It had already been stressful, and then the government said my son didn’t exist. After an initial administrative fiasco, we were all set to claim our “free” 15 hours of childcare for our two-year-old as part of the government’s expansion this April. But then another spanner hit the works.

We hadn’t been able to get our code due to a totally foreseeable government error, so, like the thousands of others affected, we’d been issued with a temporary one. But when our actual code was confirmed, meaning we then had two codes, the nursery was told he didn’t exist, and then that we couldn’t use the hours until next term, since our code had been issued in April. It’s as Kafkaesque as it sounds and, though it was eventually sorted out thanks to the brilliant nursery administrator, it’s another example of the confusion and chaos that has afflicted parents since the announcement that the already labyrinthine system would be expanded.

Erm, bureaucratic allocation ends up being complex and bureaucratic. Who would have thought, eh?

Is it possible to suggest a different, better, more efficient system? Musing on it, perhaps. What if everyone just had unconstrained ration vouchers? These could be swapped for, perhaps, this many hours of child care. Or that many hours of after school top up education. Or for food, or housing, or pints down the pub.

This would increase the utility of the voucher holders for they could then swap them for what most boosted their utility within their overall budget constraints. This would eliminate several to many layers of bureaucracy. It would also bring clarity to the overall costs - it’s easy to count the number of vouchers issued after all - of the system as a whole.

And what if we renamed those unconstrained ration vouchers money?

You know, we think there could be the beginnings of a plan there.