Gordon Brown pledges more nursery places to get parents back to work

Gordon Brown will today (Tuesday) pledge to provide free nursery places for UK toddlers in a bid to get parents back to work.

A package of measures unveiled by the government will include free places for all 600,000 two-year-olds, estimated at a £1bn cost to taxpayers. Currently, parents can claim up to 15 hours per week of free childcare for three and four-year old children.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, Brown said he plans to extend free nursery care to include all two-year olds to give more women the option of going back to work.

"More choice for women and for families is one of the themes of the next stage of our policy reforms," Brown said. "This is not a government that walks away but a government that's on the side of hard-working families, helping them to climb the ladder."

A spokesperson for the Tories said they supported the measure.

Yesterday, the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) said there is a shortage of midwives to deal with the current baby boom.