Drakeford challenged to match childcare support
FIRST Minister Mark Drakeford yesterday repeatedly refused to commit to matching the level of new childcare support in England announced by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt last week.
In his Spring Budget, Mr Hunt pledged to offer 30 hours of free childcare to working parents of children over the age of nine months in England at a cost of £5bn.
The Welsh Government will receive additional money because of the policy in England through the Barnett Formula, but it is up to the Welsh Government how this is allocated.
Welsh Labour’s deal with Plaid in the Senedd in 2021 had included a pledge to extend free childcare here to all two-year-olds.
During First Minister’s Questions in the Senedd yesterday, leader of the opposition Andrew RT Davies asked the First Minister three times if he would introduce the expansion of free childcare to one and two-yearolds.
Mr Davies asked Mr Drakeford: “Can you confirm that the Welsh Government will be bringing forward a policy that will have a childcare offer for nine months to two years,
and then, obviously, building on what is already the offer here in Wales?”
Mr Drakeford said that the Chancellor’s announcement was “an attempt in England to catch up with services that are already available here in Wales. It’s quite certainly not the other way around”, adding: “The promises – the aspirations, we might say – that the Chancellor set out, all of them carefully calibrated to make sure they land the other side of a general election, are simply attempting to catch up with the services that are already available here in Wales.”
He said that families with three and
four-year-olds in Wales receive 30 hours of childcare for 48 weeks of the year, whereas in England it is 38 weeks of the year.
Mr Drakeford then pointed to the co-operation agreement with Plaid Cymru where 3,000 more parents in Wales are able to take advantage of that childcare offer, adding: “We already do far more in Wales than they do in England and they’ll be very lucky indeed if they catch up with where we are already.”
But although the Welsh Government is currently doing more than the UK Government, once Mr Hunt’s plans come into force, parents in England will receive more support than their counterparts in Wales.
Pressing the point, Mr Davies asked: “Can we have clarity around this question? Will you deliver childcare for one and two-year-olds?”
In response, the First Minister said that in Wales the Welsh Government was investing “£70m in capital investment in this sector, so that it can grow and take more children into childcare. There is not a penny piece, not a single penny piece, in the Chancellor’s announcement of capital investment in the childcare sector in England. We will provide 100% rate relief for the sector here in Wales – £10m in rate relief to support the sector.”
He then added: “I’m not copying anybody else; this is devolved Wales where we make our own decisions. And the decisions we are making will do far, far more for far, far more families, and not on an aspirational basis, not on the basis that this may happen some time in the distance when you know you won’t be in power, we will be doing it in this Senedd term, with the money and the determination that this Senedd provides for it.”
The Welsh Government has pledged to extend free childcare for all two-year-olds, but at this point has only expanded Flying Start in less wealthy areas.