Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life

Lord Storey Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement made by her right honourable friend earlier today. Of course, we welcome the Government’s focus on early intervention and support for children in their early years before they go to school. Clearly, some key elements of the Government’s strategy formed part of the previous Conservative Government’s approach, including the major expansion of free childcare and the development of family hubs. That is why, although I appreciate that the tone in the other place is a bit different from here, and I do not know whether or not the Minister felt uncomfortable at the tone of the Statement, but I thought it jarred slightly. This is an area where long term-policy is hugely important, so the continuity is welcome. I think it was Ronald Reagan who said there is nothing you cannot achieve if you do not mind who takes the credit.

We acknowledge that the Government plan to go further and, if they are successful, it will improve the start that many children get in life. That is something that we want to see across all Benches in this House. So my questions will focus on some of the detail and aim to get clarity from the Government on how they plan to deliver on their ambition.

The strategy document talks about a best start family hub in every local authority. The Minister talked about her pride in the Sure Start children’s centres, but I am not clear whether the hubs will be a physical location in every local authority and how they will differ from the current family hubs and Start for Life teams. Obviously, one of the key ingredients—supported by the evidence, which the Minister rightly referenced as a driver in the Government’s approach—is that they offered support to a much wider age range of children. The Minister referred to the joy mixed with a little fear in bringing home one’s child from hospital; in my experience, that joy mixed with a little fear can continue for some time. So it would be good to know what will happen to the support that was offered to older children, including those in care, under the Government’s new plans.

Will the Minister set out briefly for the House how the additional expenditure will work? How will the £500 million annually that the Government have talked about break down? How much will go to family hubs, how much will go to the others that the Government have referenced, and roughly how much will each local authority receive?

I thought one of the Statement’s harsher moments on the “pledge without a plan” line was about the family hubs. There are currently 641 hubs, so I do not think it is a pledge without a plan; it is actually hubs on the ground. I am assuming that those hubs will continue within the Government’s target of 1,000, so perhaps the Minister can confirm that and that there will be 360 new ones.

We welcome the aim in the plan to build stronger links between nurseries and reception classes, but I am not clear how the Government intend to recruit additional teachers for early years settings outside the 20 disadvantaged communities, where there will be an additional payment to teachers working there. How many teachers do the Government plan to recruit, and will that have any impact on their target for 6,500 more expert teachers in our secondary schools and colleges?

The Government have published the best start in life goals. Can the Minister say anything about the Government’s vision for how screens will be used by very young children? She is aware from our work on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that there are real concerns about the introduction and presence of screens in very young children’s lives. I wondered whether she could confirm that screens will not be used as part of the delivery of those goals.

Can the Minister also clarify the Government’s plans for SEND support in early years settings? Again, this is obviously a major workforce challenge, but the Minister knows that there are two elephants in the Chamber—if they would both fit. The first is perhaps a slightly smaller, but still quite large, elephant, which is the impact of national insurance contributions on the financial stability of our nursery providers. The Government’s decisions in relation to national insurance have left nurseries up and down the country close the brink financially, with 95% of providers being forced to increase childcare fees and one in 10 facing closure. I am not clear how the Government can deliver their objectives without addressing the fragility of nursery providers.

The largest elephant is the future of education, health and care plans. Around the House we recognise the need for reform of the SEND system, but parents are worried and need clarity. The Minister spoke about the importance of promises and Governments keeping their word. Will she confirm the Government’s intentions in relation to EHCPs?

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Secretary of State’s Statement. We welcome any measures to tackle child poverty and improve the early years support which families receive. Early years have for so long been seen as just an add-on, but they are actually the most crucial part of education, including the early identification of any problems or issues and early support for any problems that are identified.

The ambitious aims of the strategy must be matched with sufficient funding to ensure its effective implementation. The additional funding for early years specialists is welcome. But with schools currently finding efficiency savings from existing budgets—mention was made of national insurance rises—and the Government’s new early years funding contract, which has led to nurseries refusing new children, there is a real risk that the investment will simply paper over the cracks rather than deliver lasting improvements. Without a comprehensive review of funding across the entire early years system, many settings will continue to struggle to meet demand or retain experienced staff. My colleague in the other place, Tom Morrison, has campaigned tirelessly following the heartbreaking death of Gigi Meehan, who lost her life in the care of a nursery that failed to follow correct procedures. We welcome the announcement that Ofsted inspections will become more frequent in early years settings and nurseries.

Giving children the best start in life also means giving parents the flexibility and support to make the right decisions for themselves and their childcare arrangements. Currently, low rates of statutory maternity and paternity pay are not high enough to give parents a real choice, while the UK’s two-week statutory paternity leave lags behind far more advanced economies.

