Early Years Childcare

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered support for childcare and the early years.

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate early in this parliamentary sitting period and for allowing the Education Committee to continue its work on this vital area of policy. I am also grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), recognising the pressure on parliamentary time today, for having withdrawn her equally important debate. I hope that she secures another one on that subject.

When I ran to be Chairman of the Education Committee, I proposed an inquiry into early education and childcare, and I was very glad to get the support of a substantial majority across the whole House, as well as from individual members of the Committee in pursuing that. As the parent of a five-year-old and two-year-old, I should perhaps declare a special personal interest in this area, but there is probably no single subject more vital to the future success of our children than their earliest experiences of education, and the stimulation, engagement and support they can receive through high-quality early years education and childcare.

As many others have argued, there is enormous economic benefit from investment in this space. However, the last time I troubled the Backbench Business Committee for time to debate it was in advance of the last Budget, when I was very glad that the Treasury accepted the case for major new financial commitments in this area. I said then that investment in childcare and early education would benefit multiple groups: parents who wish to work; schools to have properly socialised children ready to learn; children who benefit from better stimulation; and those with special educational needs with earlier identification. It is a win to the power of four.

Our inquiry was launched before the very significant expansion in the Government’s childcare offer and their plans for substantially increasing investment in the funded hours. It is important to note, however, that our oral evidence was taken both before and after the detail of the announcements became known. We heard both the relief of the sector at the scale of the commitment being made and also many of its ongoing concerns about the complexity of the many schemes of funding, the overall level of funding going into childcare, particularly for three and four-year-olds, and the many serious and ongoing pressures facing providers.

I am enormously grateful to the many expert witnesses, parents, providers, academics, campaigners, childminders and nursery practitioners who gave evidence to us. Indeed, it is worth noting that this inquiry received more written submissions than any other in the life of my Committee and, in so far as my Clerks recall, any other inquiry in the history of the Education Committee. I put on record my thanks to the Clerks of the Committee and their apprentice, who had to handle an unprecedented quantity of material with calm determination and expertise.

Due to the very important list of other debates that have taken place today, I will not have time to re-present every one of the 21 recommendations that we made in the report on the back of the more than 10,000 pieces of evidence. However, I want to remind the Minister of the pressing nature of the challenge, reflected in the enormous public response to our call for evidence, and I will focus on three key recommendations.

The affordability of childcare is a key concern for parents, and before the Budget it was becoming clear that the sector was facing a crisis of both affordability and availability. I have no doubt that the additional hundreds of millions in funding this year and next will make some difference, and that the roll-out of funded hours for the under-threes over the next few years will make a big difference for working parents, but I urge the Government to consider very carefully recommendations 6, 8 and 11, as well as overarching recommendations 1 and 2 on the need to work across Government to ensure adequate funding. The additional billions that the Government have committed over the long term will succeed only if the sector is properly supported in the short and medium term and if we continue to have strong and thriving early years education across the public, private and voluntary sectors.

I know the Department for Education is not able to make decisions on taxation, but I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to consider very carefully the case for our recommendation on exempting childcare providers from business rates and the payment of VAT on building costs. Not only are these taxes a false economy for the Treasury, as the DFE’s evidence admits these costs have to be taken into account in a setting’s funding rates, but they are a barrier to much-needed expansion to meet the Government’s own ambitions. Worse, many childcare businesses pointed out to the Committee that the size of their premises is a matter not of choice but of meeting regulatory standards required by Government and Ofsted guidelines. They therefore find themselves having to pay more in business rates not as a result of a commercial decision to expand but as a result of wishing to meet the space standards set by public bodies.

I raised nurseries’ pressing concerns about their rapidly increasing business rates bills in a previous debate but, as our unanimous recommendations suggest, fixing this problem and creating a level playing field among providers on rates and VAT should not be used as a cost-saving measure; it should be used to ensure that more resources are available for paying, upskilling and retaining expert staff. In support of this recommendation, written evidence from the National Education Union said:

“Business rates for nursery schools can be over £100,000 in some areas, so the absence of a rebate is a significant pressure on already overstretched budgets.”

