Making work pay

Yet, as it uses transitional payments to ease the unemployed into work when suitable vacancies become available, Iain Duncan Smith needs to recognise that childcare costs are a major obstacle for many families.

They are now the highest in Europe according to Save the Children and the Daycare Trust as they launch a major study into this policy – and how it is undermining those mothers who either want to continue their career, or simply need another source of income to wash, clothe and feed their young family.

There are no easy solutions, but there is the potential for early years education providers to expand their facilities – and for employers to be given tax incentives to provide nursery provision of their own. They are ideas that need to be addressed if work is to pay for all.