MPs Struggle To Secure Childcare Places At Parliament Nursery

A Conservative MP has said Parliament remains a “very outdated workplace” for parents with young children and that “special consideration” should be made for MPs to ensure their children can access onsite childcare.

Theo Clarke, the MP for Stafford, said she is talking with Speaker of the House Sir Lindsay Hoyle and Leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt about the need to improve maternity provisions and family-friendly policies across Parliament, after she could not get a place for her own daughter in the onsite nursery.

Limited access to childcare is a problem that is currently being seen sector-wide across the UK, with childcare places in England having fallen by nearly 40,000 since 2010, according to Labour Party research in March this year.

In Parliament, the issue of a lack of nursery places is likely to only get worse if Labour, which is currently way ahead of the Tories in the polls, wins the next general election. A significant proportion of Labour prospective parliamentary candidates are women in their 30s with young children or expect to have children in the near future. One candidate told The House magazine that if elected, "one of the very first things they’re going to do as MPs is hit send on a pre-prepared application for the parliamentary creche".

With new MPs after the election set to want the services of the parliamentary creche than the current cohort of MPs, calls for provisions to be expanded and improved are likely to intensify. 

Clarke has spoken on numerous occasions about issues facing new parents, particularly relating to childbirth, after experiencing a traumatic birth herself in 2022. Last week, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on birth trauma – co-chaired by Clarke – published a harrowing