There’s no dumping you’re quite right, it’s either a choice to leave young ones with strangers in a child care setting or there’s no alternative sadly.No diktats either.
Bereavement wipes out everything
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What has Labour done in the first 100 days?
(432 Posts)A round-up - curtesy of the Guardian.
Economy
One of Rachel Reeves’s first actions as chancellor was to stand in front of the Commons and accuse the previous government of leaving a £22bn hole in this year’s public accounts. Every year, government spending diverges slightly from what was budgeted, but this was an unusually large amount, driven both by the higher-than-expected costs of housing asylum seekers and public sector pay deals.
Reeves’s solution to this was to put an immediate halt to various projects, including the road tunnel under Stonehenge and the A27 Arundel bypass. Boris Johnson’s promise to build 40 new hospitals has also been placed under review, with the prime minister, Keir Starmer, accusing his predecessor of making the promise without allocating the money.
Energy
When Michael Gove was asked at Tory conference to name the most effective Labour cabinet ministers so far, one of those he listed was Ed Miliband. The energy secretary has returned to a post he last held 14 years ago with a flurry of activity.
On 8 July, the first Monday after winning the election, Miliband announced he was removing the previous government’s de facto ban on onshore wind power. A day later, Reeves, unveiled the national wealth fund, a £7.3bn scheme designed to invest in green infrastructure such as clean steel and carbon capture.
Later that month, Miliband brought forward a bill to set up Great British Energy, a nationally owned energy production company that the government has put at the heart of its net zero strategy. The bill gives the company power to produce and distribute clean energy and spend money on energy efficiency schemes.
Keir Starmer announced in his Labour conference speech that GBE would be based in Aberdeen.
Transport
The first bill to pass the Commons under the Labour government was the rail nationalisation bill. The bill automatically brings rail networks back under public control once their existing franchise contract is over, or earlier if they breach their contracts.
The transport secretary, Louise Haigh, has also passed a bill to set up a new company called Great British Railways to manage both the track and the trains service. Some have questioned, however, why the rolling stock is not also being brought under national control.
Last month, Haigh reversed another piece of privatisation in the transport sector, allowing local authorities across England to run their own bus services once more. The transport secretary has also said she wants to make it simpler and easier for local leaders to conduct the franchising process.
Education
Labour has promised that it will introduce free breakfast clubs in every primary school in England, but it is starting slowly. Reeves announced at the Labour conference that 750 English schools would be invited to be part of a pilot programme.
Housing
Labour has promised to liberalise the planning regime and began soon after taking over government, not only overturning the restrictions on onshore wind power but also reimposing population-based housing targets on local authorities.
The Conservatives had given local planners a series of loopholes to avoid meeting those targets, in a move that housebuilders said had hampered new development, pushing housing approvals to a 10-year low.
Other reforms are planned, including making it easier for public bodies to issue compulsory purchasing orders and making it easier to build on green belt land.
Meanwhile, Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, has introduced a package of renters’ reforms, which passed their second reading in parliament this week, despite the objections of the Conservatives. That package picks up on some of the ambitions originally championed by Gove when he was housing secretary, including bringing an immediate end to no-fault evictions and forcing landlords to make timely repairs to properties.
Campaigners, however, are unhappy that the Labour government has so far not enacted another package of protections for leaseholders, whom they worry are slipping down the government’s agenda. The government has promised to bring in a bill to restrict leasehold and boost the rights of tenants, but has so far not even enacted the measures passed through parliament under the last government.
Employment
Starmer promised that his government would bring forward a package of workers’ rights in his first 100 days, a deadline which was just about met when Angela Rayner, his deputy, published the employment rights bill on Thursday.
Her reforms include giving workers protection from unfair dismissal and paternity leave rights from the first day of their employment, rather than having to wait two years. The bill also bans employers from forcing workers to sign zero-hours contracts and stops them firing staff only to hire them back on lower pay, unless the company is threatened with bankruptcy.
While the bill was published in the first 100 days it will take another two years for it to come into force. Officials and ministers will spend that time consulting businesses and trade unions about the exact measures involved and how to police them.
Some of the pre-election promises have not made it into the bill. There will be no statutory right for workers to switch off outside their working hours, and the government will now consult on having a single status of worker. Unions have long campaigned for a single worker status to replace the distinction between those who are employed and self-employed, in part to tackle exploitation in the gig economy.
