Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent estimate his Department has made of the cost to the public purse of tax-free childcare in 2017-18.

As of 11 October there were live Tax-Free Childcare accounts for over 155,000 children.

The vast majority of parents are able to use their accounts to pay their childcare providers without any issues. Where a parent is unable to make a payment due to a technical issue, the helpline can make a payment to their childcare provider on the parent’s behalf. Since the start of September the childcare service have made 201 such payments, which is under 1% of the total payments made since the launch of the scheme.

The forecast expenditure on Tax-Free Childcare was published by the Office for Budget Responsibility in March 2017 at http://cdn.budgetresponsibility.org.uk/March2017EFO-231.pdf

Analysis of average parental income would exceed the cost limit for answering a Parliamentary Question.