Childcare Bill [HL]
Baroness Pinnock Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I just want to speak briefly about baselines. As we are talking about quality, I wonder whether the Minister has seen the report of the Family and Childcare Trust, Access Denied, which does not talk about quality but about 38 English local authorities which failed to carry out and publish assessments of local childcare since 2012. Therefore, a large number of working families have no access at all to childcare. The report gave an example of a mother who said:
“I was so happy when my boy turned three and we got free nursery education. I decided to try and move him from the childminder to a nursery, where he could get the free hours. But I could not find a place with any vacancies. The local nursery and the school were both full, so I’m still with the childminder, so no free hours for him and a big bill for me”.
Would the Government like to comment on this problem of access to basic childcare, never mind quality?
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I do not want to expand on what has already been said most ably by the mover of the amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady—oh dear.
Baroness Pinnock
It is, yes. I have been concentrating hard. I support everything that the noble Baroness said because it follows on from the earlier debate about quality. You cannot deliver quality unless you have a well-trained staff working in the childcare sector. I wanted to make it clear that there is support on our side. We have no critical comment to make but welcome the amendments that have been moved.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendments 13, 17 and 36, on the early years workforce. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, for bringing forward these amendments. They are wide-ranging and cover a review of the workforce and workforce strategy, together with specific issues such as training, qualifications and pay.
I am sure we would all wish to pay tribute to the commitment and dedication of the early years workforce. Their hard work and devotion does not go unnoticed, and the support they give to children in the most important years of their lives is critical to ensuring that every child gets the best start in life. The Government are committed to ensuring that childcare hours are of high quality and, of course, the workforce is key to that.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has moved an amendment requiring the Secretary of State to,
“lay a report before both Houses of Parliament setting out her strategy for developing the early years workforce”.
We covered this issue in an earlier group of amendments. I set out that strategy and some of the initiatives that the Government have introduced, so I do not propose to repeat those.
The noble Earl also moved an amendment to make explicit requirements for the use of graduates in early years settings. We are committed to continuing to raise the quality of the early years workforce. We have already set the bar high for the qualifications of people working in childcare, including early years teachers, who must meet the same training course entry requirements as primary teachers. Since 2007, 15,422 early years teachers have been trained. I also assure the noble Earl that we will continue to support expansion of the graduate workforce through the provision of early years initial teacher training routes and through providing funding support for trainees.
Regarding the noble Earl’s amendment to develop a strategy to increase the number of maintained nursery schools, we recognise that they have been shown to deliver high-quality early years education. However, we must of course also recognise that many private, voluntary and independent providers also deliver quality. At 31 December 2014, the proportion of all providers on the early years register rated good or outstanding by Ofsted was 83%.
While we agree that many nursery schools offer high quality, we also think that the diversity of the childcare sector is one of its strengths as it offers choice and flexibility to parents. We want maintained nursery schools to play their part in a diverse early years sector in years to come, delivering high-quality, sustainable provision that is responsive to the needs of parents in their local area.
I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, that I have indeed read the report to which she referred and we will certainly reflect on some of the findings laid out in it.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has also tabled an amendment which would require early years settings to provide a specified number of training hours per year to each member of staff. While I entirely understand the intention behind this amendment, to support staff training and development, we think this is a matter for individual employers and the sector to lead on. We will continue to support the sector in doing so, but do not believe that specifying a one-size-fits-all model would be helpful. Given these reassurances, I hope the noble Earl will withdraw his amendment.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has tabled an amendment which would require a review of the qualifications and pay of staff. It specifically addresses the assessment of progress of level 3 qualification standards, the assessment of progress in introducing early years career paths, recruitment and retention, pay levels and the number of black and minority ethnic staff at different levels of the profession. I will take each of these briefly in turn.
We have a robust set of standards for level 3 early years educator qualifications. The quality of the workforce is increasing year on year. We know that the proportion of paid staff with at least a level 3 qualification increased between 2011 and 2013. The sector shares the Government’s ambition to see staff in key positions holding good GCSEs in English and Maths, as this can only be to the benefit of the children with whom they work and the status of the profession.