Written evidence from the National Day Nurseries Association said:

“Business rate property revaluation from April 2023 has seen providers report bill increases of 40-50%.”

In a survey of NDNA members, 782 nurseries across England were asked what they would do if they no longer had to pay business rates: 61% said they would increase staff salaries; 49% said they would reduce losses in their business; and 40% said they would mitigate fee increases to parents. If affordability and quality are as important to the Government as availability, I believe that they should take account of this evidence. I know my hon. Friend the Minister is passionate about social mobility and the benefits of early years education, and I urge him to ensure this continues to be pressed with the Treasury.

We have heard strong arguments from the Treasury about the benefit to parents of being able to work, where there is affordable childcare provision. This has been a key rationale for the expansion of so-called free hours, which we have recommended should be called “funded hours,” down the age groups. It was a key rationale behind the very welcome changes to childcare costs within universal credit. However, in that context, I urge the Minister to press his Treasury colleagues on recommendation 11 for a fundamental review of the tax-free childcare system to improve both understanding and uptake.

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs tax-free childcare report and survey of 2021 found that 43% of people found the name confusing or unclear. Of these, 58% said it prevented them from looking into tax-free childcare and 54% said it prevented them from signing up to the scheme. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that

“in the four years after introducing tax-free childcare, the government spent £2.3 billion less on the scheme than it had planned.”

In the written evidence we received from parents, they said:

“The tax free childcare system is confusing and onerous to use, and complicated to calculate.”

Childminders told us:

“Not enough parents know about Tax-Free-Childcare, especially not the self-employed. Many parents also find it…difficult to set up the payments.”

My biggest disappointment with the announcements made at the Budget is that the tax-free childcare system was not touched, yet we know that the theoretical benefits of this policy are not reaching a very substantial proportion of the parents it was designed to help.

Worse, in answer to my written parliamentary questions, we have seen that even those who have gone to the trouble of registering or re-registering for support through the current cumbersome system, only around half actually claim anything from it, which does not suggest a system that is living up to its promise.

The Select Committee made a number of other suggestions for supporting affordability for parents, not least our call in recommendation 13 for better support for stay-at-home parents.



The last area I want to press particularly hard with my colleague on the Front Bench is the logic of our recommendation on offering funded support to parents in training or study. The logic is that elsewhere across education policy the Government are going out of their way to encourage people to upskill, supporting lifelong learning and investing in the long-term productivity of our country by ensuring people are better skilled. It is, therefore, counterproductive to disincentivise parents from pursuing higher qualifications by making 30 hours of childcare available only to working families on a particular income, and explicitly not to those in study. The recent report by the all-party parliamentary group for students on the cost of living and its impact on students highlighted the severe challenges facing parents in study. Addressing that, as part of our recommendation 18, would make a massive difference to that group of parents.

Supporting the workforce, expanding family hubs, not just in some areas but across the whole country, expanding the early years pupil premium and investing in early intervention and training to identify and meet special educational needs are among the other key recommendations of our report. I could speak passionately in favour of every single one of our key recommendations and, when the Select Committee meets tomorrow, I look forward to the detailed consideration of the Government’s response, but I know many other Members want to speak in the debate.

I end by commending the whole report of my Committee to my hon. Friend the Minister. Having served in the Government, I appreciate that he may not be able to accept every one of our recommendations straight away, but I hope he will recognise the weight of evidence that sits behind them, the incredible importance of getting policy in this area right and the immense value of continuing to invest in our children.

Our Prime Minister has described education as

“the closest thing we have to a silver bullet”

for improving productivity. I welcome his commitment to making education the main funding priority in every spending review—early years education needs to be at the forefront of that. Having worked with my hon. Friend the Minister over a number of years, I know how passionate he is about evidence-based policy to improve life chances for children, closing the attainment gap and tackling disadvantage. There can be no greater impact on each of those than investing effectively in early years.

