Political opinion column with Jade Botterill MP: Supporting local parents

Recently, I was proud to open Middlestown Primary Academy‘s new ‘Little Hands’ Pre School early years childcare provision.

From helping with homework, the school run, working and putting food on the table, local parents have to juggle a lot, so places like Little Hands give them much needed childcare support.

Raising kids has never been easy, but with the cost of living crisis things are tough for local families.

Parents tell me they struggle to get by, with child poverty increasing by 900,000 under the previous government. We know that children growing up in poverty do less well in school, are more likely to be unemployed when older and earn less over their lives. So that’s nearly a million extra children not given the chance to fulfil their potential due to their background.

Almost three in four of the children growing up in poverty are in a working family. Their parents get up every day to provide for their kids, but the money just doesn’t stretch far enough. Those kids deserve the best possible start in life, and their parents deserve a hand.

The Government brought together experts and parents to design a landmark Child Poverty Strategy. It was clear: to help local families we must boost incomes, drive down costs, and strengthen services so every child has the best start in life.

That’s why we introduced 30 hours of free childcare for working parents and started the rollout of free breakfast clubs, helping parents with the soaring costs of childcare and the limits school drop-off times can place on their work.

We are also reforming the Universal Credit child care cap to make it easier for parents in larger families to work, while extending eligibility to upfront childcare costs to parents returning from parental leave to ease the tricky transition back to work.

The Child Poverty Taskforce also found that the two-child limit is the biggest driver of rising child poverty, with children being forced to pay the price. The majority of affected families are in work, with the cap penalising working homes rather than incentivising employment.

That’s why I am proud the Government is acting to remove it, while upholding fairness between in-work and out-of-work households by maintaining the overall limit on non-disability, maternity or caring benefits for out-of-work households.

We’re also cutting the cost of essentials. The cost of some infant formula brands has risen by 25 per cent in two years, so we will step in to help families buy more affordable formula, saving them up to £540 in a baby’s first year and supporting their healthy development.

We are also taking action to lower the cost of school uniforms, capping the number of branded items parents are required to purchase and increasing access to second hand uniforms.

Together these measures will take 550,000 children out of poverty, giving them the chance to fulfil their potential, and even more parents a helping hand.

In 2026, we are delivering more security, more opportunity, and more respect for local families.