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| Photograph: Child Care by Lubomirkin on Unsplash (License) (Cropped) |
On Wednesday, new Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran attempted to ask a question at PMQs. Her effort was drowned out - and ultimately upstaged by - the Tories' reaction. The bad behaviour of MPs got the headlines and successfully buried the lead.
Getting the media to write headlines about bad behaviour - the proverbial dead cat on the table - rather than the substance of policy is the basic aim of cynical political strategy. For the Conservatives, that's a point scored.
Moran was finally able to ask her question, though, and called on the PM to take action on the problems that have arisen with the Government's longstanding pledge to expand free childcare to thirty hours a week for 3 and 4 year olds.
The Prime Minister's response was less than convincing and that shouldn't be a surprise. The problems encountered in delivering this flagship policy underline the fundamental failings of the May Government and it's predecessor.
The plan to expand free childcare, a major campaign promise, has run into major problems. The moderated version of these events are that some thousands of families can't access the service thanks to 'technical issues'.
However, Layla Moran turned a light on the deeper problems underlying the implementation: the Tory claim that they were offering so called 'free' childcare masks the fact that they're not paying the full cost of the childcare.
This is a persistent habit of the Tories. They make big pledges, but then shift responsibility for delivery, and for raising funding, to others. Local government has also been hurt by this Conservative approach.
The Tories hand off ever further responsibility from central government, while drastically reducing funding as they devolve control over it. Social care in particular has been badly hit, even as the costs in the sector continually rise.
It's worth noting it was Theresa May's attempt to respond to that self-created social care crisis that hurt the Tories so badly at the election. The party's new plans for social care - to raid middle class homeowners - didn't survive beyond the manifesto launch.
In the case of childcare, it means that many providers won't offer the service as it is simply not finacially viable to do so. That will restrict access to free care. For others, it will mean increased costs as providers are forced to spread the costs across other service users.
This is a trend with the Conservatives, one that has plagued the policies enacted by the government. Privatised delivery has produced poor results and ethical violations in the provision of welfare. Local government has had funding taken away and then been called out for not keeping front line services, such as libraries, open.
Outcomes can be explained away. They can be put down to ideological differences as to the end goals, or dismissed with excuses blaming past governments or other bodies. But the failure of flagship policies shouldn't be shrugged off.
The expansion of free childcare is a long standing promise, but one that has had a cloud over it for most of that time. Failure to provide the plans with adequate funding was pointed out as far back as the end of 2016.
Problems have been noted and gone unaddressed, undermining the fundamental promise contained in the pledged policy. Failures like this need to be catalogued, because it keeps happening under these Conservative governments.
Shifting responsibility to others, denying funding. At some point, the buck has to stop and the Conservatives have to be held to account for their policies and their failure in the delivery of them.
