NURSERIES: 'LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE' - Labour's Karen Buck in warning over secret Tory top-up fee proposals - Conservative rival Joanne Cash condemns remarks as “scaremongering”.

Published: 30 April 2010
by JAMIE WELHAM

KAREN Buck has warned that secret Tory plans to allow nurseries to charge top-up fees would create a two-tier childcare system in Westminster.

The MP painted a grim picture of council nursery schools stretched to breaking point by rent hikes, and parents forced to give up work and stay at home with their children.

It comes after reports that shadow ministers wrote to nursery providers assuring them that if they won the election they would be able to charge “supplementary fees” to parents of three and four-year-olds.

Children’s charities have echoed Ms Buck’s fears, claiming a move to scrap the guarantee of free places for all would be a step “backwards” and price many parents out of childcare altogether. But Joanne Cash, Ms Buck’s Conservative rival in the Westminster North seat, condemned the remarks as “scaremongering”.

Uptake of free entitlements – 12.5 hours of care a week for 38 weeks a year – is currently around the 80 per cent mark in Westminster, which already has some of the most expensive nursery fees in the capital.

Funding shortages are a critical problem for nurseries. Despite a high-profile campaign the Marylebone nursery in Luxborough Street was forced to close last year, and the Church Street nursery only narrowly avoided the same fate.

Ms Buck, who has been locked in a tooth- and-nail fight for her political career in the run-up to next Thursday’s election, has been an arch critic of Conservative-controlled Westminster Council for not doing enough to create more nursery places.

She said: “It would be an attack on childcare. It would make it impossible for many parents to take up nursery places. The free places are very well used indeed. 

“Either children will go without the care or increase pressure on council nursery schools. But most importantly parents who rely on these places to be able to go to work won’t be able to do so. 

“To put it in context, Boris Johnson has just closed the childcare team at the London Development Agency, so this is part of London investment in childcare to help working parents.”

Ms Cash said: “This is just another example of disgraceful Labour scaremongering. We support the principle of free nursery care and made that clear in our manifesto.

“Allowing nurseries to charge top-up fees is what’s happening now. Hundreds of nurseries are closing, 900 over the last year alone. 

“The measure is temporary until we can carry out a funding review and sort out the financial ­crisis that Labour have put nurseries in.

June O’Sullivan, chief executive of Westminster Children’s Society, which runs 15 childcare centres in Westminster, said parents would be anxious about any change to the system.

She said: “It would put pressure on the local authority to meet any cost, which during a recession would not be easy. But on the whole Westminster Council have a good performance on childcare.”

The plans were revealed in a letter seen by the Observer news­paper last week. A spokesperson for the Conservative Party did not deny the plans, saying: “Hundreds of nurseries have closed under the Labour government because of underfunding.”

Parents have reacted strongly to the reports.

Sam Harrison, of Shirland Mews, Maida Vale, has one child in St Saviour’s State nursery and another in Montessori private nursery.

She said: “It’s almost not worth going back to work for most mothers. If a mother brings home £800 a month from working and a large proportion of that has to go on nursery fees they just won’t go back to work.”

Mother-of-two Nohad Al Turki, whose twin boys went to Marylebone Nursery at the University of Westminster, said: “There is already a real shortage of nursery places in this area. The changes would mean that only parents who can afford very high fees get the benefits of nursery for their children. 

“A lot of parents wouldn’t be able to send their children at all.”