As well as strengthening workers’ rights, Ms Dodds believes that improving childcare will be key to getting more women into work.
Jeremy Hunt has sought to address this issue by extending access to free childcare from April and announcing reforms in last week’s Budget that will let working parents keep more of their child benefits.
However, Ms Dodds argued that the Chancellor’s pledge to extend access to free childcare was unfeasible because there are not enough nurseries. A total of 242 nurseries across Kent, Sussex and Surrey shut down between March and August last year, according to Ofsted data, as providers struggle with higher costs and recruitment issues.
“Women tell me they can’t access the childcare that they need, that’s reflected in a lot of different parts of the country,” Ms Dodds said. “Four in ten kids live in areas that could be classed as childcare ‘deserts’ [where there are more than three children for every early years’ place].
“What we’re hearing from childcare providers and those who work in childcare, as well as parents in need, is that that situation is getting worse. If you push more demand into a system without increasing supply, which is what the Chancellor has done, you do not increase the childcare and early years education that we desperately need.”
Ms Dodds was light on details as to what Labour’s answer would be. However, she pointed to a review into the issue commissioned by the party and led by Sir David Bell, Ofsted’s former chief inspector. Labour has already outlined potential plans to remove legislative barriers to opening nurseries and to create thousands of nursery places in primary schools.
Supporting single mothers will also be a focus.
“I had a long conversation this weekend with a single parent doing her best to bring up her daughter, she was in work and in rented accommodation, and just couldn’t make things stack up financially. She said to me, and she was right, ‘I shouldn’t be struggling like this’.”
Ms Dodds, a mother of two, said she often speaks to women who are working two or three jobs to stay afloat, creating a strain on family life that “we don’t talk about enough”.
