Thomas Asher
“All my disclosures are declared in the normal way”, so says prime minister Rishi Sunak. Parliament’s standards commissioner needs some convincing. An investigation has been launched as it emerged Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty will be a beneficiary of a policy announced in the Tories’ Spring Budget.
Murty is a shareholder in one of six private childminder agencies. So it was great news for her when the government announced a premium for new members of those agencies signing up. A new childminder can be in line to get £600 from the government for signing up. But if they sign up to an agency this figure doubles to £1,200. Why?
Typically, employment agencies charge more for services and pay workers less, they are run for profit after all, and it doesn’t come out of thin air. Supply teachers, once employed in-house by local authorities, are now largely sourced through agencies. The major framework for these agencies has a mark-up of around 15% – extracting profits from our school’s budgets.
Meanwhile, Britain’s childcare remains in crisis. The Spring Budget’s promised limited extra free hours in the future does not address the very real crisis now. Thousands of parents remain unable to afford to return to work. Every week private nurseries go under, leaving parents in the lurch without childcare.
Another dad I got speaking to in the library recently told me how his boy’s nursery had closed with less than a week’s notice, unable to find staff. His own research informed him that its workers were paid minimum wage. His question was: “Well what did they expect?” We need fully funded, high-quality, flexible, publicly owned childcare for all, with staff paid at least £15 an hour – now.
Sunak is not the first Tory prime minister mired in sleaze, as much as he tries to paint himself as different to his predecessor Boris Johnson. With a net worth of £730 million reported in last May’s Sunday Times Rich List, the Sunak-Murty household is likely to appear again in this year’s list out next month. How long must Sunak’s list of commercial interests be?
Not that there are any doubts in most working-class people’s minds about whose interests he is governing in – his own and the rest of the capitalist class.
