Why make a fuss over childcare subsidy for the very rich?
![[Image: BBC]](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/140319childcare.jpg)
[Image: BBC]
If ever there was a government guilty of false advertising, it is the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition.
Yesterday the TV news was full of a childcare subsidy scheme that, we are told, is worth up to £2,000 per family.
The only problem: You have to be paying £10,000 or more to get the full amount as only 20 per cent of the care cost is refunded.
The subsidy is available to working parents – not only poor working parents who need the help, but to any couple whose aggregate earnings are anything up to £300,000 per year.
How many of your friends (who are parents) earn that much?
How many of them spend £10,000 a year on childcare? For most of the families I know, that amount would make it their greatest expense – around one-third of their total income.
The impression I get is that most people have been forced to come to their own arrangements with family or friends. This subsidy will not change that. It doesn’t provide enough.
Up to 1.9 million families with children under 12 may well benefit from this – but most of them will get pennies, not thousands of pounds.
The average amount available to each family from the £750 million fund is £400, but with some taking thousands, most will get much less.
The real beneficiaries will be the very rich; the highest earners who do not need any subsidy at all. But the scheme has been dressed up as a gift for everyone.
By May next year, most families will be more than £6,000 per year worse-off.
This is an attempt to distract you from that distressing fact.
Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
Vox Political won’t get a childcare subsidy.
We don’t receive any funding other than contributions from readers.
Without YOUR help, we cannot survive.
You can make a one-off donation here:
Alternatively, you can buy the first Vox Political book,
Strong Words and Hard Times
in either print or eBook format here:
Gary Gibbon at Channel 4 agrees with you…http://blogs.channel4.com/gary-gibbon-on-politics/magic-numbers-free-expansion-childcare/27845 Hard to square the priority given to this with the way political backs are turned from the terrible problems faced by the families coming into food banks in this London borough. Why is most of the media ignoring the fact that money has been found at a ‘time of austerity’ for a policy that will most benefit the already-rich?
Tsk Tsk you’re not supposed to notice that it is another tax cut for the rich which will have to be paid for by………
Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog.