Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the affordability of childcare provision in Barking constituency.

The department is committed to improving the cost, choice, and availability of childcare. We continue to look at ways to make childcare more affordable and to encourage families to use the government-funded support they are entitled to.

The department collects data on the main characteristics of childcare and early years provision in England and fees data can be broken down to local authority level.

The latest data shows the average hourly fee for childcare in Barking and Dagenham to be £6.00 for two-year-old children and £5.50 for three and four-year-old children.