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BBC BLOGS - Newsnight: Michael Crick

Cat out of the bag on vouchers for boarding school

Michael Crick | 10:55 UK time, Thursday, 12 November 2009

Comments (1)

Perhaps I should have declared an interest over last night's story on the government phasing out childcare vouchers, as I claim the maximum amount of tax-free vouchers for childcare for my three-year-old daughter.

I was interested to learn how parents of children at private schools are allowed to use the vouchers to pay for boarding fees (though not tuition costs).

And several top public schools, including Ampleforth and Wellington College, encourage their parents to make use of the scheme.

What of Eton? I contacted the bursar who told me that none of their parents do so.

"Its not been suggested," he said. So they're missing a trick there then.

What surprises me is how little take-up there is. Three hundred thousand families is a very small fraction of the many millions of parents of children up to the age of 15 who might benefit.

Indeed, I suspect that many parents might not have known about the scheme until this row broke out.

So ironically Prime Minister Gordon Brown's policy may encourage a lot more people to subscribe to childcare voucher schemes, and claim tax relief while they still can.

And that, of course, would end up costing the government money in the medium term, not save it.

The phrase of the day at PMQs today

Michael Crick | 12:38 UK time, Wednesday, 4 November 2009

Comments (12)

"Cast-iron guarantee" was the phrase of the day at Prime Minister's Questions today as Gordon Brown and Labour MPs taunted the Tories on their pledge to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

The trouble is that Brown calls it "iron cast" and pronounces "iron" in a rather strange way, with two syllables rather than one.

Still, we can expect Labour researchers to be busily examing past Conservative policy statements to see where else they have made "cast-iron guarantees", or "iron-cast".

Interesting to see that the Speaker John Bercow twice gave mild rebukes to Gordon Brown over straying into party politics, and Brown's later retort that he did "not always agree" with Bercow's rulings.

Better late than never

Michael Crick | 10:32 UK time, Monday, 2 November 2009

Comments (3)

Further to my report last Monday that Jonathan Powell was distracted this week from running Tony Blair's campaign by having to do jury service, I'm glad to see that the London Evening Standard diary finally caught up with the story... on Friday.

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