I am hugely grateful to colleagues from across the House who have supported the debate and I am delighted that we have a maiden speech to look forward to from one of the House’s newest Members. I commend this report and debate to my hon. Friend the Minister.

[Mr Speaker]

I remind Members that this is a maiden speech and there will be no interruptions.

[Keir Mather (Selby and Ainsty) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) for securing this important debate on support for childcare and the early years.

In my constituency of Selby and Ainsty enormous challenges exist for children who have additional needs and who sit at that critical juncture between the early years and key stage 1. One reason for that is the failure to build a special educational needs and disabilities school for the Selby area of my constituency, despite Department for Education funding having been allocated since 2019. That forces parents to make an impossible choice: they can place their children in mainstream schools that do not suit their needs, educate them at home with little support or have them travel for hours a day to attend schools in Harrogate or Scarborough. This outrageous situation cannot continue and, as Selby and Ainsty’s Member of Parliament, I will fight tirelessly for spades in the ground to provide the SEND school those children so desperately need.

If you will permit me, Mr Speaker, I would like in my maiden speech to tell hon. Members about my beautiful constituency of Selby and Ainsty, but before I do so I too condemn the barbaric attack by Hamas terrorists on Israel last week and send my profound condolences and personal solidarity to all innocent civilians caught in the terrible violence that has engulfed Israel and Palestine.

I would also like to take a moment to welcome another new Member to their place: my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Michael Shanks). He is a person of integrity and intelligence, who I greatly look forward to working alongside, as we learn to navigate this formidable place together and show our constituents the difference that a hard-working Labour MP can make.

People in my constituency of Selby and Ainsty represent the best of Yorkshire. They are community-orientated, but personally resilient; hopeful and proud, but grounded and pragmatic; willing to give people a fair hearing, but never afraid to speak truth to power. It is that independent-minded outlook that I believe explains the most exciting political moments in our area’s past, because I am not the first by-election candidate to cause a national upset in our part of the world.

Back in 1905, Selby residents, much like their modern compatriots, had suffered through over 10 years of Conservative Government. Britain languished under the rule of an unelected Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, too weak to govern and too lacking in authority to lead a broken Tory party, divided, unsurprisingly, by Britain’s trading relationship with the outside world. The residents of Selby looked at this Tory melodrama and said enough, using a by-election to send a Liberal, Joseph Andrews, to represent them. I am proud, Mr Speaker, that some 118 years later, local people in Selby have not lost the defiant spirit of their forebears, this time voting Labour for a brighter future for their community.

In modern times, the Selby constituency has mirrored the national picture, remaining Labour from 1997 to 2010 before being Tory-held from 2010 to now. I would like to take a moment to talk about my predecessors. My immediate predecessor is Nigel Adams, who had the privilege of representing the seat where he was raised and educated. Mr Adams deserves credit for his support for local charities such as Selby Hands of Hope, and his work to secure funding for Tadcaster’s flood-alleviation scheme. In his maiden speech, he said that there was

“no greater honour, privilege or responsibility”—[Official Report, 9 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 395.]

than representing Selby and Ainsty. I echo those sentiments and thank him for his contribution.

I now turn to Mr John Grogan, who began the tradition of Labour MPs representing the Selby area. John and I both fought our first elections in Selby as younger men, myself at 25 and John at 26, though I am pleased to say that I had a little more luck on my first attempt. I can only hope that the similarities continue, as John’s achievements for our area were phenomenal. He secured the Selby bypass, oversaw the creation of modern flood defences, and achieved funding for Selby War Memorial Hospital, a pillar of our community upon which so many continue to rely. John was an empathetic and tenacious constituency MP, and will be so again when he returns to this place at the next election.

