Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she has taken to implement the provision of 15 additional hours of free childcare for working parents provided for under the Childcare Act 2016.

At the 2015 Spending Review, the Government announced that we would provide £300 million for a significant uplift to the rate paid for the free childcare entitlements for two-, three- and four-year-olds from 2017-18. Together with the funding announced at last summer’s Budget, we will be investing over £1 billion more per year by 2019-20 to fund our commitments on the entitlements.

The Childcare Act, which provides the legal framework for the extended entitlement, received Royal Assent in March. We also announced in February the eight early implementer local authorities which will offer the extended free childcare entitlement from September 2016. This means around 5,000 children will be able to benefit from 30 hours of high-quality free childcare places a year earlier than planned.

The Department is also consulting on key elements of the operation and delivery of the extended free entitlement. This includes how the entitlement will be delivered, and how it will meet and be responsive to the needs of working parents. To date we have received over 1000 responses from a wide range of childcare providers, local authorities and provider organisations. We will use these views to inform our thinking as we move to delivering the 30 hours policy. The consultation is available at: https://consult.education.gov.uk/early-years-funding/childcare-free-entitlement