A Treasury spokeswoman said that the aim of the scheme, announced in the Budget last week, is 'to make it as easy as possible for carers to be accredited while ensuring the safeguarding of quality'.
She added that it would apply to breakfast clubs and after-school clubs as well as nannies, who would not have to become registered childminders in order for the parents employing them to be eligible to claim childcare tax credits, as they do under the home carer scheme in England. The spokeswoman also stressed that it would be a voluntary scheme and that there would be 'no question of compelling nannies to join'.
The scheme is to be introduced from April 2005 and comes on top of other measures starting then that will improve the tax and National Insurance incentives for employer-supported childcare through a tax exemption on up to 50 a week of provision of formal childcare contracted either by the employer or paid for with childcare vouchers provided by the employer.
The Treasury has linked both schemes and said the Government would be consulting this summer 'on a new light-touch voluntary accreditation scheme to extend the range of good-quality childcare for financial support'.
A Department for Education and Skills spokesman said the proposal intended 'to extend the approval of unregulated care to enable more parents to access the childcare element of the Working Tax Credit and similar financial support, including tax/NI exemption for employer support for registered or approved childcare, being introduced from April 2005'. He added that the new scheme would 'enable providers of childcare and supervised activities in the currently unregulated childcare sector, such as breakfast clubs and home-based childcare, to be approved for tax credit purposes' and that this would mean that 'more parents can benefit from financial support with the cost of childcare'.
From June, parents using breakfast clubs run by schools and those paying for childcare provided by foster carers will be eligible for the childcare element of the Working Tax Credit.
But Rosemary Murphy, chief executive of the National Day Nur- series Association, warned that talking about a new light-touch voluntary accreditation scheme 'should sound alarm bells for everyone concerned about quality'. She said, 'We cannot move down a route that will give support to informal care, when the whole childcare strategy and tax credit system is based on national standards and regulation.'
The DfES spokesman, asked if the new scheme would be the first step to nanny registration and regulation, said that it depended on the result of the consultation. He added, 'Our proposals will seek the right balance between avoiding intrusion into private domestic arrangements and ensuring the approved childcarers are suitable.'
The Government also said last week that there would be 1,700 children's centres in England by March 2008, created by an additional 669m of funding for Sure Start, childcare and early years by 2007-08. These centres would be in all of the 20 per cent most disadvantaged wards in England by 2007-08, making Sure Start services available to 56 per cent of children who live there. There will also be a pilot scheme to extend a free part-time early education place to 6,000 two-year-old children in these areas.
