Childcare: Affordability and Availability

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the affordability and availability of childcare.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I am eternally grateful to have secured—to have been granted—this debate so that we can address the important issue of childcare affordability and availability, because the simple reality is that this Government are seriously failing children, parents and businesses through the chronic lack of affordable and high-quality childcare in our country. My Slough constituents are far from impressed. Indeed, the reason why I put in for the debate was to express their anger and to try to express to the Chamber just how frustrated many individuals, not just in my constituency but across our country, are. As far as I can tell, Ministers have little interest in doing something substantial and radical to rectify this. However, the Government’s usual lack of effort and ambition, as frustrating as it is, does not mean that we should not at least try to persuade them that they need to up their game.

We know that the first 1,001 days of a child’s life are integral to their development, and evidence shows that improvements in children’s outcomes in both the long and the short term are strongly associated with the quality of their early childhood education and care. The Local Government Association has told me that by the time disadvantaged young people, in particular, sit their GCSEs at the age of 16, they are about 18 months behind their peers, and about 40% of that gap has emerged by the age of five. It is therefore crucial that we provide the best possible environment in which to bring up children.

[Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I welcome the case that my hon. Friend is making, and congratulate him on securing the debate. Has he seen the report published today by the Select Committee on Work and Pensions on support for childcare costs in universal credit? It highlights two big problems. One is that people claiming universal credit have to pay the up-front costs of the first month’s childcare; they have to pay the first month’s childcare costs themselves and are reimbursed later. For some people, finding such a large sum of money is simply not possible. Secondly, the cap on monthly childcare support is the same as it was in 2005; it has not been uprated, so it nowhere near covers the costs of full-time childcare support.

[Mr Dhesi]

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Work and Pensions Committee, not only for that impressive intervention but for his tireless, persistent work in this area to try to shine a light on the injustices. I sincerely hope that the Minister and the Government will look closely at the findings in the Select Committee report and take action accordingly.

Since this Government came to power in 2010, parents of children under the age of two have had to deal with a 60% increase in the cost of a part-time nursery place. Average earnings have grown at only half that rate over the same period, putting ever greater pressure on already squeezed family budgets. As one Mumsnet user wrote:

“When we started using nursery 9 years ago it was £45 a day. Now the same nursery we use for our…3 year old is £90. He gets 30 hours free in January but they…will also be putting fees up then. Honestly when he goes to school we will have £1,000 extra”

to pay

“a month. It’s more than our mortgage.”

That is not an isolated case. A joint survey by Mumsnet and Pregnant Then Screwed found that close to two thirds of parents are spending on childcare as much as, or even more than they spend on their rent or mortgage. Shockingly, one in four parents is cutting down on food, heating or clothing in order to afford sky-high childcare costs.

What are parents doing in response? Increasingly, they are being forced to take themselves out of the labour market. Under this Conservative Government, a day’s pay is not worthwhile for a parent needing childcare.

Sadly, women are often hit hardest by the Government’s failed childcare system. Only three in 10 mothers with a child aged one work full time, and three in 10 mothers with a child under 14 say they have reduced their working hours for childcare reasons. The Office for National Statistics found that the number of women who are not in work in order to look after family has risen by 3% in the past year alone. That is the first sustained increase in at least 30 years, reversing decades of reduction. Women who are reducing their hours, forgoing promotions or even leaving work altogether due to unaffordable childcare suffer lasting financial consequences, and that widens the gender pay and pensions gaps.

This is also a huge issue for business. At a time when so many vacancies are going unfilled, this motherhood penalty equates to 43,000 women dropping out of the workforce in the last year alone. It is no wonder that even the Confederation of British Industry is calling for reform, highlighting that childcare costs in the UK are now some of the highest in the OECD and that our economy is suffering from losing £28 billion of economic output every year, because women are being forced to choose between their careers and their children. We could add a whopping £57 billion to our GDP simply by increasing female participation in the workforce—something that greater childcare provision would help achieve.

On this Government’s watch, the childcare system is failing families, women, businesses and our economy. I would therefore think that addressing it was a priority, especially given how formative these early years are for our children, so why are the Government not taking decisive action to fix this mess? They tried to convince us that they were by announcing the 15 and 30-hour free childcare entitlement, alongside their commitment to the tax-free childcare scheme. As with so many other Conservative policies over the past 12 years, even this small stepping stone towards improving the accessibility of childcare has failed to deliver the bare minimum. As I pointed out last month in the Chamber, the Government, not satisfied with hammering parents, women, businesses and the economy, have set their sights on making it too expensive for childcare providers to operate by consistently underfunding the 15 and 30-hour entitlement by more than £2 an hour, thus forcing providers to use their own resources to plug the gap and further driving up the cost of childcare. Meanwhile, Ministers have spent a whopping £2.37 billion less than they allocated for their flagship tax-free childcare scheme in the past four years alone.

Rather than ensuring we have even more childcare providers to meet the significant demand for childcare across our country, the Government have created an environment in which 4,000 childcare providers closed between March 2021 and 2022—that is 4,000 providers in just one year. We have childcare costs rising twice as fast as wages and businesses struggling to fill vacancies while women who want to work cannot because of childcare. Despite the demand, thousands of childcare providers are closing while the Government underfund the sector. That is this Government’s record.

As a country, we can and must do much better. The Government must recognise that families need support from the end of parental leave right through to the end of primary school. While more investment is needed, surely as a minimum the Government should stick to their original commitments. I ask the Minister to commit to investing in the childcare system the more than £2 billion her party has pledged. During this cost of living crisis, families are already struggling, so when will the Minister step in to ensure that parents are not forced to sacrifice a meal or a night of heating over the winter months to pay for their child’s care? Maybe the Government would be in a better position if they had developed a long-term plan. With five Education Secretaries this year alone, the Minister is probably just happy to get through the year without any more chaos. However, families across our country should not be made to suffer because of the Government’s continued incompetence.

Parents need the introduction of universal primary breakfast clubs for every primary-aged child in England, which I look forward to hearing more about, I hope, from the shadow Minister. That would help disadvantaged pupils, in particular, to access additional support from staff and friends, allowing them to catch up on learning. Where is the Government’s commitment to that? Instead of cutting hundreds of Sure Start centres, the Government should be investing in local children’s centres and helping parents with young families in some of the most disadvantaged areas in our country to get them the best possible start in life. Why aren’t they?