http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2296048/Budget-2013-Backlash-grows-plan-penalise-mothers-dont-work.html

Mothers who stay at home to look after their children do not need as much financial help as those who work, according to the Treasury.

The insulting claim was inadvertently published yesterday as part of a briefing on the Government’s new childcare plans.

It fuelled accusations that the scheme will deliberately discriminate against traditional single-earner families in an attempt to force more mothers back to work.

Critics described the new policy as a ‘slap in the face for two million stay-at-home mothers’.

The Treasury briefing, designed to help press officers ‘rebut’ criticism, stated: ‘Working families who are struggling with their childcare costs, or families where parents want to go to work but can’t afford to are in greater need of state support for child care than families where one parent chooses to stay at home and look after their children full-time.’

The document was later removed.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg yesterday confirmed that working couples who each earn less than £150,000 will qualify for child care tax breaks worth up to £1,200 a year per child from 2015.

That means they could have a joint income of nearly £300,000 and still qualify. The prime minister was accused of a 'slur' on stay-at-home mothers after the Downing Street suggestion that they do not want to 'work hard and get on'.

Single parents who are employed and earn less than £150,000 will also be eligible.

But, in a move that will anger Tory traditionalists, the Government confirmed that families in which only one parent works will not receive a penny.

‘We want to help people who work hard and want to get on, and so effectively this is some tax relief on childcare.’ But the campaign group Mothers at Home Matter described the policy as a ‘slap in the face for two million stay-at-home mothers’.

Its secretary, Lynne Burnham, said many full-time mothers were angry about the suggestion that they not hard-working.

‘It is completely incongruous for the Government to be paying £1,200 per child to families on joint incomes of £300,000 yet taking away child benefit from single-earner couples on £50,000,’ she said.

‘Mothers who stay at home are hard-working – the difference is that we don’t get paid. The Government doesn’t seem to understand that the Big Society David Cameron wanted is falling by the wayside as mothers are forced back to work.’

Children’s minister Elizabeth Truss denied that the Government was deliberately trying to make mothers go back to work.

Anastasia de Waal, of the centre-Right think-tank Civitas, said: ‘The main problem with the Government’s support is that it gives a tax break to couples so long as they pay someone else to look after their children.

‘It would be better – for both children and the economy – if the Government let parents keep more of the money they have earned so that they can decide whether to care for their own children or pay someone else.’