Early Education and Childcare

Debate between Caroline Voaden and Stephen Morgan

Thursday 4th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend from along the south coast for his question. I know that Portsmouth football club are very much looking forward to playing Southampton this season. We promised to make childcare more affordable and we are delivering on that. I pay tribute to him and the work that he did in local government, and is now doing in this place, to ensure that childcare is more affordable and accessible for children in his constituency.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

I welcome the Government’s commitment to and recognition of the importance of early years provision, and the support for school-based nurseries, like the new Little Thinkers at Kings Ash academy and the nursery at Furzeham primary school. However, like others, I am deeply concerned about recruitment in the sector. Daisy and Rainbow Childcare said to me this morning:

“Our biggest difficulty is managing the drop off in funding as the child gets older, while negotiating a 37% increase in ENICs, ongoing increases in minimum wages and a rate for three and four-year-olds that has never kept pace. Is it any wonder that practitioners are voting with their feet and leaving the sector to take their skills elsewhere? We’ve been advertising for a qualified practitioner now for three months with zero applications.”

Will the Minister explain what the Government are going to do to ensure that recruitment in the sector is maintained?

[Stephen Morgan]

The early years workforce is at the heart of our Government’s mission to give every child the best start in life. I mentioned earlier that we have seen an uplift in the number of people working in the sector by 18,000 this year. Our best start in life strategy set out a range of measures that we will take to encourage more people to work in the sector. I am proud that we have the “Do Something Big” campaign—a real effort to increase the number of people working in the sector—which is making a real difference across our country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Voaden and Stephen Morgan

Monday 21st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

20. What steps she is taking to support schools that plan to ban smartphones.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)]

Mobile phones have no place in schools. Government guidance is clear that schools should prohibit the use of devices with smart technology throughout the school day. Research from the Children’s Commissioner shows that 99.8% of primary schools and 90% of secondary schools already have policies restricting the use of mobile phones.

[Stephen Morgan]

I have said that phones should not be out in schools, and heads have the power to enforce that. The Opposition backed those measures. If they felt they needed to go further, they had 14 long years in which to do so.

[Caroline Voaden]

Last Thursday, I felt the fear in a hall full of parents of primary school children in Totnes as they listened to campaigners going through the evidence of the impact of smartphones on kids at secondary school. There is a clear safeguarding issue around kids seeing videos of hardcore pornography and violence.

I am therefore pleased that Tina Graham, the head of Kingsbridge community college, has just announced a smartphone-free policy from September to protect children, which will mean no phones in school at all except for reasonable adjustments. That is a much better policy than the “Not seen—put it in your bag” policy that most schools follow. In the light of such safeguarding concerns, where every child is only as safe as the least safe phone in school, why will the Minister not do the one thing that could transform our children’s mental and physical health, and school attainment and direct all schools to go smartphone free—