Childcare Bill [HL]

Lord True Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

My Lords, might I ask in the context of this debate what the Government mean and we mean by quality in childcare? Is it the quality of childcare only or the quality of childcare and the relationship between the adult and the child? I respectfully submit that one of the most important factors in childcare is the relationship that develops between the child and the carer.

The Government have adopted the early years formula and put a lot of money into it. I think that they are absolutely right to do so, but I suggest that to some extent this Bill in mechanising, as it were, the management of the care of children runs the risk of losing the relationship by which a very young child learns to love, care and interrelate with other human beings. I wonder if the fact that so often we are losing that relationship in the early years is not the cause of some of our troubles in family life later on as the young people get older.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I have a good deal of sympathy for some of things said by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, although I would not follow him the entire way. However, while I understand why noble Lords have tried to provoke a debate on regulations—we do need one at some point—at this stage of policy development it is quite difficult because we still have not resolved the underlying issue of the nature of what we are about.

I understand the logic of it, but I am concerned by the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. We already have before us a proposal for the state to provide universal childcare for 1,140 hours a year—although the state will not provide it: the poor old providers in the schools and all the other people will have do that. As we found at Second Reading, that is more than we ask for sixth-formers studying for A-level courses or for pupils studying for their GCSEs. However, we are saying to those three and four year-olds, “Come here and stay for 1,140 hours”. That cannot in any sense all be about education—it certainly is not entirely about the effective relationships that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, was talking about. Now, on top of that, to say in Amendment 21 that the settings must provide even more than 1,140 hours a year is, if you will forgive the classical allusion, to pile Pelion on Ossa. It is simply not conceivable that under regulation, which applies to everybody who works in this sector—you cannot have some people obeying the regulation, while others do not—these extra hours should be piled on also.

We hear a lot of talk about flexibility, and of course I support that, but again I urge the Committee to recognise that a lot of the women who provide this care and education—and they are mostly women; I keep saying that, but it is true—want their flexibility too. A lot of them are young mothers or grandmothers, and they cannot sit around in these settings at the behest of the state for hour after hour. That is simply not the way things work in the real world. Therefore if we are to have a debate about flexibility, can we please bear in mind the flexibility of the good people who have to provide that service and who have the vocational wish to provide education? I would be very wary about adding to the burden, as this amendment would, and I think my noble friend will be cautious about it.

On the regulation amendments, this may be premature, and I fully understand where the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, is coming from, but there are inherent disparities in the existing regulations. Maintained schools have to provide a lower ratio than private and voluntary providers. I do not quite understand the overall logic for that, but that is what it is. When plans to change the ratios were put forward recently, which I thought deserved a hearing, there was a bit of—what was the word used?—an outcry. However, the reality is that we cannot at once argue that a ratio of 1:13 is fine if you are in a maintained sector, but if you are in a non-maintained sector it has to be 1:8 or less. Clearly, there is room for some discussion about where to fit the right level.

Again, I will be nervous until we see the colour of the Government’s money—or, rather, the way in which this system will work. It is premature in the debate to say that the existing regulations and hours are necessarily the right ones, as they may well not be affordable. There is a trade-off. You cannot have an immensely expensive policy of employment subsidy by providing places for children to be placed while their parents go off and do other things and necessarily do everything at the level you want to. Therefore we have to think about that. Again, however, I underline what I have tried to make my main theme in this Committee; if we are talking about quality, there is a lot out there that is to do with education, such as good learning and advancement of children’s development. In trying to create a single universal policy by regulation, we must not lose sight of the diversity and richness of the educational element of early years care, which certainly cannot take place over a longer period than sixth-formers and GCSE students are asked to support. That is simply not on. I would be nervous about settling on particular regulations just at this moment, but I hope that we will have a chance to have this debate. My noble friend has offered the road to that in later proceedings on the Bill.

