Livingstone woos parents with loans and grants for childcare

 
Ken Livingstone: Parents in London face the most expensive childcare in the country

Ken Livingstone made a bid for the family vote today as he announced plans to offer loans and grants for childcare.

Labour’s mayoral candidate pledged to fund out-of-hours places in 200 nurseries across London. Parents in the capital face some of the highest childcare costs in the world, with some nurseries charging more than £15,000 a year for a full-time place.

But Mr Livingstone immediately faced questions over how he would fund his pledge, after expensive promises to cut fares and restore the educational maintenance allowance.His campaign claimed the childcare plan would cost £3.4 million a year and be funded from contingency money in City Hall’s budget.

The proposals are likely to be popular with many of the lowest-paid Londoners who are struggling to get back into work or returning from maternity leave. Mr Livingstone would:

Offer low-income families grants of up to £700 for up-front childcare costs. They would initially only be available to about 1,200 of the poorest families.

Cost: £0.85m per year.

Offer interest-free loans of up to £1,000 to families earning up to £40,000 a year, for advance costs. In the first year, he would subsidise loans, provided through financial institutions, for up to 10,000 families to be paid back over five months.

Cost: £1.54 million per year.

Provide funding for more out-of-hours childcare places at 200 nurseries across London. Nurseries would get grants to stay open longer — probably outside the hours of 8am and 6pm.

Cost: £2 million over two years.

Launching his policy at a childcare centre in north London, Mr Livingstone said: “Parents in London face the most expensive childcare in the country.”

He also pledged to campaign against government cuts to the childcare element of the working tax credits, said to cost 50,000 London families over £1,200 a year.

A spokesman for Boris Johnson’s campaign said: “Does anybody honestly think there is yet another pot of money Ken Livingstone can dip into without him raising the cost of living for Londoners elsewhere?”

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