Siobhain to Chair new Childcare Commission

40% of mothers say that they have had to work fewer hours because of childcare costs and more than a 1/3 who return to work make a financial loss or only break even.

For them, unaffordable childcare means that work is simply not paying.

And so Siobhain took part in a debate in Parliament on the cost of childcare.

In the debate, Siobhain announced her new role as co-Chair of a cross-party Commission to consider affordable childcare. Working with John Penrose MP and the Social Market Foundation, the collaboration will analyse the stark impact that poor childcare provision has on wages and poverty, and consider, cross-party, the changes so desperately needed.

The debate was timely, with the Commission’s first research released revealing that women who had a baby in 2010 would have staggeringly missed out on almost £70,000 in the decade since, relative to what would have happened if they had remained childless. But should we be surprised? The charity Pregnant then Screwed found that more than a third of Mothers who return to work make a financial loss or break even only – and that 62% of parents said that their childcare costs were the same as their rent or mortgage! If they cannot afford the childcare costs to return to work, or if those costs outweigh the salaries that they bring home, then work simply does not pay no matter how many times the rhetoric is repeated by the Government.

You can read more about this work featured in national press here.