We recognise the importance of clear progression routes within the sector to attract and retain good-quality staff, and will be looking further at how to ensure that the current and prospective early years workforce can take advantage of the varied and rewarding careers that are available to them. I know that the Minister for Childcare and Education is looking closely at the qualification frameworks and rules to ensure that they are enabling the development of a high-quality workforce.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, also raised the important issue of recruitment and retention. It is important that experienced and skilled early years professionals want to stay in the profession, a point made by the noble Baroness. The Government recognise that settings, the majority of which are private businesses, manage this themselves in the context of their staff employment and deployment responsibilities.
There are many reasons why staff turnover may increase, including local economic factors which are beyond the control of providers. Making staff turnover information available at a local level to parents could lead to the information being misinterpreted and lead a parent to dismiss out of hand a good-quality setting that is doing good work to support staff. That is not what anyone would want.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, tabled an amendment on local authorities publishing turnover rates of early years staff. We already collect and publish information on staff turnover through the Childcare and Early Years Providers Survey, which was last published in 2013 and is publicly available on GOV.UK. We think this is the right level of information about turnover, and that it is not appropriate or necessary for local authorities to publish further information.
As regards the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on reviewing pay, all private, voluntary and independent providers are free to set their own pay scales. This means that those working in the sector can be paid as their employer sees fit. Only those defined as “school teachers” under Section 122(3) of the Education Act 2002 are legally entitled to the pay and conditions specified in the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document. With respect to the noble Baroness’s amendment to assess the numbers and qualifications of black and minority ethnic staff, it is the responsibility of early years training providers and employers to ensure that they do not discriminate when recruiting trainees and employees, and they must comply with the requirements of the Equality Act 2010. Information published on the representation of ethnic minorities reveals that school-based providers in nursery schools have the highest level of BME staffing, at 17%.
In conclusion, while we sympathise with the intention behind these amendments, we do not think they are necessary. Work is already under way to look at how to support the continued improvement of the early years workforce. I therefore urge the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, to withdraw their amendments.
Baroness Pinnock
“( ) Regulations under subsection (2)(c) must ensure that the description of “qualifying child of working parents” includes children between the ages of 1 and 2 years.”
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, Amendment 10 is in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Tyler of Enfield. It seeks to ensure that the new free entitlement provided under the Bill is also available to parents with a child aged between one and two. The Government’s announcements on this Bill have made it clear that they intend to target their support at three and four year-olds, who already receive 15 hours of free childcare a week. While I welcome this, it means that a significant gap in childcare arrangements will remain. At the moment, a parent with a newborn baby will receive support during parental leave, which—thanks to the work of Liberal Democrats in the previous Government —can be shared between mothers and fathers, helping them to share child-raising duties. However, once their statutory pay expires, they must make ends meet on their own. It can therefore be of little surprise that many parents see the end of their statutory parental pay as the point at which they need to return to work. It is a luxury that few can afford to go on for many months, especially due to the high cost of housing.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, surely, as the noble Baroness has acknowledged, there is a key question of affordability here. There is a great danger of good intentions running away with us on this legislation. I ask the noble Baroness for clarification. She speaks from the Front Bench of her party; is she making a commitment that the Liberal Democrats believe that that money should be spent?
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord True, and I said earlier, election manifesto promises are important. The Liberal Democrat manifesto gave a commitment to providing childcare in this gap for one to two year-olds. In the end, it is a question of priorities. Either you spend money on things such as Trident or you spend it on children from one to two years old. It is a question, as always, of priorities.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 10. While I understand the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Tyler, would like working parents of children between ages one and two to be entitled to additional childcare, the elected Government’s manifesto commitment is to increase the hours of free childcare to working parents of three and four-year-olds.
There is already support for childcare put in place by the last Government. We have increased the child tax credit entitlement to £2,780 per year for families with one child, £480 more per year than in 2010. We have legislated for tax-free childcare, which will save about 1.8 million working families with children under the age of 12 up to £2,000 per child a year.
The Government are also committed to increasing childcare support within universal credit by about £350 million to provide 85% of childcare costs from 2016 when a lone parent or both parents in a couple are in work. This is up from 70% in the current working tax credit system and current universal credit system.
This package of support for childcare as a whole provides help for parents with children between ages one and two and represents significant public investment. These are, however, difficult economic times, and the Government have to make hard choices. We know that more parents use childcare as children move towards school age. We are, therefore, focusing on where there is the greatest demand for childcare. Alongside this, two year-olds in low-income families also receive 15 hours a week, offering both high-quality early education and the opportunity for their parents to move into work.
I hope, for these reasons, that the noble Baroness is persuaded to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Pinnock
The response from the Minister is predictable because of the cost to the public purse of providing free childcare in this gap year. I refer, however, to the comment I made earlier about the motif on the door of the Minister’s office, which says, “closing the gaps”. Here is a big gap that I would like closed. If we can edge towards this by saying, “What we would really like to achieve for early years care and education is a planned approach which includes provision from age one to four,” I would welcome that. At the moment, we have a more or less ad hoc approach to extensions; first it was to everyone—the universal offer—now to only those with working parents, and to some two year-olds from disadvantaged families. It seems that we ought to be able to extend this to one and two year-olds, especially to those from disadvantaged families who would qualify at age two. As I and many of the Members of this House have said, if we can help the most vulnerable children in the most disadvantaged homes, it helps not only those children but also the rest of society as they grow into adulthood.
I hope that, at some point, perhaps on Report, there could be an approach to help bridge that gap. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, this amendment seeks to explore in more detail the purpose of the funding review announced by the Government, the extent to which real evidence will inform its findings, and the need to find a fully sustainable solution to the funding crisis.
At Second Reading there was a general recognition that the funding of the existing 15 hours of free childcare was unsustainable and would not survive an extension to 30 hours. There was also considerable evidence given to the Affordable Childcare Select Committee on this matter. This was subsequently echoed by the Pre-School Learning Alliance and others, which made a persuasive case to show that the hourly rate was so low that nurseries were able to provide the free hours only if they did so at a loss and cross-subsidised the payments from additional hours elsewhere. To be fair, the Government were quick to identify that this was a problem and announced the funding review soon after, and, of course, this is to be welcomed. However, serious questions remain about the conduct of the review, and this amendment seeks to explore these issues further.
First, the call for evidence asked parents and providers to send in any information that they wished to provide to inform the review, such as existing studies on the cost of childcare and the factors that make up the cost. That is okay as far as it goes, but where is the analytical research that needs to underpin a review of this nature? What we do not want is a whole series of anecdotal stories, important though they are. Surely what we need is a proper, independent study to investigate and evaluate the cost of provision across the different providers, how much the current shortfall is estimated to be and what the full cost of providing a fully funded, sustainable system would be. For example, it would be helpful to know how the Government will calculate the number of parents they expect to be eligible for these payments. Will any capital funding be included to allow for the expansion of premises or the creation of new premises? Will the calculations allow for any increase in staff pay, which providers say is necessary to recruit and retain staff? Will the assessment end the historic disparities in payments between the different local authorities? I could go on, but the point is that to do this properly requires a major piece of research, and I am not convinced that this is what the Government have in mind.
The Minister said in the policy statement:
“Between now and September 2015 the Government will be considering the simplest and most effective way to deliver the additional 15 hours of free childcare to working families. This process will be led by the Minister for Childcare and Education and the Government Task force on Childcare. The Government will provide a full update on this at Report Stage in the House of Lords”.
Again today, the Minister has confirmed that the funding review will be completed by September. This hardly allows time for a proper inquiry to be carried out.
There is then a question about how any increase in the payments to parents will be funded. The Pre-School Learning Alliance estimated that it would cost at least 20% more than the original estimate of £350 million; and, as we know, the Children’s Minister was at one stage talking about a figure over £1 billion. So there is an urgent need to clarify where any additional money will come from. Will the Minister confirm that it will be new money, not money drawn from existing budgets, and will arrangements be made to increase these sums year on year?
