Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch announced on October 3 that a future Tory government would scrap the £100,000 income cap on free childcare, extending the 30-hours-a-week entitlement to high-earning families. The pledge landed on the eve of the party's annual conference in Birmingham.
Free childcare for the £100k-plus club
Under current rules, families with young children in England get 30 hours of funded childcare a week — unless one parent earns more than £100,000, in which case the whole family loses the entitlement. Badenoch would abolish that limit entirely: any parent working at least 16 hours a week would qualify, regardless of income.
She called the current system "absurd" and a disincentive to work more. "Conservatives believe that you shouldn't be punished for working more, but this childcare cliff edge does exactly that," she said. "No one should be turning down a promotion or a pay rise because they literally cannot afford to earn more."
Ending the "cliff edge": earning £1 more can make you poorer
The irony is that the cliff edge is a Conservative creation. In March 2023, then-chancellor Jeremy Hunt set the £100,000 threshold under Rishi Sunak's government — earn a single pound over it and thousands of pounds of childcare support vanish overnight.
The Tories cite a Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (Centax) report estimating that nearly 12,000 parents deliberately keep their earnings below £100,000, with some higher earners exploiting loopholes. Badenoch, a mother of three, said she had faced the same choices and argued the system hits women hardest: "It is often women who end up carrying more of the childcare responsibility, so a system that makes it harder for them to progress in their careers is not helping families, it is not helping women and it is definitely not helping the economy."
£700m a year, paid for by cutting quangos
Conservative officials put the annual cost at roughly £700 million. The funding plan: cut headcount at arm's-length public bodies such as Arts Council England and the Environment Agency, which the party claims could save £1.6 billion by the end of the decade. NHS bodies would be exempt from the cuts.
Badenoch paired the announcement with other signals of her policy direction. She told the Sunday Times that cutting inheritance tax would be "morally right," though only if fiscally responsible; she wants to block EU Settled Status (EUSS) applications, which she says are being "abused"; and she has already proposed abolishing most stamp duty — another tax change that disproportionately benefits wealthier people.
"Should millionaires get it?" — her answer
On the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Badenoch was pressed on whether someone earning over £1 million should receive taxpayer-funded childcare. She replied that the number of people earning tens of millions with multiple children was "negligible," and that the policy is aimed at ordinary strivers — her example: a deputy head teacher with three children whose salary rises from £85,000 to £110,000 and ends up worse off.
Her pitch is that the Conservatives now make policies "for everybody," an attempt to drag the party out of its "party of the rich" stereotype.
Labour: "the first Tory tax policy they want to unpick helps higher earners"
Labour fired back immediately. A spokesperson said the proposal "tells you everything you need to know about the Tories — that the first of their own tax policies they want to unpick is one helping higher earners," while pointing to Labour's own early-years investment.
The Conservative conference opened in Birmingham on October 4, with Badenoch delivering her opening speech that afternoon. A pre-conference YouGov poll showed her personal standing markedly stronger than a year ago, but whether that converts into votes remains an open question. The childcare pledge will be the first real test of her policy pitch — voters and the media alike will be doing the sums on whether it is truly "for everybody."