Labour woos working mums |
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Wed, 20 Apr 2005 01:00
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Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown today attempted to demonstrate solidarity by appearing together on the GMTV show as part of their campaign. They promised to step up efforts to help working mums as part of their plans for working families.
Both the Labour leaders expressed their support for women who choose to stay at home with their children. They also apologised for the failings of the Child Support Agency (CSA) saying it had been facing problems right since it was started in 1993. However, Mr. Blair promised that things would be different soon enough as they now had a new management team and a new computer system in place. Mums will get the payment they need and the payment system will be a lot simpler. But that would take some time, he said.
| Chancellor Brown tried to underscore his claim that Labour was family-friendly. Working families, particularly ‘school-gate mums’ are the key voters and Labour has a bundle of plans and promises to ensure the ballot results are in their favour. These included flexible working hours to allow mums to spend more time with their children. They plan to increase paid maternity leave to nine months from 2007 and have set a target of one year’s paid leave within five years. An investment of £220m to improve nutritional standards would ensure children have better school meals.
They would also make schools a safer place by giving head teachers the legal right to frisk students for guns and knives. Parents of 3-4 year-olds will have access to free and flexible nursery provision for 15 hours a week which would be increased to 20 hours a week by 2010.
The two leaders did not miss the opportunity to criticize Tories’ proposal to scrap the revaluation of council tax. Mr. Blair said it displayed the “most desperate opportunism”. He also pointed out that the Conservatives were planning to cut the block grant which “as you all know helps local authorities keep council tax low.”
One wonders whether all those promises and plans will succeed in making the voters overlook the current pension crisis, a major failure by Chancellor Brown.
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