This amendment seeks to tease out more information about the nature and scope of the review, who will be consulted, what the timetable will be and how the outcome will be financed. It goes without saying that we welcome the Minister’s reassurance that this House will have an opportunity to consider the outcome of the review and its impact on regulations as proposed by the Delegated Powers Committee, and we look forward to further debate on this in that context. In the mean time, I beg to move.
Baroness Pinnock
I shall speak to Amendment 30 in this group which is tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Tyler of Enfield. For a serious new investment by the Government, it is disappointing that there is no indication in the Bill of the funding package that will be available for its implementation, because the funding is critical to the nature and quality of the childcare that will be provided. I welcome the funding review that has been opened, and I am delighted that the Minister has already received more than 500 responses to the request for information, but that simply shows the nervousness of the sector over the funding package that may be available.
I know from comments that have been sent to me by various childcare providers that they are very worried that if the funding is not of the right size, the implementation of what is otherwise an excellent proposal will be seriously damaged. There are several reasons for this. We do not know the quantum figure. We know that two figures have been bandied about. One is £350 million, which was mentioned in the Government’s manifesto, and the other is more than £1 billion, which was mentioned prior to the election period. The figure surely must be more than £350 million in order to fund an additional 15 hours of childcare for three and four year-olds. I hope the Minister will be able to explain where the money will come from, even if he is not able, at this stage, to tell us the total figure that will be available.
The other significant issue is that providers will not know the hourly rate that they will get for providing this childcare in the different settings. We know the rate is determined through local authority school forums and that they get the grant via the early years element of the direct schools grant. We also know that that is a flawed system. It is not necessarily a fair distribution of funding to local authorities across the country. We end up with different hourly rates for different childcare providers in different parts of the country which may not be sufficient to meet the costs of provision in those areas. I hope the Minister will be able to throw some light on this area.
There is going to be a significant demand for capital expenditure. For instance, providers in the state sector in nurseries attached to primary schools currently provide 15 hours through a morning session and an afternoon session. If there is going to be only one session of 30 hours, there will need to be a 50% increase in the amount provided. Capital funding will be necessary to do that, and it would be good to know whether any capital money is going to be available for either the voluntary or the state sector to do that.
The last point I want to make is one I raised at Second Reading, on the question of cross-subsidisation. Currently, parents who are working full-time may have to have childcare from eight in the morning to six in the evening. It is obviously quite proper that they have to pay for some of those hours, but people have been telling me that in the hours outside the free entitlement, they might be paying up to twice as much as the hourly rate in order for the private provider to meet the full costs. If, therefore, a private provider or voluntary sector provider is providing not 15 hours but 30 hours free, where is the cross-subsidisation going to come from? I am confident that the Minister, through his request for comments on the funding review, is receiving in his inbox many expressions of concern about the hourly rate that will be necessary to ensure these childcare providers are viable. For those reasons I have tabled the amendment in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and support the comments that have been made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones.
Lord True
My Lords, I also have an amendment in this group. Part of it follows from what the noble Baroness was saying. Cross-subsidy—or top-up fees, as it would be more honest to call them, although we pretend that they do not exist—is a problem. As has been established in this Bill so far, that will be a problem if 30 hours becomes the limit and you cannot charge below that for the settings in question.
I am actually really interested in another thing, which is not just money. I do not believe all the problems in the world are solved by money. One of my objections when I saw this Bill published arose when somebody said, “Here’s a great idea. We’ll throw an unspecified amount of money at it and the world will be a better place”. It is not quite as easy as that and what matters are real people, real places and things that actually happen on the ground. This is a fantastically diverse sector, as both my noble friends on the Front Bench have rightly recognised. Of course, I am biased, because over the last 30 years I have come to know hundreds of people who work in the informal education sector, in nursery care, for whom I have huge affection and admiration. They are good educators; women with vocations; people who are passionate about children; but maybe those settings do not all live up to the standards you might want if our country had been erased and you were rebuilding it—they would not be like that. But they are there—in the little church halls, the village halls and parish halls up and down the land—and they are small settings. It may be nine or 10 people who work hard, and the skilled and dedicated principal and manager does not have all the time in the world to fill in forms.
