On the 7th of July the Government published a piece which is entitled Free childcare: How we are tackling the cost of childcare and that piece is available from here and it began with the claim that

England has some of the highest quality childcare provision in the world, with 96% of early years settings rated by Ofsted as good or outstanding. But we recognise that childcare is also one of the biggest costs facing working families today. That’s why we’re making the biggest investment by a UK government into childcare in history, doubling the amount we expect to spend over the next few years from around £4 billion to around £8 billion each year. By September 2025, working parents will be able to claim 30 hours of free childcare a week, over 38 weeks of the year, all the way through from nine months up to their child starting school. 

As it happened on the 3rd of July Tan Dhesi who is the Labour MP wrote a question “To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has made an estimate of the number of adults who have left the workforce as a result of the cost of childcare.” and the response from the Government can be obtained from here. Also on the 10th July Helen Hayes from Labour asked a question “To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate her Department has made of the number of apprentices (a) studying for roles in health and social care and (b) other roles who are working parents and will not be able to access the expanded 30 hours free childcare offer in 2024-25.” and the answer which came from Claire Coutinho is available from here.

There was also a response to this theme from the CYPNow piece which is titled as Early years leaders criticise ‘offensive’ government blog on funded childcare expansion and it was written by Joe Lepper on 2nd August. He goes on to say that

Sector leaders have hit out at a government blog justifying plans to expand funded childcare hours, with Early Years Alliance (EYA) chief executive Neil Leitch branding its claims as “simply not true” and a “gross insult” to settings. He is concerned that the Department for Education statement around the expansion suggests that settings currently charge “inflated fees” to parents and that the government is “properly covering the cost” of providing free places. “By making sure the government is properly covering the cost of providing the free places, there will be no need for nurseries to charge inflated fees for additional hours parents want to pay for,” claims the DfE’s blog.

And also on the article there is a section from the National Day Nurseries Association director of policy Jonathan Broadbery who says

“The government needs to be very careful and clear about how it communicates about the funded childcare offer to parents. The funding has only ever been for the hours of childcare, not covering meals, snacks, consumables and other additional services. When you add in chronic underfunding of the hours it has never been free for childcare providers or parents.”