“Family matters,” Rishi Sunak declared as he promised to create a “better future for our children and grandchildren” in his first speech of the new year this week. He is right, of course. What happens at the very start of life determines outcomes later on. Good early years education, including support for parents, holds the key to levelling the playing field between rich and poor while helping every young person develop their full potential.
But the prime minister’s plans to improve childcare and nursery provision are opaque. There was only a brief mention of “family hubs”—local centres to support parents—in his big “vision” speech setting out his priorities for Number 10. Too many parents are giving up work because they can no longer afford spiralling nursery costs. The UK has the third most expensive childcare system in the world and it is also increasingly chaotic. A fifth of families are struggling to find someone to look after their children because so many providers have closed.
Sunak has been criticised by his predecessor Liz Truss for scrapping her childcare reforms. Kit Malthouse, her short-lived education secretary, urged Sunak to “push the go button as soon as possible” on Truss’s plan, insisting that “the current system is a complicated Heath Robinson affair that means no one, parents or providers, is happy.”
