More nursery places and longer leave

Gordon Brown made a direct pitch for parents' votes today with the promise of longer maternity leave and more free nursery places.

The Chancellor's 10-year childcare strategy included measures to ease the burden on families, with poor and rich alike benefiting from extra money.

The long-awaited package, which will form a central part of Labour's general election pitch, would create "a welfare state that is truly familyfriendly for the first time in its history", he said.

Working mothers were given a ?285million windfall with the extension of paid maternity leave from the current six months to nine. Crucially, parents will be able to transfer the leave from the mother to the father if they so wish.

But in a move that may disappoint some campaigners, Mr Brown held out only a vague pledge that the time-off period may eventually be increased to a year.

Free nursery education for three- and four-yearolds will be increased from the current 121/2 hours a week to 15 hours a week by April, 2007. The figure will rise to 20 hours a week at some point, but again the Chancellor failed to give a deadline.

As expected, Government money will be provided to keep schools open from 8am to 6pm to look after children while their parents are at work. Under these plans, many more schools will become "extended" primaries and secondaries, ushering in a new era of open-all-hours state education and childcare providers.

Mr Brown announced that the childcare element of the working tax credit would be raised from the current level of 70 per cent to 80 per cent. This will be worth a maximum of ?170 a week for the first child and ?300 a week for more than one child. The payments will be means-tested and available to families with an income of up to ?59,000 a year.

Mr Brown said that for a typical middle-income household where both parents earned a combined ?34,000 a year, this would be worth an extra ?700 towards their annual childcare costs. This will reduce their share of the childcare bill from 85 per cent to 75 per cent.

Government figures showed that under the reforms, a family with an income of ?24,000 a year paying ?320 a week in childcare will get a contribution from the state worth ?268 a week.

For families with an income of ?37,500 a year with the same weekly childcare costs, the Government will contribute ?172 a week.

The Chancellor announced the intention to give families up to a year's paid maternity leave by 2011 or 2012.