Immigration
As promised, Labour has ended the previous government’s Rwanda scheme, which had not sent a single asylum seeker to Rwanda but was already costing the government money. Scrapping it saved more than £2bn over two years.
In its place, Starmer and his home secretary, Yvette Cooper, have introduced a border security command to focus on people-smuggling gangs. However, the prime minister is still trying to sign returns agreements with European countries, agreements that might mean Britain having to accept migrants in return.
Since the election, nearly 12,000 people have crossed the Channel in small boats, slightly fewer than in the same period last year.
Justice
A week after the election, the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, announced an early release scheme that would see some offenders who had committed less serious crimes leave prison after serving 40% of their sentence. Mahmood blamed the prisons crisis she inherited from the previous government, which had left jails in England and Wales almost entirely full.
The early release scheme was controversial, but its purpose was underlined later in the summer as riots engulfed parts of the country. Speaking to journalists from the Downing Street garden after the riots had subsided, the prime minister described the decisions he had had to make while they were unfolding.
“I shouldn’t be sitting in the Cobra room with a list of prison places across the country on a day-by-day basis, trying to work out how we deal with disorder,” he said. “But that’s the position I was put in.”
Health
If Starmer is to show progress in one public service by the time he goes into the next election, it will have to be the NHS. His health secretary, Wes Streeting, commissioned Ara Darzi, a former Labour minister, to outline the scale of the challenge. Lord Darzi’s report, which was published last month, found that long delays for hospital, GP and mental health services were leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths.
Darzi suggested a range of changes, including focusing more on prevention and making companies pay “health levies” for things such as alcohol and tobacco.
I criticise any political party Maybee when they’re in power and I disagree with policies or actions and that includes my own party Labour. It seems odd to me to defend something simply cos you voted for it, or even odder to praise everything they do.I was relieved they won the election but they haven’t made it easy for me since then.Hope things improve soon.
My Party, right or wrong!
Not for me, if we all felt like that we'd never have a change of government.
Allira
My Party, right or wrong!
Not for me, if we all felt like that we'd never have a change of government.
I don’t think any of the Labour voters on here have that attitude. I certainly don’t. I’ll always criticise when necessary and praise when it’s due with all parties. But I am prepared to give Labour time given the chaos they’ve inherited from a party that is still chaotic, divided and veering to the far right. I just wish that Sunak was continuing as party leader even though I’ve always believed that a party leader should stand down after losing an election. He’s so much better than the people replacing him.
Oreo
I criticise any political party Maybee when they’re in power and I disagree with policies or actions and that includes my own party Labour. It seems odd to me to defend something simply cos you voted for it, or even odder to praise everything they do.I was relieved they won the election but they haven’t made it easy for me since then.Hope things improve soon.
Well said. Oreo.
There’s no better or more natural environment for a very young child than to be with its parent, even better, its Mother.
Says who?
I would imagine John Bowlby, Maternal Deprivation but sadly I no longer have my 60 years old ( at least ) copy to argue my point.
The theory was disproved by my father who spent several blissful months in 1908 aged 3 in a Diptheria isolation hospital, with a nurse in full-time attendance, masses of lovely toys and other children to play with, and his father cycling a ten mile round trip to stand on a chair and wave through the window.
Mind you; Bowlby hadn't met my paternal grandmother.
I agree with MayBee. I don't see any slavish following of party on here. I will agree with people and policies on one thing that I disagree with on another - whether politicians or 'ordinary people'. The insistence that unthinking defence is happening is tiresome, and if people can't see (or choose to ignore) criticism it shows their own limited viewpoint.
I still have high hopes for the new government, and am conscious of the fact that they have only been in power for three months or so, and have fourteen years to dismantle, as well as hostile media. I hope they get it right, for everyone's sake, and if they don't I will criticise them.
The first test will be the budget in a couple of weeks. That will show 'the direction of travel', even if they can't be as radical as they would like.
eazybee I don’t think 3 months at the age of 3 in isolation for diphtheria would qualify a child for loss of significant other. The child had many years to recover from the experience too. A poor example? Also from your description it would seem that your father had the full benefit of the extended family as well as parents all who were very invested in his care. So very different to modern childcare practices in the main.
All of whom ….
If parents go back to work full-time, it's a long old day for tiny tots who are dropped off at nursery first thing in the morning and not picked up until about 5.30 or 6.00 pm.
