Corbyn unable to give cost of childcare pledge in interview

Jeremy Corbyn appeared to forget the cost of a key Labour childcare pledge when asked repeatedly to provide the figure during a tense interview on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.

The Labour leader apparently tried to look up the policy on an iPad and in a hard copy of the Labour manifesto, according to the presenter Emma Barnett, who also said he had received a phone call in the studio while he struggled to remember the cost of universal provision of 30 hours of free childcare a week for all children aged two to four.

Asked how much the provision would cost, Corbyn paused and then replied: “Er, it will obviously cost a lot to do so, we accept that.”

“I assume you have the figures?” Barnett asked.

“Yes I do,” Corbyn said. “The point I’m trying to make is we’re making it universal … to make sure every child gets it and those who get free places will continue to get them, those who have to pay won’t, and we’ll collect the money through taxation, mainly corporate taxation.”

When Barnett asked again for the spending figure, Corbyn said he would “give the figure in a moment”.

Barnett then said: “[You are] logging into your iPad here, you’ve announced a major policy and you don’t know how much it will cost.”

“Can I give you the exact figure in a moment?” Corbyn said again. Barnett then described the Labour leader flicking through the hard copy of his manifesto and said he had received a phone call while in the Radio 4 studio.

“Can we come back to that in a moment? I want to give you an accurate figure,” he said.

Barnett then quoted figures given in an earlier interview by the shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, pledging an extra £4.8bn a year for the childcare subsidies, raised from corporate tax increases, as well as an additional £2.7bn of capital spending over the course of the next parliament and £500m to reverse cuts to Sure Start centres.

Asked if the figures sounded correct, Corbyn said: “It does sound correct and the importance of restoring Sure Start is that this Conservative government has actually cut Sure Start … and damaged a lot of children’s futures.”

The Labour leader denied his campaign was being run haphazardly, citing the recent move in opinion polls in Labour’s favour. “My office is not run chaotically at all. We have put together in two weeks, because the election was unexpected, a comprehensive manifesto.”

Corbyn was also challenged for choosing Woman’s Hour to launch his childcare policy, and presented with research showing that, like men, women consider the economy to be their top priority in the election.

“Of course [childcare] is not just a women’s issue, it affects all of our children,” he said, though he later cited a “big investment in early years education and our education strategy in schools” as the party’s key policy for women.

Corbyn denied he was thinking of all women as mothers and said the education policy was about “linking girls to educational opportunities, encouraging girls to go into science and engineering”.

“My mother was a science teacher and this is something she impressed upon me very robustly about the skills of girls in science subjects,” he said. “I think it’s saying to girls ‘you can do anything’, getting that message across.”

The Conservative Priti Patel called the interview “shambolic”, adding: “This car-crash interview shows Jeremy Corbyn isn’t up to the job of leading our country through the challenges ahead – he is simply too big a risk to take.”

The Lib Dem Alistair Carmichael called the interview a “brain fade” and compared it to a recent LBC radio interview with the shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, who could not specify the cost of Labour’s pledged increased in police numbers.
“It seems [Corbyn] has been borrowing Diane Abbott’s calculator,” Carmichael said.

Corbyn was also challenged about complaints made by Labour’s female MPs at the height of the tensions over the leadership challenge last summer.

About 40 MPs, including Angela Eagle, who challenged Corbyn for the leadership but later withdrew, wrote to the Labour leader about the online abuse they said they had suffered from his supporters.

“I did everything and I do everything that I possibly can [to stop the abuse],” he said. “Abuse of any sort is totally and absolutely unacceptable. I met Angela and all the women who wrote to me and pointed out what our procedures were, pointed out what the policies of the party were.

“They absolutely did not do it [the abuse] in my name, any abuse is totally unacceptable. I got in touch with people involved in campaigning work to say it was completely unacceptable and wrong.”

Barnett later tweeted:

Several Labour MPs offered support to Barnett after she tweeted about the abuse. Ilford South’s Mike Gapes said: “I have had foul antisemitic abuse on Twitter (and I am not Jewish) but I’ve noticed how it is much worse for women.” Redcar’s Anna Turley replied to one account purporting to be a Labour supporter saying: “Delete your account.... You are not Labour.”

Corbyn clarified the figures in a webchat with Mumsnet an hour after his Radio 4 interview. “At the moment, the high cost of childcare means that some parents send a huge proportion of their income on childcare and, as a result, are very poor,” he said.

“Today we’ve announced a new childcare policy which is designed to give every child the opportunity of 30 hours’ free childcare per week. This will cost £5.3bn a year by the end of the next parliament to ensure that all children get the opportunity of an exciting pre-school environment.”

On Mumsnet, the Labour leader took questions on free movement and on raising income tax for high earners, but some users expressed disappointment that the scheduled chat lasted only 20 minutes so Corbyn could leave on time for Labour’s launch event.

Justine Roberts, the founder of Mumsnet, posted: “Very sorry to disappoint folks – we were under the impression that Jeremy could spare an hour for us, which is the usual duration of our chats, but 20 minutes in his team told us he’d have to leave to catch a train at 12.30. We did try to persuade them to stay longer ... We agree it’s not an ideal length of time for a webchat.”