Since entering Government, my Lib Dem colleagues and I have worked hard to make the childcare system fairer for working families.
Couples and single parents should not be forced to give up work to look after children because of the costs of childcare – and more generally people shouldn’t have to choose outright between a career and a child.
That’s why we recently announced that working families will get up to £2,000 a year tax free childcare, from Autumn 2015.
Parents will be given vouchers for any Ofsted regulated childcare in England. In Haringey alone it is estimated that 8,340 families will benefit from the new scheme.
This is another boost for children and their parents, to work alongside the other changes guaranteed by the Lib Dems.
These include supplying 15 hours a week free childcare for 2, 3, and 4 year olds, introducing free school meals for infant school pupils, and the Pupil Premium – providing schools with £2.5 billion extra a year.
In tough times we need to ensure that families are given the support they need to help children thrive. The schemes brought in since 2010 have been put in place to provide a more equal playing field for all children and their families.
At school, teachers are getting extra funding to help the most vulnerable, and the administrators can now provide nutritious meals. At home, with the cost of childcare reduced, parents can feel secure in the knowledge that they will be better off in work and their children will be provided for.
These changes are making the country fairer, and they would not have happened if the Lib Dems hadn’t entered Coalition in 2010.
Lynne Featherstone 
That’s just fine Lynne and to be welcomed I’m sure but at the other ens of the scale where pensioners who qualify for the indexed state pension are denied any uprating by a government regulation that the party and the Pensions Minister in particular were going to remove and thereby stop the discrimination that this imposes. To further spoil your reputation there is a clause written into the new Pensions Bill (clause 20) which will further deny future pensioners their rightful annual increase of pension. Not happy with that we have the embarrassment to her Majesty the Queen who had to give the Royal Assent to this bill even though this clause was in it. One year previous she had signed the Commonwealth Charter which says that “We are implacably opposed to discrimination of any kind”. The majority of the frozen pensioners live in the Commonwealth and so a slap in the face for the pensioners and the Queen.
Some legacy from your part in the coalition government. There is still time before the election to make this right as many votes count on it.