This is a good first step but the funding is only being put in place for the next two financial years – we call on all parties to support this move and to commit to increasing funding beyond that period. This would give parents, children and employers long-term certainty for an affordable and sustainable childcare system.

The Chancellor’s announcement does not address these existing, systemic challenges -including ensuring high quality affordable childcare is available to lower income families or addressing the recruitment and retention crisis in the childcare sector.

In a fortnight, we will be publishing our annual childcare survey, and year after year this has set out the growing challenges parents have faced with ever higher costs and an increasing lack of places.

We will continue to make the case for genuine, radical reform of the childcare system, and call for a right to early education for all children regardless of parents’ or carers' background, and bringing early years education into line with schools. This would provide a genuinely transformative start in life for all our children.