Meeting of the Parliament 26 February 2026 [Draft]
I am sorry. Where were we?
There is a long-term impact when a parent has to leave work. It is harder to save on one income and non-working parents pay rent or mortgage interest for far longer than they would have done if they were working.
Childcare makes a big difference to ending generational poverty. I have a few cases from new mums in my inbox at present. Some can choose to go back to work, but if someone does not earn enough, they do not have a choice, because they just cannot afford childcare. They feel that the Government is playing a game of chicken with them. Sometimes they blink and pay the childcare costs themselves; sometimes they do not blink and leave their jobs for three, four or five years, which means that the Government loses the income tax that they would otherwise have paid during that time. According to Pregnant Then Screwed, the Scottish economy loses out 71 per cent of the time for mums and 51 per cent of the time for dads.
There is much more to say on the matter, including about the cognitive development of toddlers, who benefit from professional enrichment and from mixing with others. It is obvious that the most common response from parents is not to swallow the cost of childcare themselves or to decide not to work, but to choose not to have children. Scotland’s fertility rate should be 2.1, but it is 1.2 at the moment, which does not bode well for the future. We are stacking up problems and will be looking to fewer people to sustain an ever more costly welfare system in the future.
Many Governments are choosing to act on the issue, but Scotland is not one of them, which is an unfortunate and sad state of affairs.