The answer to Labour’s Reform problem? Childcare
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3 min read
Being a dad is one of the things I love most in the world.
One of the surprising things about being a parent is that after a long day, as one child pokes the other’s eye out, while the other chucks food on the floor, I so often find my kids energising. They force you to focus on the moment and see what is important – key in our profession.
Yet in this country, we make having kids so much more expensive and exhausting than it needs to be. My kids are one and three, and despite holding jobs as an academic and an MP, my wife and I still spend a significant amount of our income on childcare. All parents know that it costs a small fortune, and that should concern all of us.
Childcare may be a surprising but powerful part of how Labour beats the populist right
Since being elected to Parliament, I have been struck by the breadth of the consensus that our childcare system is broken. While brilliant campaigners like Stella Creasy and groups like Pregnant then Screwed have led the charge, it should also matter to men, working people whose finances are stretched, and those who live in rural as well as urban areas.
Reforming childcare is a political issue, something which is often overlooked. At the general election, more people voted for Reform UK than for the Liberal Democrats. In my constituency of Makerfield, Reform won their sixth-highest vote share in any constituency in the country. Reform racked up votes not only in former Conservative strongholds but also in areas with strong, historic Labour ties, like post-mining areas.
Many of my constituents felt a deep sense of disillusionment, a scepticism that politicians can make any tangible difference to their lives. Scores of working parents who told me they were voting for Reform specifically raised the issue of childcare. Family, in whatever form, really matters in weaving the fabric of a community and a country. In policy, we should show that we value family, children, and the joy of raising them.
Childcare may be a surprising but powerful part of how Labour beats the populist right. If Labour’s job is to deliver for people who do not believe we can, childcare is one area where we can make a tangible, urgent difference with policy. To win back disillusioned voters, we must do more than restore control over our borders, important though that is.
There is also a powerful economic case for radical reforms to childcare. In this country, dual-income parents spend more of their wages on childcare than anywhere else in the G7. My constituents feel this acutely. The Centre for Population Change estimates that poorer households spend an average of 20 to 30 per cent of their income on childcare, compared to 10 per cent for wealthier ones. While this issue affects all parents, the burden is not shared equally.
Better and more affordable childcare is essential to boosting productivity, getting more people back into work, and providing families with more disposable income to put back into the economy. Better childcare leads to higher-quality early years education, breaking down the barriers to opportunity that emerge in the earliest years of life.
The Labour Growth Group, which I was proud to help establish, recognises that growth means building communities and services too. Fuelling growth through building is about delivering visible change – visible change that is essential to restoring trust in politics. Childcare may be just the place to start. Over the coming months and years, that is what I will be campaigning for.
Josh Simons is Labour MP for Makerfield
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