Examination of Witnesses

Part of Childcare Payments Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 12:00 pm on 16 October 2014.

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Vidhya Alakeson: We are quite supportive of the single provider solution; it seems to be one way of simplifying the system for parents. It was unclear whether choice of voucher provider or choice of tax-free child care system was really adding much in terms of parental choice.

In terms of the policing and enforcement of the system, one of the questions I had, which links back to the parity with universal credit, was about the employment test and the extent to which that can realistically be policed. In universal credit, it will be tightly controlled and the real-time information feed will allow people to manage that very clearly. It is unclear to me how, in a tax-free child care system, that could actually be enforced. That feels like a lack of parity and an issue if this funding is supposed to be targeted at families where both parents, or the single parent if there is only one, are at work.