The proposal is outlined in ‘Balanced Working Life’, a paper written for the upcoming Autumn Conference, which also proposes extending the free entitlement and the introduction of a month-long block of paternity leave.
Only 46 per cent of local authorities in England feel that they have sufficient childcare to accommodate full-time employed parents; a figure that shrinks to only 12 per cent when considering parents with atypical shift patterns.
To encourage longer opening hours, the Lib Dems will recommend that Ofsted not award ‘outstanding’ unless the availability of flexible hours to parents is high.
The paper suggests that children and family centres and full daycare nurseries should open for 10 hours a day to accommodate parents who work outside the normal 9 to 5 shift patterns.
This would be limited to those nurseries with more than 25 places and receiving the Nursery Education Grant, for whom it is suggested that they operate between 7am and 7pm daily for 48 weeks a year.
The Lib Dems also want to increase the amount of free childcare and create a ‘decent supply of good quality and affordable childcare’ for parents.
Allocation of free childcare is proposed to increase by five hours to 20 hours a week for children aged three and four, while 15 hours’ childcare entitlement would be extended to all two-year-olds, rather than just to the most deprived 40%.
The paper recommends the introduction of 10 free hours of childcare for children aged one to two to bridge the gap between parental leave and free entitlement and allow mothers to retrain or go back to work part-time.
However, the paper suggests that these increases should only be extended to families with a combined income of less than £100,000 per annum rather than the current personal allowance of up to £150,000.
It states that strategies such as ensuring that all team leaders in children and family centres are educated to degree level by 2015 are ‘critical to social mobility’ and have an ’important impact on the early development of the child’.
Improvements including a high profile online information source for parents have ‘clear economic benefits’ for parents who want to return to work, the paper claims.
The paternity leave policy, nicknamed ‘Daddy Month’, is to be debated at September’s Glasgow-based conference and considered by the Lib Dems Federal Party, led by Nick Clegg, for the party’s 2015 electoral manifesto.
The idea to extend leave for new fathers on a ‘use it or lose it’ basis is inspired by a similar policy in Sweden that aims to encourage uptake of parental leave among men.
Currently, all new fathers are entitled to up to two weeks’ paid leave on a statutory weekly rate of £136.78.
The policies set out in the paper aim to help people on low and middle incomes to cope with both working and caring responsibilities sustainably.