Children and Families Bill Debate

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Department: Department for Education

Children and Families Bill

Craig Whittaker Excerpts
Tuesday 11th June 2013

(10 years, 11 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Elizabeth Truss Portrait Elizabeth Truss
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I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution. The new qualifications will include the study of early brain development and attachment theory to ensure that early years educators and teachers are up to date with the latest research and practice when they go into the profession fully.

We have just announced a £2 million apprenticeship bursary scheme for apprentice early years educators. Up to 1,000 bursary places will be available to people who aspire to a career in early education. Each bursary will be worth £1,500 and an additional £300 will be available for further training. I am encouraged by the view of David Pomfret, the principal of the college of West Anglia, that the bursaries will make it easier for people to begin a career in early education. The college has seen more people taking up such courses in recent years and we want to encourage more young people into this important profession.

In addition to improving the supply of early years educators and teachers into child care, we are reforming child care funding. The tax-free child care scheme will provide 2.5 million families with financial support towards their formal child care costs. That is an expansion on the current system and, in the majority of cases, will provide a more generous amount.

Unfortunately, under the current employer-supported child care voucher scheme, which was introduced by the previous Government, the question of who receives support is arbitrary. It is also highly inefficient, with 33% of the total amount being spent on overheads. At present, only 5% of employers offer employer-supported child care, and only a fifth of employees are eligible for it. Those who are self-employed do not have access to it, and whether a parent can or cannot get it is a lottery. Strangely, as more than one parent can claim employer-supported child care, in some cases there are two claimants for one child. That means that the costs for one child could be covered more than for a single parent with several children, and that is neither a sensible nor fair way to continue.

Our new tax-free child care scheme will resolve those anomalies. It will be available to any working family, except where one or both earners pay the additional rate of income tax. It will be on a per-child basis and include the self-employed and those on the national minimum wage. Tax-free child care means that around 2.5 million families will now have access to support. That support will be worth the same as the basic rate of income tax at 20% of costs, making child care costs effectively tax free. It will mean that the average family with two children will receive up to £2,400 each year. Those on lower incomes will continue to have 70% of their child care costs paid through tax credits and, in future, universal credit, and there will be an additional £200 million to help those in receipt of universal credit ensure that work always pays.

We are not introducing the tax-free child care scheme now. The Government have been in discussions with interested parties since the announcement of the scheme, and will launch a formal consultation document shortly. The consultation will last 12 weeks, and the Government will proactively engage with those affected by the changes to discuss the issues. New clause 10 has been tabled to enable HMRC to start developing the scheme. Although we will consult in full on its details, the basic tenets have been set out. To ensure that the scheme is in operation by the autumn 2015 target, work on its foundations must commence now.

Craig Whittaker Portrait Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)
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I thank my hon. Friend for providing information on the tax-free child care system. Will that replace all forms of child care currently in the market? I am thinking particularly of employee benefits for those who receive child care as a benefit through the taxation of companies.

Elizabeth Truss Portrait Elizabeth Truss
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I thank my hon. Friend for his question and HMRC will consider that issue in its new consultation on this subject.

Much of the work required is based on IT development because we want all parents to be able to access the service online. As with paving legislation before it, the new clause will enable officials to start high-level discussions on IT and other development, and such discussions could not take place without the new clause. The provision will not affect HMRC’s current operations or impede the development or scrutiny of the tax-free child care scheme, and there is no immediate cost of the scheme that must be funded.

This is a short and self-explanatory new clause that merely allows the Government to begin preliminary work ahead of the final design of the tax-free child care scheme. The Bill is similar to those used by previous Governments, and takes no greater powers than in those cases. Furthermore, the Government are clear that any changes required in primary legislation will receive appropriate scrutiny. The new clause is minor and technical in nature, and I look for support across the House to enable HMRC to start working on one of the Government’s priorities.

In addition to reforming child care funding we must also increase the supply of quality child care. The number of childminders has almost halved over the past 15 years, limiting parental choice in a flexible affordable form of child care. Many parents want home-based care, especially in a child’s youngest years—I know my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) is a great advocate of that. The Bill enables the introduction of childminder agencies, which I believe will help to increase the number of childminders in the market by removing barriers to entry and offering an alternative to working completely independently. Agencies will drive up quality—they will be required to support the training and development of childminders—and make it easier for parents to access childminders and be assured of high-quality and flexible provision.

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Sharon Hodgson Portrait Mrs Hodgson
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We would rather the Minister had come to the House sooner with a proper statement. In the time available this afternoon, that will not be possible, and obviously the House is not as well attended as it would have been for a statement. It is disappointing, then, that the announcement was not made in a statement to a full House in the usual way.

Craig Whittaker Portrait Craig Whittaker
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I fully understand what the hon. Lady is trying to achieve, but are these professionals and new clauses trying to say that the professionals in the sector are not professional or good enough to decide themselves what ratios they deem to be safe, rather than what she deems to be safe?

