Free childcare for working parents in England is set to expand to cover one-and-two-year-olds, which is part of the government's effort to encourage people back to work and boost economic growth.
The plans will be included in the Budget and offers an extra 30 hours of free childcare per week to parents with children aged nine months and above.
There are concerns if the plan is actually deliverable, or if it will succeed.
The UK government announced an expansion of free childcare for working parents in England, which will gradually apply to children aged nine-month-old and above from September 2025.
Currently, working parents with three and four-year-olds can avail 30 hours of free childcare per week.
According to the BBC News, the government looks to get more parents into work and boost economic growth.
The Guardian also reported that local authorities would be given funding to start setting up wraparound childcare provision in schools, beginning in September 2024, to match labour's pledge to provide bold childcare.
The plan would provide an extra 30 hours a week to parents and increase funding by £288m through 2024-25 for the existing programme of free childcare for three-year-olds.
Conversely, there are opinions from sources such as The Guardian, that the expansion of free childcare might not be as deliverable as expected.
The Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has feared that the new care for parents in England might not succeed in encouraging more people to return to work.
The quotations The Guardian attributed included some people from the Conservative MPs who also viewed that the expansion could be an unachievable promise.
Nonetheless, the government's plan could be seen as a ray of hope for around 60,000 parents of young children to be able to enter employment.