High-quality early years education is the best possible investment in the future and the most effective way of narrowing the gap between rich and poor children. As we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, the Early Years Alliance reported that one-third of providers are at risk of permanent closure in the next year, and four in 10 said they would reduce the number of funded places for three and four year-olds. Early years education provision is so important. It needs to have high-quality provision with well-trained staff. They need to see a career strategy, training and all staff having or working towards an early years qualification.

Childminders are a valued part of the early years system. Will the Minister consider replacing the three different current registration processes with a single childcare register? Given the staffing crisis in early years education, what assurances can the Minister offer that there will be sufficient qualified professionals to staff 1,000 hubs by 2028?

Best start family hubs will make a real difference to children and families. The new investment will take the total number, as we have heard, to around 1,000 by 2028. It will be supported, as we have heard, by the new digital family hub to be launched by the National Health Service. However, does the Minister think that we need to consider measures to ensure that the most disadvantaged families actually access the services offered by these hubs?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lords for their response to and broad welcome of the Statement. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, that I did not feel uncomfortable at all. It took me back, I have to say, but nevertheless the challenge and contrast that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State set out in her Statement in the other place was wholly fair.

On the funding of family hubs, the difference that this Government are making is a trebling of investment in those hubs over his spending review period. While currently only 88 local authorities have access to the funding to support a hub, that trebling of investment will ensure that all local authorities will be able to develop the best start family hubs. As I suggested in the Statement, we will develop that further through the digital offer, giving parents access to the information that they—I agree with the noble Baroness here—most certainly need from the very earliest stages, not only of their children being alive but in pregnancy, to be able to support them.

Although there is a focus in this Statement on the very early ages, because that is the right place to start to make a difference, children’s hubs will continue to respond to children from nought to 19. I think the noble Baroness identified some areas in which we would expect that support to continue.

Noble Lords asked about funding of the early years entitlement and its delivery. To be clear, in delivering the 30 hours entitlement from this September, this Government will provide over £8 billion, as well as delivering a 45% uplift in the early years pupil premium and providing £75 million for the early years expansion grant to help providers meet their local demand. We have responded to concerns around funding in the way we have increased investment.

The phrase “pledge without a plan” related to the early years entitlement. While the noble Baroness is right that it was announced by the previous Government, it did not have funding allocated to it to enable it to be delivered. It is the hard work of the sector and the investment this Government have been willing to put into it, as I have just outlined, which means we stand a chance of being able to meet that entitlement this September. However, noble Lords are right that, without sufficient recruitment, we cannot deliver that.

That is why, as I outlined in the Statement and is outlined in the strategy, we will invest in the recruitment of early years workers through the £4,500 financial incentive for early years workers in the most disadvantaged areas. Across the system, we will have improved training for early years workers through a focus on professionalism, with the development of a register to recognise the professional status of those who work with our youngest children. Those will be important ways to welcome and attract more people into the sector, along with our “Do Something Big” recruitment campaign and the emphasis we are putting on supporting better practice in a range of areas for early years practitioners.

Both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, rightly raised the issue of early years SEND provision. We know the crucial importance of children’s earliest years: they can make a really important difference to their development, health and life chances, as well as to identifying any special educational needs a child might have at an early stage. That is why we are further funding training for up to 1,000 early years special educational needs co-ordinators in 2025-26, which will be targeted at settings in the most disadvantaged areas. Last year, we launched free online child development training to support early years educators working with children with individual needs and development differences. We are continuing to fund voluntary and community sector partners that support family hubs’ delivery of services for home learning and early years special educational needs and disabilities. This includes funding awarded to the early years SEND partnership for the 2025-26 financial year.

The noble Baroness also asked about the concern around the continuation of education, health and care plans. In this Chamber, we often talk about the parlous state of this country’s special educational needs and disabilities system, the struggle parents face to get the support they need for their children, the length of time it takes to get education, health and care plans, and the lack of trust parents now have in that system. We are determined to rectify all those things.

To clarify, there will always be a legal right to the additional support that children with SEND need, and we will protect it, but this Government are prepared to grasp the nettle and reform a broken system that noble Lords opposite presided over and have themselves described as a lose-lose-lose system. We will ensure that every child in this country gets the opportunity to achieve, thrive at school and get on in life, and we will do that by bringing forward earlier identification and inclusion of all children, while safeguarding the support that those with special educational needs and disabilities need.

On the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about the tragic case of Gigi, I very much commend her parents for their campaign. Last week they had the opportunity to meet with my honourable friend the Minister for Early Education, Stephen Morgan. As the noble Lord said, the improvements in Ofsted’s inspection of early years provision are important here, with a commitment to inspecting an early years setting within 18 months of it being registered, and a reduction in the length of time between inspections from six years to four years. We will see better inspection, and therefore better accountability, and with the investment this Government are putting in, better results as well.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

Before the Minister sits down, could she commit to writing to me on the points I raised about the registration of child minders and ensuring that we get disadvantaged children to actually use the facilities?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Yes, I will write to the noble Lord about that.