What this amendment is getting at is something that I think is so important. I know my noble friend says that he wants to address this issue—I appreciate what he said both inside and outside the Chamber—and does not want to cause problems for this sector, but a huge number of providers simply could not provide 30 hours of childcare a week, because the constraints of where they provide it do not allow for it. We really should understand, as I ask in this amendment, how many nursery and childcare providers operate in rented premises or private places. These are the people who are under threat. What proportion of nursery and childcare providers could not offer this wonderful 30 hours a week that we talk about in this House and which we would all love to see?
Childcare Bill [HL]
Baroness Pinnock Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, these are crucial amendments that seek to take forward our concerns, which have just been set out by my noble friend Lady Smith. As we have just discussed, they echo the concerns identified around the House at Second Reading, which have been endorsed by the damning report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, and further endorsed today by the Lords Constitution Committee.
Noble Lords will recall that at Second Reading there was broad consensus that we supported the principles behind the Bill but were concerned about whether it was workable and affordable. More fundamentally, there was a concern that we were being prevented from carrying out our essential scrutiny role effectively. I could cite a number of quotations from noble Lords around the House to endorse that argument, but I know that we all recall the frustration that we felt at the time. The Minister was not able to provide any reassurance because, as he said, the plan was to carry out the reviews and then publish the regulations in light of their conclusions—in other words, a long time after the Bill had left this House. We have since received a letter and a policy statement from the Minister, as well as his helpful statement today, but I would still like further clarification on what we will have before us on Report. This is what our amendments are attempting to tease out.
I gathered from the policy statement that it was proposed to consult parents, providers and employers, beginning in the summer, as well as to have a public consultation that would not take place until 2016, and that outcomes from both would feed into the draft regulations, which would be published after that. I am just checking the timescale that the noble Lord is now proposing, in light of what I read in the policy statement. Then, in September 2016, the pilot schemes will take place, so there will also be conclusions from these. I gathered from the noble Lord today that on Report we would have details of what the pilot schemes would do, but not their conclusions.
The policy statement also said, and the noble Lord echoed this today, that in the autumn the Government will produce their response to the affordable childcare report. As my noble friend Lady Massey has said, it would be helpful to have the Government’s response to that before Report. I am not sure that the Minister clarified that that would be the case. He said that there would be discussions with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and others, but a thought-through response to that report would be very helpful.
We then have the government task force on childcare, which I think we are also calling the funding review, to which my noble friend Lady Smith referred. As she said, the whole Bill will stand or fall on whether we get the funding right. Is the noble Lord saying that all the work on that review will be completed by September, in time for Report? It seems a very big piece of work to get it right—not only to consult all the providers but to look at the financial implications and at where the money will be drawn from to pay for any additional places. I am impressed if that is the case, but it would be helpful if the Minister could clarify that.
We also have the Minister for Employment chairing a childcare implementation task force—which I think is different, but the noble Lord will be able to clarify this—to look at the options for extending entitlement. However, as we discussed last night, it seems from the 10 Downing Street website that that task force’s report is not to be made public. Perhaps the noble Lord could clarify whether we will ever see it.
There is then a full economic impact assessment, which we will not see until 2016. Then, as we talked about, there are the final regulations and guidance. I am just trying to tease out in a little more detail which of these we will see on Report, because I would have thought—and this is what the Delegated Powers Committee report said—that most of them would be very helpful before we get into the detail of the Bill.
In essence, this is a topsy-turvy Bill. We are doing everything in the wrong order. As the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, said, it would have been sensible to have reviews and pilot schemes and publish a more detailed Bill after that. Amendment 1, is, in effect, a sunrise clause: it puts a logical process of consultation and review into the Bill and enables both Houses to play a proper role in scrutiny before the Bill is enacted.
