) of nursery staff are considering quitting in the next year, according to research by Leeds University, while nursery closures in England rose by 50pc last year compared with the year before.

That’s not a great look for Rishi Sunak as the Government edges closer towards the first phase of its flagship free-childcare plan. The pledge to widen the free childcare net for families earning £8,670 to £100,000 a year from April cannot turn out to be just a soundbite. Nursery workers are underpaid and undervalued.

Staff-to-child ratios are rising, raising safety concerns. Brexit has exacerbated recruitment problems. Families with children at nursery are being pushed into debt or only breaking even. And there are growing ethical concerns about the rising number of profit-hungry private equity groups now in this space – especially given how that went in the care home sector.

The UK has some of the most expensive childcare in the world, so why is it such a mess? It’s a question that’s been asked over and over again.

In countries with similar sized economies such as France, a significant proportion of costs are met by the government. Here, parents are being asked to pay as much as £400 just to join a nursery waiting list. Competition for places is so fierce that people started telling me to secure a nursery spot when I was just a few months pregnant.

The Government is hoping it has a crowd-pleasing answer up its sleeve, right on cue for an election year. Children aged over two will get 15 hours of free childcare a week from April, expanding to those aged nine months from September and under-fives a year later. It’s an ambitious plan, but after decades of chronic underfunding it’s one that is described as delusional and impossible to deliver. The staffing and infrastructure just isn’t there.

The Government has responded to concerns with a £1,000 golden hello to get thousands of workers through those nursery doors. The half-hearted fix is emblematic of the Government’s approach to problems. A one-off cash prize for new workers simply isn’t going to cut it. The industry’s staff shortage crisis is so severe that experts think that as many as 100,000 more people will be needed by September 2025 to make this plan work.

Wages and conditions need to change dramatically, and that isn’t going to happen in a few months. Let’s get real: is this giveaway really on track? Education Secretary Gillian Keegan can’t quite bring herself to say it, telling Sky News on Sunday that she cannot guarantee that the Government’s pledge will be met on time for all parents because she’s “not in control of all the bits”. It is yet another example of the Government imposing something and putting nothing behind it. We’ve already been here with housing. The 2019 Tory manifesto pledge to build 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s is looking increasingly fanciful. Widely expected to fall short (the target has never been hit), it was dropped as a compulsory house-building plan at the end of 2022 and is now merely an ambition.

Another house-building blow came in December, when authorities were told they do not have to build on the green belt to meet targets, opening the Tories up to criticism that they were caving into pressure from MPS in shire constituencies at the expense of young workers. These are short-sighted moves from a Government that has had 16 housing ministers in 13 years.

Housing is in crisis. It lags behind other Western European countries for availability of homes but also on affordability and condition. Charities warn that there had been a huge increase in homeless young people.

Housing is not the only example of political flip-flopping. But it does, like childcare, mean a huge amount to the under-40s. The Tories know that these areas could hold the key to election votes, but young people will see straight through any chaotic rehashing of priorities before a general election.

A poll late last year showed voters have little faith that childcare costs under a Tory government will come down. Labour is already playing on this doubt in its advertising, posting a clip on social media at the weekend of Jeremy Hunt announcing the policy before cutting to Keegan questioning if it will happen. A £1,000 golden hello won’t fix years of political neglect.

The Tories don’t have much longer to prove their plans for the young aren’t just hocus-pocus.