Badenoch vows to end £100k childcare cliff edge introduced under last Tory government
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has vowed to end the “absurd” childcare trap for parents earning above £100,000.
On the first day of the party’s conference in Birmingham, Badenoch will announce that the childcare cliff edge – engineered under the previous Tory government – will be scrapped at a cost of about £700m per year.
Former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt created the cliff edge when he announced that parents on income under £100,000 could claim 30 hours of free childcare for under four-year-olds.
The change in approach builds further distance between the current leadership and Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives that lost the election in 2024.
Badenoch said the cliff edge was absurd” as earnings of just one extra pound above £100,000 could leave families worse off than those below the thresholds.
“Conservatives believe that you shouldn’t be punished for working more, but this childcare cliff edge does exactly that,” Badenoch said.
“I’m a mum of three and I’ve had to make the same choices many families have had to make on work and childcare. Those choices are difficult already, government should not be making them harder.
“It is absurd that earning just one extra pound can leave a family thousands of pounds worse off. No one should be turning down a promotion or a pay rise because they literally cannot afford to earn more.”
Free childcare trap
The £700m costing is based on a recent report by the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation.
Centax estimated that there are nearly 12,000 parents deliberately holding their income below the £100,000 threshold in order to get free childcare.
Hunt introduced a state-funded childcare scheme in March 2023. The government is reviewing the success of his flagship policy.
Centax analysts also said that one third of parents earning between £100,000 and £120,000 received free childcare through a loophole in the system.
The Tories said they would also remove the cliff edge for tax-free childcare, which pushed up the costs slightly.
Party officials said the cost would be covered by reversing the increase in the number of public servants in non-departmental public bodies, which would save about £1.6bn by 2030 according to the Conservatives.
Such bodies include the Climate Change Committee, Arts Council England, the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Executive.
Shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith said the cliff edge hindered career progression and led to fewer hours worked.