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Moved by

[Lord True]

28: Clause 2, page 3, line 21, at end insert—
“( ) Nothing in any regulations under this Act may impose any obligation on any private or voluntary childcare setting or school that does not wish, or is unable, to—
(a) participate in a scheme, or any part of a scheme;(b) provide such information to the Secretary of State, a public body or local authority as may be required under this Act of participants in a scheme,under this Act to provide 30 hours of free childcare.”

[Lord True]

My Lords, I can be relatively brief, since some of this follows earlier discussions. I have yet to be persuaded that the ranks of providers and settings that we are told are required will spring into being. I was interested in what my noble friend said in response to the previous amendment: new settings will emerge that will enable flexibility. When I think of the struggles that I have as a local authority leader to find settings for primary schools, let alone nursery schools, I do not think it will necessarily be quite as easy as that. Furthermore, I urge that, when we read through this debate, the point that I made about flexibility as it applies to part-time workers and the people providing the service is understood. We ask a lot of our nursery teachers at the moment and many of them have busy family lives.

My main point with regard to this amendment is that, at the moment, the voluntary, private, independent sector is relatively small. However, the Bill envisages an economy in which we move to an expectation that any setting that is participating in this scheme will actually provide 30 hours of care for 38 weeks a year. As I tried to illustrate on an earlier amendment, there are a very large number of settings in rented premises such as church halls and parish halls, or providers whose teachers want to follow the school term because they themselves have children at school; it suits many such employees to have school holidays. For various reasons, many providers will simply not be able to provide the 30 hours for 38 weeks on any method. Some will not be willing to do so because they place greater emphasis on educational purpose than on occupying the crease. There is a dashing element to education and there is a Geoff Boycott mode of being there for 1,140 hours to fulfil the commitment. I do not expect a formal answer from my noble friend. All I am asking on this amendment is to consider those extremely valuable settings in villages and small places where the parish hall may be required for other purposes. Socially, they are extremely important and they should not be hyper-regulated to whatever extent the Treasury says we have to regulate this new sector to protect public money—so that for the 30 hours and 38 weeks we have to comply with 65 pages of new regulations to ensure that the state’s money is protected.

All I am asking is that it is understood, just as we understand with independent education, academies and free schools, that there may be some variety. There may be places where good-quality education is provided where it is not necessary to conform to every regulation that the state puts forward for this 30-hour, 38-week scheme. This is a plea to my noble friend as he reflects on this. This informal sector should not be snuffed out by being crowded out by state-supported provision and commercial ventures that are allowed to borrow against the certain stream of the 30-hour, 38-week commitment from the taxpayer. If it is to be nurtured, can we give those settings the same degree of latitude with regulations, while obviously making the same demands about inspection, that we give to the excellent educators in academies, free schools and the independent sector in maintained education, where we do not necessarily expect everything to be the same? That is the thought behind Amendment 28. It is not necessarily a perfect amendment, but just a thought that I place.

Amendment 38 is simply a rider to that. Ofsted does important work, and every setting needs a “good” or “outstanding” Ofsted finding to succeed. When Ofsted is assessing educational quality—not just Geoff Boycott occupying the crease—can we be sure that in no circumstances will it include in any report that the setting is not open for 1,140 hours and is therefore not conforming to the standards that are expected? It is very easy to slip into that sort of position.

I am not expecting an answer now because Report and later stages of the Bill will follow, but I fear that the independent informal sector may grow simply because it physically cannot conform to the requirements of 30 hours and 38 weeks. We should not resent that or compete with it. We should nurture it and that should be understood in the policy approach to regulation and inspection. I beg to move.

[Baroness Pinnock]

I want to comment on two aspects of what the noble Lord, Lord True, has proposed. He raised the issue of capacity, which we raised on the first day in Committee. We received assurances from the Minister that capacity would be much less of an issue than some of us feared. I trust that the Minister believes that to be the case. If so, perhaps the noble Lord, Lord True, is overstating the issues that he has raised today.

