Early Years Childcare

Claire Hanna Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) on securing the debate, and the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather) on an excellent maiden speech. It reminded me that my maiden speech as a Member of the Legislative Assembly some years ago was on childcare. I hope that he is slightly more successful than me in achieving his political aims.

Members across the Chamber have made excellent points about the chronic failure to think big on the issue of childcare, and about the series of minor interventions to tinker with a sector that is struggling under the weight of complex funding streams. Such interventions have increased demand on the sector, as various promises of free hours are made without any meaningful work on the supply side and so do not add up to any sort of solution. As we have heard, the UK has the highest childcare costs in the OECD. Northern Ireland is falling even further behind because, as my colleague the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry) said, successive Executives have failed to take sufficient interest in the issue.

The crisis is not new. As I said, I addressed it as an MLA back in 2016, and I subsequently established an all-party group, which has driven quite substantial policy change and ideas. However, when government is down more than it is up, implementing those things is difficult. There has been quite a bit of progress in people’s understanding of the issue, and I credit Northern Ireland groups such as Employers For Childcare and Melted Parents NI, as well as the Federation of Small Businesses, with correctly framing the issue as one of gender equality in the workplace, of outcomes for children and, fundamentally, of economics. The issue is crucial in tackling Northern Ireland’s chronically low productivity and high levels of economic inactivity.

In January, my Social Democratic and Labour Party colleagues in the Assembly set out a plan for a two-stage rescue plan to address the acute cost of living pressures that families face, including gargantuan—and growing—childcare bills, which, as Members have said, dwarf housing and other costs; and to address the recruitment and retention crisis that the sector faces. We also had a longer-term strategy that would borrow from successful—and usually social democratic—economies around the world. We noted at that time the inverted pyramid of funding that means that 10 times more is spent on post-primary education than on early years education, despite all that we know about the impact of a child’s first 1,000 days.

Nobody is pretending that this is a simple issue, but the necessary fixes for childcare start from the principle that it is a common good. Yes, having children may be meaningful in our lives—I think back to being asked by an indignant morning radio presenter whether this was not just chronic self-interest on my part because I had big childcare bills—but fixing childcare starts with an acceptance that, as well as being a meaningful experience, parenting is necessary for the replenishment of the human race and the workforce of the future, so providing for childcare is a matter for us all. It starts from the knowledge that more equal societies do better. That means affording everyone an equal opportunity to thrive in the workplace, and understanding that giving children a better and more equal start in life is good for the public purse and for society throughout their lifetime.