Bill Carmichael: Clegg is quick to capitulate

IS Sheffield Hallam MP Nick Clegg a slippery character who can’t be trusted an inch? Certainly many of his Conservative coalition partners seem to think so after the Deputy Prime Minister apparently reneged on an agreement to introduce wide-ranging changes to the regulations governing childcare to make it easier and cheaper for parents to return to work.

Under the proposals. childminders and nurseries would be able to look after four under-ones per adult, instead of three, and six two-year-olds, instead of four.

The changes were entirely voluntary and no nursery would be forced to change its ratios if it didn’t want to. France, Denmark, Sweden and Germany all have minimum ratios that are larger than ours and all are widely acknowledged as having excellent child care systems.

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And only nurseries that hired staff with higher qualifications were to be allowed to take on more children.

The reforms were recognition by the coalition government that the cost of childcare is a significant barrier to parents returning to work. The Department of Education calculated the changes would cut the costs by 28 per cent, saving parents an average of £1,329 per child.

Recognising that the reforms had the potential to be controversial, the Minister involved, Elizabeth Truss, was careful to flag up the changes in ratios with the Deputy Prime Minister. According to the BBC, Clegg gave the go-ahead.

As soon as the proposals were publicised there was the predictable bleating from the trade unions and the disaffected old lefties who hang about on the Mumsnet website. To judge by the hysterical reaction you would think the Government had decreed the slaughter of the first born, rather than some modest changes to make the lives of parents a little easier.

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Clegg immediately capitulated at the first whiff of cordite. He is not a man you would like to have fighting next to you in the trenches. He breezily announced on his radio show that he was in fact against the idea and this week he phoned leaders in the childcare sector to tell them the plans were “dead in the water”.

Parents are punished all ways – penalised by the cost of childcare if they return to work, and hammered by the tax and benefits system if one partner decides to stay at home to look after the children.

Is it too much to ask Prime Minister David Cameron to fulfil his manifesto commitment to recognise marriage in the tax system – perhaps by introducing transferable tax allowances between partners?

It would certainly give hard-working families a welcome boost in tough 
times. But no doubt Clegg would block 
that as well.

Leftover lunacy

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The last time I wrote about the ridiculous quango, the Waste Resources Action Programme (WRAP), it was suggesting that workers shouldn’t buy a sandwich at lunchtime but should raid the fridge for leftovers instead.

Now it’s back with yet another barmy idea – this time decreeing that waiters should be trained to tell restaurant customers to accept smaller portions of chips.

WRAP says that more than half of us leave food on our plates when eating out – most commonly chips, vegetables and salad garnish – and as a result thousands of tons of food are thrown away. The solution, it says, is to persuade diners to accept smaller portions. It is in the catering industry’s interest to cut down on waste and we should let them get on with it, without the constant nannying from a busybody quango that costs the taxpayer £30m a year.

If we are really serious about cutting down on waste, it’s about time we chucked WRAP into the recycling bin.