At Second Reading, the Minister argued that it was important for the Bill to be published early so that parents could plan for 2017. Crucially, our amendment would not alter that start date, but would give an opportunity to address the many concerns that parents and providers are raising about who will be entitled to the free childcare and how it will be funded, so that, by 2017, parents will have a much clearer picture of what is on offer to them. I hope that noble Lords will see the sense of the amendment. It is very much in keeping with the recommendations of the Delegated Powers Committee and it would underpin our right to scrutinise the intent and detail of the Bill more rigorously.
Amendment 27 is quite straightforward and essential, and again builds on the recommendations of the Delegated Powers Committee. As it stands, Clause 2(2)(d) is a Henry VIII power that gives widespread powers to the Secretary of State to amend, repeal or revoke any regulations made under the Bill. By removing subsections (4) and (5) and replacing them with our amendment, all the regulations in the Bill would need to come to each House for approval, so there would need to be an affirmative, rather than a negative, process. We believe that this safeguard is necessary because of the lack of clarity in many of the regulations proposed.
In their policy statement, the Government sought to make a virtue of the lack of detail in the regulations proposed, arguing that the reviews and the consultation should take place first. We of course agree that consultation, evidence-collecting and analysis should take place before the legislation is finalised, but we are not prepared to hand over so much detail of the legislation, both primary and secondary, to the Secretary of State when so much is yet to be decided. We believe that that is bad policy and bad scrutiny.
The Delegated Powers Committee’s report was clear on this. It said:
“In our view, the Government’s stated approach to delegation is flawed. While the Bill may contain a legislative framework, it contains virtually nothing of substance beyond the vague ‘mission statement’ in clause 1(1)”.
It went on to recommend that the affirmative process,
“should apply on the exercise of all powers conferred by clause 1”.
We agree with this recommendation and our amendment would give effect to it. I am not sure whether the Minister’s statement today confirmed that. Again, I would be grateful if he could clarify that. Amendments 40, 41 and 42 are then consequential on Amendment 21.
Given the lack of detail, on which all noble Lords commented at Second Reading and again this afternoon, I hope that these amendments will provide some reassurance and a vehicle for taking the Bill forward. I hope they will receive widespread support. I beg to move.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I am very new to this process of scrutinising legislation. All the detailed procedures and processes that more experienced Members of this House know about, and the intricacies of how a decision is made, are a bit new to me. What I do know, though, is this: there is in front of us, for a very important change to legislation, a Bill that comes to just over three pages. The amendments that have been tabled across your Lordships’ House come to 13 pages, which is a very telling ratio.
What we have in the initial case is something that is extremely lacking in detail and substance, when we need detail and substance. The Bill is not about a Conservative manifesto commitment; I am concerned not about the Government’s manifesto commitments but about the impact of the final legislation on children and their families. So much is lacking in the Bill that we have no idea what the impact will be and whether it will be affordable or accessible for all young people. Which families will be able to take advantage of the 15 hours of additional free childcare that is on offer? We know none of these things. We do not know whether there is sufficient capacity in the sector to provide these additional 15 free hours.
In my other capacity, as a local councillor, representing families and their children, I would have to say, looking at this, that I do not know what is on offer, and whether I would be able to access and use it. We have before us a lost opportunity of immense proportions. Everybody across this Committee can agree that an additional 15 hours’ free childcare is very important to families and to children of preschool age, but we cannot get it right in the first instance. It is shameful that we are at this stage.
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, has said. As the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said, the focus of this Bill must be on the quality of provision for the child. I made that point on Second Reading. It is most important that we keep our focus on the quality of the provision for the children whom the Government are going to spend money on by providing additional hours of childcare.
