It is a good idea to remove cliff edges like this that create perverse incentives for aspirational people. BUT This does not change the fact that our current childcare policy is anti-choice, economically illiterate and bad for children. A system that offers help to parents only if they hand over their nine-month-old to the State is not conservative. The reason most mothers return to work as soon as possible is not because they’re desperate to put their babies in institutional childcare; it’s because the cost of living is so high that most families now need two incomes to survive. The majority of mothers of small children, when surveyed, say they would prefer to work less when their children are small. A conservative policy would pay a childcare allowance/tax break that parents could use as they see fit - to work fewer hours, use informal childcare or pay for formal childcare. Conservatives should also recognise that the primary value of a mother is not found in her ability generate a short-term GDP boost for the Treasury bean counters. Our current childcare policy is also a wonderful example of the idiocy of socialist economics. The state pays a fixed price for a good (in this case, hours of childcare) that is less than the cost of production and then wonders why there is a shortage of the good. 🤔 Childcare places also cost more than the average mother who returns to work pays in tax. If encouraging mothers back into the workplace is the aim, this is a ludicrously expensive way of doing it. Yet conservatives seem deeply confused about the aim of ‘childcare’. Is it to get parents back to work or is it about early childhood education? Whatever it is, the current arrangement is harming our children. Long hours in institutional childcare before age two are linked to emotional and behavioural problems later in life. This is not rocket science - babies need a strong and consistent attachment to their mother in order to be able to learn to regulate their emotions and be psychologically secure. State-funded childcare is therefore a false economy if it makes children less productive later in life. By all means, remove cliff edges. But if the Conservatives are the party of the family, then they should overhaul childcare policy to put the family first. The current system views individuals purely as economic units - and that is socialism, not conservatism.