In the recent budget, a budget meant to set things right and put the UK economy some way back on track after Liz Truss had broken it, Rishi Sunak the new prime minister did something rather odd that didn’t really seem to fit with the plan. He announced a new pilot scheme giving incentive payments of £600 for childminders joining the profession of child minding. In fact, he went further, the sum doubles to £1,200 if workers sign up through an agency. Why the government should throw such sums on this topic is a total mystery, really, and why now? Yes, a claim could be made that by encouraging more child minding services you create more vacancies for children of people who want to go to work, but does that really hold water? I don’t think so, any benefit would be years away, well over five years, so how is that going to help now? So why do it?
And here we get to the question the political media don’t seem to want to ask. Where did the idea come from?
Rishi Sunak’s wife will directly benefit from this scheme, she holds shares in one of the childcare agencies that were cherry-picked to benefit from it. Yes the media are questioning why that was not disclosed at the time but why are they not asking who came up with the idea in the first place. Any ideas? Anyone?