The second matter is more important and concerns the continuity of care provided if we go for this 30 hours a week. Almost inevitably, as we said on the first day in Committee, many children will take part in different settings, so 15 hours may be in a school nursery setting and the other 15 in a private nursery, with a childminder or a combination of all three—childminder, private sector day nursery and state nursery. We should think very carefully about that. I hope that the Minister will be able to come back with some thoughts about this. Very young children may be moving between those three different settings during the course of a day. How does that benefit them? How can we overcome some of those changes that the noble Lord, Lord True, has raised in the discussion around his amendment this afternoon?

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 28 and 38. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord True, for raising this issue and I hope I can satisfy him that we are keen to stimulate new provision and not crowd it out by regulations. As someone who has fielded against Boycott, I can assure him that his approach is deceptive. He does actually hit the ball extremely hard.

As I explained in Committee last week, no provider is required to offer places under the existing entitlement. It is of course very pleasing that so many choose to do so. I do not expect that providers will be required to provide places for these additional hours should they choose not to do so. If they do not, they will not be prevented from providing places under the existing entitlement of 15 hours. We have no plans to make the regime more burdensome. If a provider is providing the existing 15 hours, he will have a service-level agreement with a local authority and if that is how he decides to provide the extra 15 hours, he will have a service-level agreement for that provision. However, if a provider decides not to deliver this, there will be no plans for extra regulation.

The noble Lord asked whether failure to provide places will be reflected in Ofsted assessments. A rigorous inspection regime is important to ensuring the effective use of government funding and improving the quality of provision that children receive, regardless of whether they accept children under the free entitlement or not. However, I reassure the noble Lord that whether or not a provider offers free places will not be a factor in Ofsted inspection judgments. Of course, the quality of provision provided to such children will continue to be inspected. I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, that, as I said last week, if grandparents are working they can therefore qualify for the provision. I will reflect on the points made by the noble Lord, Lord True, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and I am happy to discuss those with them privately. I hope I have reassured the noble Lord others who have spoken about their concerns. I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord True]

My Lords, I am very grateful, as ever, to my noble friend for listening carefully; I found what he said very reassuring. I will obviously want to look closely at Hansard, but what is important above all is his clear commitment to continuing the dialogue with providers and to understand the mixed nature of the sector. Having heard what he said, particularly his assurance regarding Ofsted—and in no way resisting the comments about quality, which is vital—I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 28 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord True]

35: Clause 3, page 3, leave out lines 26 to 28

[Lord True]

My Lords, having just spoken from a point of view sympathetic to providers, I now come forward as a paid-up member of the trade union of local authority leaders. I suppose that that is a switch from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde, since local authorities have not always been the flavour of the month in my noble friend’s department. However, they do try honourably every day to assist in the provision of high-quality education, and I hope that that will be recognised as work on this legislation goes forward. Local authorities are not the enemy: they are often part of the solution.

This is a probing amendment—that is very clear. We are told that further regulations are to be produced requiring each English local authority to provide all sorts of as yet unspecified information. Governments have a terrible habit of requiring information from people, and I am afraid that local authorities sometimes do as well—I plead guilty to that, although I have tried to eradicate it. Every piece of information asked for that is not germane is a burden on business and a burden on the setting. It should be avoided unless it is of overwhelming social benefit. Filling in forms, answering emails and getting involved in chit-chat about whether information is expressed in the right way all take time away from administering, teaching and other important jobs. I hope that providing this unspecified information, whatever it is to be, will not add administrative burdens and costs to local authorities above the minimum level and certainly that it will not prove a burden on the providers and small settings.

The policy statement so helpfully circulated by my noble friend refers to the fact that, under existing legislation, local authorities currently provide a certain amount of useful information: the hours of the setting, where there is one; costs, if people wish to declare them; and other similar items. You can go on your local authority website and find out about nursery settings in your area. The policy statement goes on to say that although the new regulations will require more information, it will not be very different from what is already provided under the existing system. If that is the case, why have this regulatory power? How is it going to be used? Once we have given it away to the Government, or whoever, is there not a risk of regulatory creep as one Government succeed another? I do not think it is necessarily enough to pass a law that everything should stay the same. I ask for an assurance that over the course of the Bill we can have a dialogue about the burden that providing information imposes both on local authorities and on providers.

