Yvette Cooper calls for 'childcare revolution'

Ms Cooper, who this week launches a formal bid to become the next Labour leader, said that no party had set out a bold enough vision for families' futures and wants Labour to lead a ‘revolution in childcare and family support’.

Childcare was now ‘essential infrastructure for a modern economy’, she said, and for too long childcare and family policy have been seen as ‘soft optional extras’.

Ms Cooper is calling for extra family support for younger families, so that parents have more choice about returning to work, working part-time or staying at home.

Writing in The Independent, Ms Cooper said, ‘Our childcare policy at the election was popular but limited. I want Labour to lead a revolution in childcare and family support. We should campaign for universal childcare – as other countries, including Scandinavia, have. That means breakfast clubs, after-school clubs, holiday clubs and free nursery places and childcare available full-time not just for three- and four-year-olds but two-year-olds too.’

Ms Cooper backs 30 hours of free childcare a week, but wants to go further than the Conservatives’ manifesto pledge and make it available for all children from the age of two. She said that the plan would need to be 'fully funded' as Labour had done with the bank levy before the election.

‘The Tories don’t have the policy answers,’ she said. ‘They have never taken seriously the pressures families face. Tax credits and child benefit were cut by billions and George Osborne has them in his sights again.

‘Over 600 of the Surestart centres I worked to get opened as a minister have been closed. Labour’s Department for Children, Schools and Families has been stripped down to Education. And David Cameron’s conversion to childcare policies is late and unfunded.’

In tomorrow’s Queen’s Speech, the Conservatives will announce legislation to extend the free entitlement from 15 to 30 hours a week for three- and four-year-olds of working parents.