Nursery World - Tax-free childcare

Alison Garnham, Chief Executive, Child Poverty Action Group

Is the Coalition being fair to families? The Bishop of Exeter and, he claims, many of his colleagues believe it is not being fair because a number of Coalition tax and benefit decisions have penalised stay-at-home parents.

This is a concern which is not confined to our Lords Spiritual. Paul Goodman has forcefully argued that the new childcare scheme announced in the Budget is unfair to stay-at-home parents. And it was a point rammed home to Nick Clegg in his LBC phone-in last week by an angry mum who asked the question: why not route support through child benefit which would give parents a choice as to whether they their spent the money on childcare, or on items that benefited their children in other ways?

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