A Tory MP has a radical plan for stay-at-home mums – just not the one he thinks

If George Eustice wants a society where mothers are freed from the shackles of office life, then what he is advocating for is a society in which salaries are higher and housing is cheaper, argues Marie Le Conte

It isn’t only expensive to be a parent in today’s Britain: it’s expensive just to exist (Getty)

Welcome, Comrade George Eustice, to the revolution! The former secretary of state for the environment may not seem like an obvious ally to the struggle, given he has been a Conservative MP for 13 years and was briefly a member of Ukip before that. But it’s never too late to change your mind.

“The relentless pursuit of GDP is a rather flawed, somewhat artificial measure of growth”, he said yesterday in response to the Budget. His argument focused on chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s effort to drive people back into work, including parents of young children.

If you missed it last week, the chancellor announced that one- and two-year-olds would soon be able to receive 30 hours of free childcare a week (during term time), in line with their three- and four-year-old brethren.

The goal of the policy is to ensure that it makes sense for women – it is, let’s face it, usually women who take the career hit – to return to work without having to spend all their salary on the childcare they now require.

According to Eustice and a handful of his colleagues, it is a flawed idea. Instead, they want Hunt to “change the tax system so that parents who stay at home and do not earn a wage can transfer more of their unused tax allowance to their working partners”.

Why is that? Well, you can probably guess. “Many women do want to spend those first few years with their child,” he said. “It’s a short period in life where they can perform that natural nurturing role. We shouldn’t belittle it; we should value it.”

In case you feel that the point he made here was too subtle, he added: “Fathers of course have a very strong paternal desire to spend time with their children but you can’t get away from the way we are biologically wired and the maternal instinct is a strong one.

“It is generally the case that mothers in particular will want if they can to spend that time with their young children.”

It’s fair to say that Comrade Eustice could do with a frank chat or two with women’s organisations but, well, he’s new to all this. He’s got time to learn. As Simone de Beauvoir categorically never said, one is not born, but rather becomes a revolutionary.

More seriously: Eustice has half a point. There are women – and men! – out there who would like nothing more than to spend the first few years of their child’s life being nothing but a parent. It isn’t for everyone, but stay-at-home parenting can be hugely rewarding. Few people would disagree with this.

What he seemingly doesn’t get is that stay-at-home parents transferring more of their unused tax allowance to their working partner would be about as useful, in most cases, as filling up an Evian bottle on the beach to reverse rising sea levels.

It isn’t only expensive to be a parent in today’s Britain: it’s expensive just to exist. In cities especially, it’s expensive to keep a roof over your head, to buy food to eat every week, to commute, to occasionally go out and have hobbies and do the odd thing that makes life worth living.

Sometimes people say, in conversation, that they would ideally like to have three children and it makes them look clinically insane, or like secret millionaires. Even two-salary households struggle to keep their head above the water if they’ve got more than one kid. How could they hope to do it with only one income?

The problem isn’t just the cost of childcare: it’s everything else as well. Proponents of traditional values may like to imagine that life would be better for everyone if women could just stay at home – but can they not see they have built a world where it is only possible for a small minority?

The only solution is for them to reckon with what they have done. Does George want a society where mothers are freed from the shackles of modern feminism, of office life and cold nannies?

Then what he is advocating for is a society in which salaries are higher, housing is cheaper, and both employees and renters have more rights where they work and live. We’ll see him on the barricades.