Our system is an outlier in the developed world and it is holding back working families

Childcare costs are a painful subject for British parents. My husband Richard and I struggled to find affordable childcare when we had our firstborn son 32 years ago. We both had decent full-time jobs and assumed we could afford basic childcare, but a nursery place accounted for 70pc of my post-tax pay. We couldn’t afford to live on one salary, and no family members lived close enough to help.

A nursery near my office in the City was the least unaffordable option, and the most compatible with our working hours. I went back to work, feeling conflicted as so many new mothers do, but on a mission: to get promoted so I could contribute more to the family finances.

All these years later, many couples are in the exact same bind. According to Pregnant Then Screwed, a charity, one in four parents say their childcare costs more than 75pc of after-tax pay, with one in 10 either just breaking even, or paying to work. One in three parents take on debt to cover the costs.

With a strong sense of déjà vu, Richard and I are now seeing the next generation of our family experience the same predicament. Our eldest now has a young son of his own. We compared notes, and it’s clear the economics around his and his wife’s return to work are as finely-tuned as ours were.

According to children’s charity Coram, annual nursery fees across Britain average nearly £15,000 for a fulltime place for a child under two (and are 25pc higher in London). Of course, £ 15,000 after- tax requires an extra £20,000 income, even for a lower-rate taxpayer. That’s a huge sum. But while many new parents face the same tough economic decision as we did around whether and when they should return to work, if they have strong career prospects it can still be a good longer-term investment in their family’s future.

It should also benefit the economy. For many years, I raised the issue of childcare costs with various government ministers. Their reply was always along the lines of, “there’s no money to help”. That response revealed a deeply flawed mind set. Better childcare provision would help more people, especially women, provide for their family, pay taxes, improve Britain’s productivity and fulfil their career potential.

That’s the approach taken by other countries, especially across Europe and Scandinavia. In Germany, the average