Sharon Hodgson Portrait Mrs Hodgson
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No. I will tell the hon. Gentleman what more of the professionals have said, however, and then perhaps he will think on the strangeness of his intervention.

Purnima Tanuku of the National Day Nurseries Association said:

“At the moment there is an option that nurseries can operate a 1:13 ratio for over threes, if a person with a Level Six (degree level) qualification is working directly with the children. However, few nurseries take up this option, largely because it is not practical for one person to meet the needs of 13 children doing the type of activities most nurseries offer.”

That was echoed by private nurseries and managers I have met across the country. They suggested that it can often be a struggle providing quality care when operating at the current ratios. Finally, I will quote June O’Sullivan, chief executive of the London Early Years Foundation, which runs the nursery in the House of Commons:

“It beggars belief that a junior Minister can wreak havoc on a sector that has explained the negative consequences of her actions.”

Obviously the junior Minister has at last come to the House and ditched her plans, which I am sure all the people I have quoted will be pleased to hear. Most important, though, parents will be most pleased to hear today’s announcement.

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Sharon Hodgson Portrait Mrs Hodgson
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My hon. Friend makes a very valid point that has been raised with me many times. I know that the Secretary of State is getting a reputation for sloppy research, and I feel that this is another case of policy-based evidence from his Department.

Then, last week, we thought that common sense had prevailed and the plans had been ditched. In fact, the Deputy Prime Minister said as much. In his briefing note to journalists, he set out in black and white the complete lack of support and credible evidence that the Department for Education had for these reforms. This was a cause of great relief for the tens of thousands of parents and childcare professionals who were rightly appalled by the lack of consideration of the needs of young children in these plans. Indeed, given how out of touch with childcare practice in England the Minister appears to be, it is little wonder that, according to her own Department, she has visited just five English nurseries in an official capacity since getting the job, compared with seven settings in France.

I am not sure what those French nurseries were like, but the Minister regularly cites them as exemplars. I am sure she will have seen that the chief executive of the Pre-school Learning Alliance, Neil Leitch, commented last week on his visit to France. He highlighted staff not having the time to identify and support children with special educational needs, nursery age children having scheduled toilet breaks and long afternoon naps, and children being made to sit still at desks for so long that tennis balls had to be fixed to their chair legs so that they did not make a noise when they fidgeted. This is not what anyone with an understanding of child development—[Interruption] He has photographs. They are available on the internet. The Minister is disputing what I am saying. She can look up the pictures, and I am sure that Neil Leitch would be more than happy to meet her to discuss what he saw in France.

This is not what anyone with an understanding of child development would describe as high-quality early education. When we consider how stubbornly the Minister has refused to listen to those experts and child care bodies who repeatedly told her that that is what her plans would mean, it is unsurprising that she has met with the tiny number of organisations who support her many more times than the major sector representatives who disagree.

Craig Whittaker Portrait Craig Whittaker
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In view of the fact that the hon. Lady thought my last intervention a little strange, let me put it in a different way. Is she saying that the French system is much more expensive, or does it have higher ratios and so is much more unsafe than our system?

Sharon Hodgson Portrait Mrs Hodgson
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Yes, the French system is of a lower quality. That comes out in the OECD ratings of its nurseries, which are lower than those of the British system. When people meet French nursery providers, they are often asked about our system. French nursery providers look to emulate our model and cannot understand why we look to emulate their systems. [Interruption.] That is what we are told, but again, I am more than happy to hear evidence to the contrary.

Within 24 hours of the Deputy Prime Minister saying that the policy was dead in the water, both the Leader of the House and the Prime Minister’s spokesperson denied that a decision had been taken. The Department for Education said absolutely nothing for six days. We had to wait six days for a Minister to come to the House and make a formal announcement confirming that the plans are indeed dead in the water. We were grateful to hear that at long last, even though we will not have time to discuss it in detail this afternoon.

Even though the Minister has said today that the plans have been shelved, I do not have confidence that we have seen the last of them. After all, the Government are struggling to meet their target to provide free child care for the 20% most disadvantaged two-year-olds. With just three months before the policy is due to be introduced, a freedom of information survey that I have conducted shows that only 60% of councils have the capacity to provide the places, probably for some of the reasons cited a moment ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck), who is no longer in her place. The temptation for the Government just to click their fingers and increase the number of two-year-olds that each worker can care for must be great. We should be clear: all they would have to do is change statutory guidance, meaning that Parliament would have no say.

In proposing the new clauses in this group, the Opposition are giving this House a say. We have an opportunity to nip any such future reforms in the bud. We have an opportunity to send the strongest possible message to Ministers that this House has listened to the tens of thousands of parents and professionals who have been campaigning against these changes, not to mention the Department’s own experts, and to say that we will not risk the safety of children in child care settings or the quality of the early learning and development they receive by allowing any such plans to go through unchallenged.