The one word that I noticed was missing from the Bill was the word “quality”. When you are dealing with the very youngest members of our society, you would think that any additional provision made for them would have the word “quality” attached to it. When I read the Bill, it struck me that the focus or driving force behind it was not the needs of the child but the needs of the parent. That is why I passionately support these amendments. We need to shift the focus back on to what is done for the child. It would be wonderful if we could rename this Childcare Bill, which has all the connotations of care rather than anything else, the “Early Years Care and Education Bill”. Within the additional 15 hours for which the Government are paying we want to see not just aspects of care, but aspects of early years education as well. That would bring with it the qualities proposed by both the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and my noble friend Lady Tyler. I hope the Minister will take those two points on board.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
I shall speak to Amendment 31 in my name. Before I do so, I declare my interest—since it is pertinent to local authorities—both as a councillor and as a newly elected vice-president of the Local Government Association. I concur entirely with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about the confusion in implementing free childcare provision if local authorities are responsible for the first 15 hours and the Secretary of State is responsible for the next 15 hours.
However, our amendment focuses on a different aspect. We are asking for a new clause to be inserted into this Bill, to enable local authorities to be a provider of last resort. We do so for a number of important reasons. When I visited the Minister this morning, I noticed a big sign on his door that included the phrase “closing the gaps”. We all know, from our own research and from references already cited by many noble Lords this afternoon, that early years are extremely important in ensuring that children start school on a level playing field. We as a society must do our best to ensure that children who come from less advantaged homes have that gap closed before they start their formal education.
We are concerned that where children are less advantaged, either in homes where they are vulnerable or in areas where there is considerable deprivation, it is much less likely for vibrant private sector provision to be established, particularly when there will be 30 hours of free childcare. We already know, from evidence provided at Second Reading, that many private providers rely on additional funding, outside those free hours, in order to make their businesses financially viable. We need to give special focus to those areas of the country and those families that many Members of the House are already most concerned about, to ensure that children in those areas and families have the same opportunities and access as children from more advantaged areas. In those places where there are no viable providers from either the private or the voluntary sector, the local authority should be given the opportunity to close that gap to enable children to take advantage of the 30 hours that would be on offer. One of the reasons for doing this is because, sadly, many Sure Start children’s centres are either closing their doors or decreasing the number of hours that they are open for children from these very families. In many cases the buildings are there and could be used by local authorities by commissioning from the voluntary or private sector, but certainly provision should be made for children from less advantaged backgrounds.
As we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, local authorities already have a duty of sufficiency. Enabling local authorities to bridge that gap would give them the opportunity to ensure that there is a sufficiency of places for all children in our country to take advantage of the additional 15 hours of free childcare—or “early years care and education” as I am going to start calling it. As we heard in the debate on the previous group of amendments, that is probably the most important thing we can do: to focus on children who come from less advantaged areas and vulnerable families and give them the right start in life. Let us really do what it says on the Minister’s door and do our best to close that gap.
Baroness Pinnock
At Second Reading, I raised considerable concerns about the lack of a definition of working parents. I welcome the contributions so far, which have tried to expand the definition of working parents that the Minister gave at Second Reading, which is now written in the policy statement he provided at the end of last week. If the Government’s aim is to enable more people to go out to work by providing additional free childcare, I think we need a wider definition than that the Minister provided.
I am particularly concerned about people who go into education and training. They, too, ought to qualify for the additional 15 hours’ free childcare. We know two things. One is that many young parents have missed out, somewhere along their route through life, on accessing further education or training, either by choice or not. We also know that skill levels in this country are not as high as we would like them to be. One of the best ways back into the workforce is by gaining extra skills or qualifications through further or higher education. The Government ought to be enabling and encouraging this to happen by including parents in education or training in their definition of working parents. I urge the Minister to consider that addition seriously.
Childcare
Baroness Pinnock Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Nash
I agree entirely with the noble Lord, who is very experienced in this area. We all know that these are the most important years in a child’s life, but I am encouraged that of the providers who have been inspected under the early years inspection framework, which is a more rigorous one, we now have some 85% of them being found to be good or outstanding, up from 69% five years ago.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the problems of undercapacity in the childcare sector will not be resolved unless hourly rates for the free places are substantially increased? The hourly rate is dependent on the vagaries of the early years funding element in the revenue support grant to local authorities. We need to address both concerns if the rates for free places are going to be increased, as well as problems around capacity in the childcare sector if the increase to 15 hours a week is to be provided.
