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PM facing revolt over childcare vouchers
GORDON Brown is facing a revolt from senior South Yorkshire MPs over a controversial plan to cut childcare vouchers.
Three former ministers – Sheffield Heeley MP Meg Munn, Don Valley MP Caroline Flint and Rotherham MP Denis MacShane – have warned the Prime Minister that removing an "effective and popular" benefit for 340,000 parents will penalise those on low incomes.
They have also told him his policy threatens marginal Labour seats in the run-up to next year's general election.
Earlier this year Mr Brown announced he was removing tax relief for employer-based childcare vouchers, arguing too much of the money was going to the middle classes.
Under the voucher scheme, a family on the basic rate of tax, where both parents claim the tax relief, can save 1,924 a year on the cost of childcare.
The PM promised the money saved from phasing out the vouchers will go towards providing 250,000 two-year-olds from 'modest or middle incomes' with 10 hours of free childcare a week.
But the cuts have sparked an angry backlash with more than 75,000 people signing a Downing Street petition criticising the decision.
And it now threatens to provoke a major Labour revolt with a influential group of nine former ministers writing to Mr Brown to urge him to review the decision.
Mrs Munn's involvement in the letter is particularly significant because she is a former women's minister. Ms Flint and Mr MacShane are both former Europe ministers.
Mrs Munn said: "The childcare vouchers have enabled a lot of families to get over that decision of whether it's worth the mother going back to work and enabled a lot of employers to encourage mothers to return to the work place.
"There has been such an outcry over removing child care vouchers that it shows that they are really valued."
The MPs' letter states the cut is "greatly unfair" and would "mark the undoing of one of Labour's landmark achievements".
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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