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Commenting on Labour’s plan to offer additional subsidised childcare to families on the lowest incomes in addition to 'free childcare' to all two- to four-year-olds, Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Pre-school Learning Alliance, said:

“We know how important childcare and early education are to ensuring that all children are given the best possible start in life, and that it's those children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds who have the most to gain from access to quality early learning experiences. As such, Labour’s pledge to provide additional financial support to the lowest-income families is, in theory, a welcome policy.



"Similarly, with early years providers having been overworked and underpaid for far too long, a plan to not just encourage but also financially support the development of a graduate-led workforce by delivering improved wages and a new national early years payscale is very positive in principle.

“That said, put together, Labour’s ambitious proposals – extending the so-called free entitlement and introducing subsidised care for all with seemingly no upper earning limit on eligibility, increasing funding rates to £7.35 per hour, and overhauling the childcare payment system – would be, to put mildly, incredibly costly. As such, as a sector that has all too often been on the end of improperly costed and inadequately funded pledges, many childcare providers will be understandably sceptical as to how all these proposals can collectively be delivered as outlined, even over an extended period of time

“The direction of these proposals is certainly the right one – additional support for parents, a greater emphasis on supporting and valuing the early years workforce, and a focus on raising and maintaining quality across the sector. But, as always, the devil in the in the detail and we would need to see a lot more detail on how these proposals have been individually costed to feel reassured that this plan is indeed sustainable – or even possible – in the long term.”

ABOUT THE ALLIANCE

• The Pre-school Learning Alliance is the largest and most representative early years membership organisation in England. A registered educational charity, it also provides high-quality affordable childcare and education to support children and families in areas of deprivation throughout the country. 
• The Alliance represents 14,000 member settings and supports them to deliver care and learning to more than 800,000 families every year. We deliver family learning projects, offer information and advice, produce specialist publications, run acclaimed training programmes and campaign to influence early years policy and practice.
• The Alliance website is
• The Alliance’s Fair Future Funding campaign currently has around 5,400 practitioner supporters and over 1,000 parent supporters.