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UK government warned on childcare reforms

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Press TV
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Publication Date: 
6 Jan 2014

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The British government's childcare reforms will help better-off households rather than the needy, government's advisers have warned.

Ministers are pressing on with plans to offer up to £1,200 a year tax relief per child to households with two earners on up to £150,000 a year each.

Government advisers on child poverty warned that the new plans will benefit couples with a joint annual income of up to £300,000 while reducing support for poorer families and creating a two-tier system in the country.

"The Government's proposals put taxpayers' money in the wrong place. Subsidising the childcare of families with earnings of up to £300,000 is the wrong priority when low income families in work have had government support for their childcare costs cut from 80 to 70 percent," said Britain's former Health Secretary Alan Milburn.

Milburn, who is currently the chairman of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, also urged the British Chancellor George Osborn to use his Budget in March to "put right what he got wrong" by switching resources from better-off families to the less well-off.

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- reprinted from PressTV

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