AN MP says poverty wages are to blame for making the North-East the most expensive place in the country for holiday childcare.

One week of paid holiday childcare costs an average of £133 in the North-East, a rise of nine per cent on last year – higher than anywhere else in England.

Darlington MP Jenny Chapman said “chronic” low pay in the region, along with inflation and the rising cost of living, meant parents were being forced into working longer hours, which in turn ramped up demand for childcare places.

The charity Family and Childcare Trust said rising childcare costs and increasing shortages meant many parents who were unable to call on family and friends to provide informal childcare were struggling to keep their heads above water.

Its chief executive Ellen Broomé said a Government strategy was needed to make sure that every parent is better off working after they have paid for childcare and that there was enough childcare for working parents throughout the year.

Labour attacked the Government over the issue and said both wages and Government support had failed to keep pace with either the cost of childcare or the needs of families.

It claimed in its own analysis that the cost of holiday childcare had risen by more than 50 per cent across Britain since 2010 and by a massive 111 per cent in the North-East over that period.

A survey by the Trust found that the average price of one week of full time holiday childcare is now £124.62 in England, an increase of five per cent year on year. It was marginally higher in Yorkshire at £125.70.

To pay for six weeks of holiday care would cost £748 per child, it said.

Mrs Chapman, a mother herself, said: “Demand [for child care] is increasing and far outstripping supply because of chronic low pay.

“Previously it may have been possible to support a family on one full-time and one part-time wage and that is becoming harder as parents are forced into working longer hours because of inflation and the cost of living.

“The providers charging the parents, nurseries and childminders, their costs are going up too, so they are having to increase their charges.

“These providers are not multi-national businesses making megabucks, they are small businesses just about covering their costs and paying modest wages.”

The MP said the Government’s intervention in the childcare market had been “catastrophic” and had prevented childcare providers taking as many children as they would like to.

Two years ago the Government pledged to give 30 hours free childcare to families, doubling the 15 hours per week previously introduced by Labour.

But Mrs Chapman said it had been so heavily means tested that only a small number of families were eligible for the increased entitlement.

“Also because it is optional to take a child for 30 hours many providers have just said we can’t do it, or they have taken a smaller number of kids in order to have them for 30 hours,” she said.

“That has taken up a load of places no longer available for those that aren’t eligible for 30 hours, but are still eligible for the 15. So demand far exceeds supply and the Government has made the problem worse.

“If you speak to providers they will tell you how difficult financially the situation is for them at the moment.

“It is just very expensive because there is huge demand.”

Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner said: "The Tories are quite simply failing working parents who are seeing the cost of their childcare skyrocket, their wages fall, and their government failing to give them the support they need.”

Children’s and Families Minister Robert Goodwill, MP for Scarborough and Whitby, said: "Conservatives have taken action so this that summer parents benefit from 15 hours of free childcare, income tax cuts worth more than £1,000 since 2010 and a pay rise worth £1,400 a year to a full time worker through the National Living Wage.

"But we want working parents to have more help with the costs of childcare so from September we are doubling that offer to 30 hours for working parents – worth up to £5,000 per child – with that increased entitlement successfully rolled out in several areas across the country."