The Conservatives have 'matched' the Labour promises on financial support and leave for new parents. They have added some elements of choice but essentially the Conservatives are accepting the Labour idea that the government should dish out other people's cash and impose extra obligations on employers when a couple have a baby. In their desperate attempts to morph a Labour plan which would subsidise care by people outside a family but not care from inside the family, the Conservatives have come up with the idea that grandparents should be able to take a course in caring for children so that they could then qualify for subsidy too. The idea of the government - which has shown itself incapable even of teaching children in its care how to read - telling grandparents how to look after children is grotesque.

The Conservatives have also implicitly accepted tax credits. But tax credits are an appallingly bad way of delivering benefits. A large minority - often those most in most need - do not go through the difficulties of applying and so do not get them.

The Conservatives should not have accepted these flawed, complex, anti-employment, high-tax, bureaucracy-heavy ideas.

The BBC coverage of the Tory proposals is here.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Parenting • Politics • Welfare benefits

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