Why British mothers need a tax break

Next week’s Budget marks George Osborne’s last chance to make a game-changing reform before the next election. The Chancellor will have his boasts ready: he’ll say that Britain has the fastest growth of any developed country. What he won’t say is that no developed country has needed to pile so much debt onto its citizens to buy this growth. Statistics about GDP are not much use if the average British breadwinner can put less food on the table than five years ago. To make a proper recovery, something fundamental needs to change in the way the British economy is run. Where Osborne has had the courage to change the Labour system he inherited, it has worked. The modest cuts in tax for the low paid helped employment, and cuts for the best-paid have led to a surge in revenues. The top rate of tax is 47 per cent, far higher than the Blair-era 40 per cent. But to Osborne, politics comes first. He won’t cut more, fearing this would be unpopular. But there is one option for Osborne that is both politically attractive and economically sensible. Several recent reports have made it clear that Britain is poorer as a country because of the way our economy conspires against working mothers. We do well at educating women. They outsmart and out-earn men in their twenties. But after childbirth, they face the highest childcare costs in the world. In all too many cases, salary barely covers these costs and the same is often true for part-time work. And how many of us would do our jobs for free? Women are told they have to choose, that win or lose they can’t have everything. Reluctantly they drop out of the workplace. Some Tories understandably bridle when Labour politicians speak of stay-at-home mothers as if they were economic deserters.