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You may have been following our ongoing fight to keep Childcare Vouchers open alongside Tax-Free Childcare to give parents a genuine choice of the financial support that best suits their families’ needs. As things stand, the Government will close access to Childcare Vouchers to new parents from this April. This will also apply to existing users who change employer for any reason.
You may also have been one of the 116,000 instrumental citizens that signed the petition to keep Childcare Vouchers open, resulting in a Westminster Hall debate on Monday 15th January. Nine MPs from multiple parties laid out emphatic arguments for why the Government should keep Childcare Vouchers open alongside Tax-Free Childcare to ensure that many hardworking families are not worse off. However, the Government Minister failed to acknowledge these arguments in its response. You can watch the full debate here and read the transcript here.
The debate was a key milestone but the Government’s failure to acknowledge the issues raised means we have to continue to keep the pressure up. An Early Day Motion (EDM) has been laid to keep Childcare Vouchers open. These are used by MPs to raise an issue when they believe the Government has not taken sufficient notice and we can all play a role in supporting it.
A particularly effective component in Monday’s debate was the number of real life examples that MPs were able to present of parents in their constituencies that benefit from Childcare Vouchers. With this in mind, we would urge you to write to your MP stating briefly how Childcare Vouchers have benefitted you and your family and to ask them to sign Early Day Motion 755 to keep Childcare Vouchers open. This may only take a couple minutes of your time but could mean your family and future generations continue to benefit from thousands of pounds of extra support.
Writing to your MP is easy. It just takes a couple of minutes using the three simple steps below: