Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the speech by the Children and Families Minister announcing new early years funding, of 28 February 2019, whether additional funding for maintained nurseries will be funded from new revenue from HM Treasury.

Maintained Nursery Schools (MNS) make a valuable contribution to improving the lives of some of our most disadvantaged children.

We have been providing around £60 million per year of supplementary funding to local authorities so that they can preserve MNS funding. We listened to concerns about the timing of the Spending Review and therefore last week we announced that we would provide local authorities with around £24 million of further supplementary funding, to enable them to fully fund MNS for the whole of the 2019/20 academic year. Local authorities can feel reassured they can allocate September 2019 places in MNS with confidence.

All expenditure that falls in the next Spending Review period, including the additional supplementary funding, is a matter for the Spending Review.