Early Years Providers: Government Support

Rachel Gilmour Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Pritchard; it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) on securing this important debate.

I want by paying tribute to early years providers across the country. The early years sector runs on a powerhouse of dedicated, skilled professionals, the vast majority of them women, who spend every day making a difference to the lives of children. As I pay tribute to early years professionals, I want to recognise the extraordinary work of Laura McFarlane, who sadly died this week. Laura dedicated the whole of her 40-year career to improving the lives of children, most recently as the director of the Lambeth early action partnership, known as LEAP, a 10-year national lottery-funded programme of early years support, and as director of the Liz Atkinson Children’s Centre just outside my constituency. LEAP made a difference to the lives of countless babies and young children in Lambeth, thanks to Laura’s leadership, vision and drive. She will be very much missed. Her legacy is immense.

The early years of a child’s life are vital. They offer a unique opportunity to lay the foundations for learning and development and for good physical and mental health, and to close the disadvantage gap. There is a wide variety of early years providers, including childminders, not-for-profit and social enterprises, private companies, school-based nurseries and maintained nurseries. That makes early years policy more complex than some other areas of education policy, and it also creates challenges, particularly in seeking to secure availability, consistency and quality in every area of the country.

The debate about early years providers can sometimes fall into a false dichotomy between childcare and early education. I have always been clear that these are two sides of the same coin: what is childcare for parents is early years education for children. We want every child to have the highest-quality early years education in whatever setting they are cared for.

[Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)]

Does the hon. Member agree that although expanding nursery-based provision in schools is unquestionably laudable in improving access to childcare, we must guard against inadvertently passing on to primary school teachers the responsibility for teaching basic life skills that could and should have been nurtured earlier, thereby stretching resources and risking the lowering of standards? Perhaps the Minister could outline what steps his Department is taking to correct the funding and support imbalance so that childminders who provide vital individualised care are not sidelined.

[Helen Hayes]

On the first part of the hon. Lady’s intervention, that is exactly what the Government are trying to do in establishing school-based nurseries: to ensure that across the country there are a range of settings that support children’s development so they arrive at school in reception year ready to learn.

I welcome the Government’s expansion of early years provision through the roll-out of funded hours and the delivery of 3,000 new school-based nurseries. That will make a huge difference to families, giving parents the option to return to work and helping with the costs of childcare, which under the previous Government resulted in many families spending more on childcare than on their rent or mortgage and, for the first time in decades, saw women leaving the workforce because the costs of staying in work were simply unviable.

In delivering the roll-out, it is important that the Government pay close attention to the financial resilience of early years providers. Many providers have been flagging for a long time the fact that the hourly rate they have been paid does not match the costs of delivering funded hours. There have also been inconsistences in the way local authorities pass on the Government subsidy. The previous Government’s funding model created distortions in the costs of childcare, with parents of the youngest children paying very high rates to cross-subsidise the costs of providing underfunded funded hours for three and four-year-olds. Nurseries have also experienced rising costs in relation to energy, food and insurance, and they are also now having to adjust to increased employer national insurance contributions and the increase in the national minimum wage.

Sadly, we have seen far too many early years settings close in recent years because they cannot make their business model work. It is important that the Government pay careful attention to the financial resilience of the sector and take steps to ensure that nurseries do not close due to high costs and inadequate rates of funding.