Tories Pledge to Scrap the £100,000 Childcare Cliff Edge
A Conservative government would remove the £100,000 earnings limit on free childcare hours and tax-free childcare, Kemi Badenoch said. “What we want to see is that people who work harder don’t get punished for doing so,” she told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. The party puts the cost at about £700m, to be met by cutting staff at arm’s-length bodies such as Arts Council England and the Environment Agency.
The limit, unchanged since the coalition set it, is assessed on each parent’s income rather than the household’s, and economists say it can leave parents worse off even after a pay rise of tens of thousands of pounds. The Tories claim savings of £1.6bn by 2029–30 from the arm’s-length cuts. Badenoch also committed to keeping the state pension triple lock, “the right policy for pensioners”, which Andy Burnham has pledged to change — though Damian Green told a fringe meeting that its “mechanical straitjacket” was “no longer desirable”.