I conclude with one point that goes back to the position of the provider—particularly those providers that may be on the fringes of staying in the scheme. The more you press them for information, the more they become unwilling to give it, the more careless they get about filling in what they are doing and the more coercive systems can become. None of that is intended, but with accretive creep it could happen. If we are to have regulation then let us be absolutely clear about the boundaries, let us not take it too far and let us never consider that quality is necessarily assured by regulation. Regulation may be part of it, but quality is assured by good service and is tested and assessed in this sector by Ofsted. If this policy is as successful as my noble friend hopes, and anybody in this country is enabled to choose the care they want, then quality will also be provided—perish the thought—by the market, because no one will be constrained from making the childcare choices they want, and logically the good settings will succeed and the bad settings will not. So, please: let us have restraint on regulation. As we go forward I would be grateful for an assurance that my noble friend will talk to local authorities and providers about finding the right balance in the regulations required, lest we get into a merry-go-round of demand, counterdemand and otiose administration. I beg to move.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, in responding to the debate on the first group of amendments the noble Baroness asked whether I had recovered from my daughter’s wedding, which took place last Thursday. We ended it yesterday with a family lunch. As the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and I agreed last week, in Wales a wedding can last a number of days. In my daughter’s case that was certainly true.

My noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen cannot be with us this afternoon, so I shall speak to her Amendment 37. It is a straightforward amendment, which would place a duty on each local council to share information directly with partner agencies in the area, including children’s centres. In my experience, something as simple as this is all too often overlooked when we consider a measure such as the Bill. To digress for a moment, I know from personal experience of the National Health Service in the past couple of years that structures are often in place that actively work against information sharing, to the detriment of a patient.

With this amendment we have the chance to ensure that this does not happen with the Childcare Bill. Information about childcare services is crucial and can be complex. Sources of information vary from the formal, through local authority networks, to the informal, by word of mouth. We welcome the Government’s intention to ensure that parents can access information about childcare and other services through a range of sources in a local authority area. The amendment suggests that the requirement on local authorities to publish this information could go further to ensure that those who would benefit most from childcare support are made aware of good-quality care. Children’s centres can and do work hard to reach parents. Action for Children’s parent champions for childcare, based in children’s centres, can give personal support and advice, which is often much needed.

There is much merit in the amendment. I hope that the Minister, if she cannot accept it today, will at the very least reflect on it and come back to us on Report.

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[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

May I ask the Minister about a point of detail? At a recent meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group dealing with children’s centres, one of the practitioners said that, while in the past Ofsted has examined centres to see how they were engaging with fathers, it had been decided that it should no longer do that. For instance, when providing information to parents, a centre might say, “Dear Mum and Dad” or “Dear Mother and Father”, rather than saying “Dear Parents”, in order to reach out to and engage fathers. They do a lot of work to try to reach fathers. That should be recognised. It may not be the case—it was only one practitioner’s experience—but I would be grateful if the Minister could write to me to confirm whether Ofsted is checking this, acknowledging the good work in this area.

[Lord True]

My Lords, I apologise to my noble friend. She looked around to see whether I was still in my place. I share the concern of noble Lords who are coming in about the trauma being inflicted on the people of Greece by the euro project, and I have moved along to allow other people to come in and make a point. I have to leave after this stage.

I am very grateful to my noble friend for what she said. It is important always to remember, before every piece of legislation that comes before this House, that the need for one local government officer at a relatively low grade across the 32 boroughs of London alone costs £1 million. That is besides the rest of the country and is a minimum sum, so noble Lords will understand why I am concerned that no regulatory demand should place pressure on local authorities to employ even more.

I am very grateful for the undertaking that we can have discussions on this and I am very grateful for the spirit in which my noble friend responded to the amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 35 withdrawn.