Selby and Ainsty is a vast rural constituency, with no one single centre of gravity. Instead, ancient patterns of agriculture, river trade and commerce have created a complex tapestry of villages and towns, each with its own unique attributes. Selby itself has always been on the national map, passing the centuries under the shadow of our magnificent 11th-century abbey as a prosperous market town. It played its part in the industrial revolution with a thriving shipbuilding industry, and in recent times boasted the largest coalfield in Europe, powering Britain for decades through the hard graft of ex-mineworkers and their families, whose interests I look forward to defending and advancing. It is also clear that our town has a bright future ahead as a regional tourism centre, an emerging hub for doing business, and in its continuing role as Great Britain’s energy epicentre.

To the west of Selby lies Sherburn in Elmet, a town fired by community spirit and people determined, in the best Yorkshire sense of the phrase, just to get on with it. The place is powered by fantastic community groups such as We Are Sherburn, the Old Girls’ School, Elmet Lions and the annual Scrapper’s Cup, stewarded by fantastic local leaders. To the north lies Tadcaster and its surrounding villages. Tad is a brewing town with formidable heritage, and those Members who enjoy a Madrí, a John Smith’s, a Foster’s or even a Newkie Brown are likely to be sampling the produce from that beautiful part of north Yorkshire.

However, like so many other northern villages and towns, the success of communities in my constituency has been in spite of a Government who have consistently failed to get the basics right. In our part of north Yorkshire, it is hard to stay healthy when a GP appointment or a timely ambulance is a thing of the past, and when dental provision is so poor that one resident told me that she had had to pull out one of her own daughter’s teeth. It is hard for people to keep their head above water when average mortgage payments in our area have increased by thousands of pounds a year, and when those trying to build a life on newbuild estates are fleeced by the very companies that are meant to provide them with a decent place to live. It is hard to get on as a region when broken bus networks isolate the elderly, stop people getting to work, stifle small businesses and cut us off from the outside world.

I have no doubt about our future success, but local people know that we deserve better than what we are forced to settle for now. That hope for a fairer future is what I will fight for every single day that I am in this place, and I am grateful that constituents have provided me with this opportunity to serve, because for me, the need to right those systemic wrongs is not just about productivity, health outcomes, or pounds and pence. It is about values—Labour values—and the conviction that residents in Selby and Ainsty have a right as British citizens not just to survive but to realise their full potential, and to live decent, happy and fulfilled lives that allow them and their families to flourish.

I hold those convictions not only as a Labour Member of Parliament, but as somebody who is deeply patriotic, who believes that Britain should lead the world and set an example for what it means for the Government to serve their citizens. That belief in progressive patriotism is defined by my experience as a young person. I am the first Member of Parliament to have been born after the last Labour Government took power in 1997. I know that some Members may want to close their ears at that fact, but it means that I have grown up in a world destabilised by the technological revolution, climate crisis and war, and I will live through a century of unparalleled global upheaval.

In the face of those challenges, myself and other young people believe that Britain has a duty to become a leader again. When globalisation has failed to solve challenges such as the climate crisis, British business and British workers must lead the world in securing green prosperity and winning the race to net zero. When the age of peace on the European mainland is over, and America’s ability to provide stability is in question, the UK must lead in NATO, support our European partners, and enhance our armed services’ ability to defend our interests. When democratic ideals are threatened, either by autocratic regimes or the destructive power of terrorist organisations such as Hamas, the UK must defend our allies overseas, uphold international law and human rights, and strengthen our democracy at home, protecting civil liberties, enhancing trade union rights, and pursuing meaningful devolution of powers across our United Kingdom.

As young people, this is the future we choose. We are clear-eyed about the challenges that lie ahead but determined to play our part in realising our country’s promise. As I said on the night of my election, I hope to be a representative of that power of young people to make a difference. But we will not do it alone. I was sent to this place by a constituency whose population is older than the national average but who put their faith in me to defend their interests. That is because, in spite of the divisive politics that seeks to pit one generation against the other, in Selby and Ainsty we share our ambitions for our community and our country, and are committed to realising them together.

It will be the privilege of my life to play my part in this work, working in our Parliament, which I revere so deeply, to give back to my community and country, which I love so very dearly. Thank you.

[Mr Speaker]

I am now putting a four-minute limit on speeches.