The Government promised yesterday to provide free nursery places for all two-year-olds, although experts predicted that achieving the objective could take ten years.

Gordon Brown revealed that a major expansion of childcare would form part of his speech to the Labour conference in Manchester tomorrow. He will say that he wants free nursery places, pre-school help or childcare for all 600,000 two-year-olds at a cost of more than £1 billion.

The Tories support the measure but claim that it amounts to an unfunded commitment.

The promise is part of a package of family measures to be detailed in the autumn, as the Government also considers the introduction of free school meals. Free meals will be provided under pilot schemes to be introduced by some councils in conjunction with a study examining the link between nutrition and intelligence. This could lead to an announcement before the end of the year.

Unions have been pressing for years for more family-friendly policies to help parents to get back to work. At present, parents get 12½ hours of free childcare a week when their children are aged 3 and 4, which will rise over the next two years to 15 hours. Ministers believe that exposure to learning environments at an earlier age will boost achievements at primary school.

Some Labour insiders fear that the nursery announcement will unfairly raise public expectations, since it will take several years for the additional places to be created. One told The Times: “We need announcements that have an effect on people’s lives straight away, not another ten-year plan.”

Childcare experts point out that there is already a scarcity of accessible nursery places in rural and suburban areas, and that this would take time to address.

Mr Brown said yesterday: “I think more choice for women and for families is one of the themes of the next stage of our policy reforms. What I want us to do is to create thousands more nursery places, not just for three and four-year-olds but also for two-year-olds. This is not a government that walks away, but a government that’s on the side of hard-working families, helping them to climb the ladder.”

The plans build on the announcement in the Children’s Plan last November to help 20,000 low-income parents with two-year-olds. It will feature in Mr Brown’s speech tomorrow, when he will promise a “new wave of social mobility — upward mobility — people being able to do better than their parents”.

When challenged, Mr Brown denied that the pledge was unfunded. “We’ve put the money in so that this can start in the next year and we were taking £4 billion through to 2011 spending on childcare.”

Maria Miller, the Conservative families spokeswoman, said: “We fully support measures that will help improve access to affordable childcare, which is one of the biggest problems families face, but nobody is helped by the Prime Minister making unfunded promises.”

Emma Knights, of Daycare Trust, a childcare charity, said: “This announcement is a welcome staging post on the road to free childcare for all, but it must be put in place as soon as possible. Childcare is critical to fighting child poverty, allowing parents to return to work while raising the educational outcomes of children from deprived backgrounds.”

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