Plans to introduce a childcare voucher system are to be put out to a 12-week consultation on Monday, the Sunday Telegraph has reported.
Under the scheme, families with two working parents earning less than £150,000 each would be able to claim back up to £1,200 a year per child.
The government says the scheme, which was first announced in March, will benefit 2.5m working families.
Critics have argued, though, that it will penalise stay-at-home parents.
Begins in 2015The UK has some of the highest childcare costs in the world, with many people with two or more children saying it does not make financial sense for both parents to work.
When the scheme was announced, Prime Minister David Cameron said the plans, expected to cost £1.4bn, would be a "boost direct to the pockets of hard-working families".
- Parents will be able to open an online voucher account with a voucher provider and have their payments topped up by government.
- For every 80p families pay in, the government will put in 20p up to the annual limit on costs for each child of £1,200.
- Parents will be able to use the vouchers for any Ofsted regulated childcare in England and the equivalent bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
- The scheme will initially only be open to pay for children under five
- The scheme is expected to benefit 2.5 million families.
- Parents using the existing childcare voucher system will be able to continue using that scheme instead
- Full details of the new scheme will be proposed in a consultation before being finalised.
But there has been strong criticism of the scheme.
It was widely publicised when Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was accused of unfairly targeting "stay-at-home mums" by a caller to his weekly radio phone-in on London's LBC radio.
Details of the scheme will be set out following the consultation, but the new system is expected be phased in from autumn 2015, with children under five helped in the first year. The scheme will then build up over time to include all children under the age of 12.
To be eligible for the new support both parents will have to work - or the one parent in the case of lone parent families - and each parent must be earning less than £150,000 a year.
In two-parent families where one parent does not work, families will not receive support.
Half of the funding for the new scheme will come from the abolition of the previous system of employer-supported childcare vouchers, and in part by funding switched from elsewhere in Whitehall.
The government says it expects the new tax-free childcare scheme to eventually help 2.5 million working families.
It says that is significantly more than the current employer-supported childcare voucher scheme, which is provided by only around 5% of employers.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Childcare plan 'up for consultation'
Dengan url
https://gayabugarsehat.blogspot.com/2013/08/childcare-plan-up-for-consultation.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Childcare plan 'up for consultation'
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Childcare plan 'up for consultation'
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar