Oral Answers to Questions

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to my predecessor for that question. I think I will leave it to the Daily Mail to decide what it does. Suffice it to say that the number of non-domestic providers has remained stable.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am sure the Minister can guess what I am going to ask about.

Among early years provision, the jewel in the crown for social mobility is our maintained nursery schools. The Minister will know from the conversations that we had before the summer that the supplementary funding that they receive from the Government is due to run out before the comprehensive spending review, so does he have an update for the House on what he and the Treasury are doing to ensure that our maintained nursery schools have a secure future beyond next year?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. Maintained nurseries offer a valuable service to communities such as hers and others around the country, and we are conscious of the value that they provide. Both I and the Secretary of State have visited a number of them. Decisions about the future funding of maintained provision will be taken at the spending review, but I repeat that it would be premature for local authorities to make decisions about the future of their maintained nurseries before seeing the spending review outcomes.