Member

The wider economic benefits have been estimated to be worth up to £2.68 billion a year. I know the Treasury can be sceptical about such calculations, but when Jeremy Hunt expanded childcare provision down to children nine months or older, the benefit of increased labour market participation, mainly from women, led the OBR to estimate that it would increase GDP by up to 0.2% a year—the biggest single upward estimate to growth based on a government policy decision that the OBR had made in its history.