Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life

Darren Paffey Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

The hon. Lady’s local authority area is not currently funded through the programme and it will receive funding, including a share of a £12 million development grant, which we will confirm in the next few weeks, to start the process, ahead of opening a Best Start family hub next year. As I said earlier, we will ensure there is a trained SEND professional in every setting so parents get early and timely access to support.

[Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)]

Twenty five years ago this year, the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, joined my predecessor, John Denham, in opening one of the first Sure Start centres in the country, on the Weston estate. We remember the good that that did for families there, and we remember the effect of over a decade of slashing council budgets and shutting Sure Start centres. I welcome this announcement, which will benefit families in my constituency. Obviously, we are going to need more early years educators, many of whom we lost after the pandemic, to deliver this plan, so will my right hon. Friend set out how the Government will build that vital workforce where it is really needed?

[Bridget Phillipson]

As a Government, we want to ensure that more brilliant people want come and work in early years, and that they can gain qualifications and training, and build fulfilling careers. We will work with the sector to do that. We will recruit more early years teachers, particularly in the areas where they are needed most, more than doubling the number of funded early years initial teacher training courses by 2028, and rolling out a new early years teacher degree apprenticeship. That goes hand in hand with consulting with the sector on introducing a new £4,500 early years teacher incentive to attract and keep early years teachers in nurseries serving some of our most disadvantaged communities.