All very well for the mother who wants to stay on the career ladder, but what about the child?
Allira
If parents go back to work full-time, it's a long old day for tiny tots who are dropped off at nursery first thing in the morning and not picked up until about 5.30 or 6.00 pm.
All very well for the mother who wants to stay on the career ladder, but what about the child?
Nobody has to send their child to nursery.
There is no diktat 
.
There is even a financial incentive for those who can afford it to stay at home, in the form of 12 years pension contributions per child, which is not given to those paying into the system.
I have no idea what this misconception has to do with a thread about the first 100 days of the new government - has anyone?
Doodledog have you somehow missed all the announcements surrounding nursery school provision attached to primary schools? Also the other discussion about how to train staff? It’s firmly Labour policy so clearly part of the 100 days. 100000 nursery staff?
Improving provision is not the same as issuing a diktat. Childcare is eye wateringly expensive, and the vouchers issued by Sunak are not working- they don’t pay the nursery enough, and don’t kick in early enough for parents who want to use them.
Those who don’t want to work can stay at home if they want to - I don’t know where the idea of compulsion has come from.
Doodledog I keep telling you that Bridget Phillipson gave the strongest impression that two parents need to be in work. Looking around it does seem to be common for young babies - even at 5 months- to go to full day childcare. The cost of CNN living is so high and wages are kept artificially low in the main. Houses are now eye wateringly expensive. Hence the need for dual incomes.
Forget CNN
This is why the push to build more houses and to increase the amount of social housing, plus the new raft of workers’ rights are a good thing.
It’s not all about getting babies into nursery. I don’t think we can keep paying parents to stay at home when their children are at school, but that’s a separate issue.
Doodledog
This is why the push to build more houses and to increase the amount of social housing, plus the new raft of workers’ rights are a good thing.
It’s not all about getting babies into nursery. I don’t think we can keep paying parents to stay at home when their children are at school, but that’s a separate issue.
Are parents to stay at home when their children are at school?
Really?
Allira
If parents go back to work full-time, it's a long old day for tiny tots who are dropped off at nursery first thing in the morning and not picked up until about 5.30 or 6.00 pm.
All very well for the mother who wants to stay on the career ladder, but what about the child?
It’s a sad state of affairs isn’t it?
Are parents to stay at home when their children are at school?
Really?
Sorry, I don’t understand this.
Oreo
Allira
If parents go back to work full-time, it's a long old day for tiny tots who are dropped off at nursery first thing in the morning and not picked up until about 5.30 or 6.00 pm.
All very well for the mother who wants to stay on the career ladder, but what about the child?It’s a sad state of affairs isn’t it?
My own poor children! I honestly don't know how they turned out as they have done. 
What patronising and judgmental posts!
Allira My children were dropped off at 8 and picked up at 6. They had a sleep during the day, just as they would have done if they'd been at home. They weren't the ones who were tired, but their mother, who was doing a full-time job and spending quality time with her children, was exhausted.
Extension of nursery provision is of course a Conservative policy left for the current government to provide and find funding. I hope Angela Rayner is able to improve workers’ welfare and working conditions especially for carers and families as planned.
growstuff - we seem to have had similar experiences with young children. Mine are nearly 40 now and like yiu, reading some nonsense here makes me amazed they survived (and thrived)
Children aren’t dumped with strangers. They’re gradually introduced to their nursery or childminder. In nurseries, they have a named key worker.
Doodledog’s comment about the difficulty discussing politics on gransnet resonates with me
Iam64 fyi my 3 year old gs did not have a key worker and was not given a gradual introduction to a very full day at his nursery.
I am sorry that his experience was unsatisfactory. This site could be a valuable resource for exchanging information - a lost opportunity it seems.
Oreo
Allira
If parents go back to work full-time, it's a long old day for tiny tots who are dropped off at nursery first thing in the morning and not picked up until about 5.30 or 6.00 pm.
All very well for the mother who wants to stay on the career ladder, but what about the child?It’s a sad state of affairs isn’t it?
My daughter , a single Mum, after marriage breakdown, had no choice . Both children to nursery, attached to local Primary school, as she wanted to keep working to pay bills mortgage etc. Father's input was a pittance. Now years on, both children happy, well adjusted, and GG goes to same nursery. Job well done from nursery. So don't knock it. Needs must .
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