Universal Free Childcare Proposed...in the United Kingdom

This, my friends, is the kind of social policy that a country gets when it has an actual center-left party:

Labour is to pursue the policy of universal childcare for all pre-school children in the runup to the general election.

As Ed Miliband pledges in his new year message on Monday to make childcare one of his priorities if he is elected as prime minister, the shadow minister with responsibility for the issue has made the case for the introduction of free universal provision.

In a Guardian interview the shadow childcare minister, Lucy Powell, said of free universal pre-school childcare: "I'd love it to be [introduced]. My job is to make the political and economic case for childcare, not just the childcare offer that we have right now but an extension of that. I am absolutely firmly of the belief that if you invest in childcare it pays for itself over time because it increases maternal employment rates."

The remarks by Powell are the strongest indication that the Labour leadership would like to take a dramatic step on childcare at a cost of billions of pounds, though Powell insists the state would eventually reap savings as women return to the workforce in greater numbers.

Labour is already committed to using a levy on banks to provide 25 hours of free childcare a week for working parents with three and four-year-olds, worth £1,500.

It is also to offer "wraparound" provision between 8am and 6pm – from breakfast to after-school clubs – in primary schools. The coalition has introduced 15 hours of free childcare for parents with three and four-year-old children for 38 weeks a year.

Before any Republican readers get too outraged at the thought of Mitt Romney-defined 'free stuff' going to the masses in our closest ally, one might want to consider what this kind of policy allows parents to do: both husband and wife can return to the workforce soon after birth, allowing for more work and more taxes paid to finance said program:

In an interim report published earlier this month, the IPPR said a wide-ranging expansion of childcare would pay for itself over time. It estimated that attracting 280,000 mothers back into the workforce would generate an extra £1.5bn in tax revenues and make savings in benefit payments.

In other words, giving everybody a universal entitlement can actually reduce the kind of welfare that conservatives seem to hate most: cash benefit payments.

And I won't even begin to bore you all with the sociological implications for gender equity of providing this kind of entitlement to families: the woman (or, in some cases, husband) at home will no longer be trapped in the role of babysitter for a decade or longer. Parents, mothers primarily, will no longer need to decide whether it is 'affordable' -- given the extortionate cost of child care in the UK (by some metrics, higher than the US) -- to re-enter the workforce.

Don't worry, though, parents of the USA, our 'Democrats' are proposing awesome solutions for unaffordable childcare like loans. If parents are lucky, maybe they'll pay these off before they -- and their kids -- begin taking out more loans for college.