Childcare Bill [HL]
Baroness Pinnock Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, of course we very much welcome the basis of this Bill, which is the additional 15 hours a week of free childcare for three and four year-olds whose families are in work. However, as the noble Baroness has just said, the devil is very much in the detail of this offer. I have four broad areas of concern: funding—there must be sufficient funding allocated to cover the cost of a high quality offer; flexibility—to really help working families, there must be flexibility built in to the offer; focus—childcare provision must be primarily for the benefit of the child; and fairness—this provision must be of equal benefit to low-income and higher-income families. Our concerns are the four Fs—funding, flexibility, focus and fairness. I want to expand on each of these issues.
On funding, one of the key concerns is that the Government provide adequate levels of funding for the scheme. On this, sadly, the Bill is completely silent. However, we know that the manifesto commitment was for an additional £350 million. I hope that this is one manifesto pledge that will be broken. Even combined with the estimated lower demand for the tax-free childcare and a transfer of any of those savings, the scheme appears to be grossly underfunded. This potentially underfunded proposal is then subject to the unfair vagaries of the early years funding element of the local government grant. Consequently, some council areas will have the double hit of the combination of an inadequate funding package that is then unfairly divided. This leads to private providers making up for losses incurred on the free offer by charging highly inflated rates for hours outside of the scheme. One parent told me that he pays £8.36 an hour for these extra hours for a non-London nursery. The Government are undertaking a funding review which may report before the end of the year. However, that does not help us in our consideration of the Bill or, more to the point, the parents and children who will want to know what quality of childcare will be provided.
The second concern I have is flexibility. The needs of parents and carers who are working are many and varied. Many women, particularly, often have two, three or even four short-hour jobs in cleaning and catering. Their needs are often for childcare to meet early-morning shift working and for after-school cleaning jobs. Often jobs in this area of the labour market are unstable both in terms of hours worked and in length of contract, so having a flexible offer is vital for both the child and the parent. Then there is the constant pressure on parents to find childcare in the school holidays. This can be very expensive. One mother of three children has told me that it costs her £2,000 in childcare during the six-week holiday. Even with the tax-free childcare, her costs will be £1,600. I have asked parents to let me know their comments on the flexibility provided—or not provided—in the Bill. They have said that being able to spread the 30 hours per week over 52 weeks rather than the 38-week school year would be of enormous benefit. I urge the Minister to consider that proposal.
I have considerable concerns about the Bill’s focus, which seems to be on providing the means to encourage more women into the workforce. That in itself may be a laudable aim, but these are children’s lives we are dealing with and the primary focus of attention must be the impact on their lives, not just an economic argument about the labour market. I urge the Government to make adjustments to the Bill so that it becomes child centred. Making that change would change the thrust of the debate towards focusing on the quality and type of provision. We know that poor-quality childcare can actually damage a child’s development. An underfunded scheme may well result in lower quality, but the thrust of any childcare provision, especially that funded by the Government, must surely be to provide care of the highest quality. Focusing on the needs of children would force consideration of the effect of spending 30 hours in an institutional setting and thought about the potential benefits of childcare being shared between different providers. Wraparound care also needs to be thought through. A parent who may well need care from, say, 8 am until 6 pm will need more than provision that is just school based. Private providers are understandably reluctant to provide care just for an hour or so each side of the school day. It does not add up, for them, to a successful business model. I hope the Minister will be able to give us categoric assurances that the Bill will put the needs of the child first and foremost.
Finally, fairness needs to be at the heart of the Bill, and I am not convinced that it is: fairness to parents trying to juggle work and parental responsibilities, when they are in jobs that may last only a few months; fairness in defining the eligibility, so that parents in education or training also qualify; fairness to the child in ensuring that the free childcare is of a high quality; and fairness for children with disabilities and from dysfunctional families through actively encouraging their take-up of any offer which is adjusted to meet their specific needs. It is, therefore, only when we see the detailed regulation and, importantly, the funding package that we will be able to be certain that this measure will be positive both for children and their carers.