Catherine McKinnell – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Catherine McKinnell on 2016-02-29.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to paragraph 2.61 of the Spending Review and Autumn Statement 2015, what estimate he has made of the number of families that will be eligible for tax-free childcare in 2016-17.

Damian Hinds

The Government confirmed that Tax-Free Childcare will be launched from early 2017. To roll out the scheme in a safe and managed way, we will be gradually opening up the scheme to all eligible parents within 12 months.

We will provide further details of the exact plans for this rollout in due course, in good time for parents and childcare providers to prepare for the introduction of Tax-Free Childcare.

Once the scheme is fully open, we estimate that around 2 million families will be eligible for Tax-Free Childcare. And we estimate that up to 1 million families may take up the scheme in ‘steady state’.

The Tax-Free Childcare system will be extensively tested with users before the scheme is launched.