Written Statements

Friday 15th March 2024 Written Statements

Friday 15 March 2024

Arts Council England: Public Body Review

Friday 15th March 2024 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Lucy Frazer)]

Today we are announcing that the second stage of the public body review into Arts Council England is under way.

The public bodies review programme delivers against the commitments made in the “Declaration on Government Reform” to increase both the effectiveness of public bodies and departmental sponsorship, making Government and public bodies work better in service of the public. Public body reviews will be underpinned by broad minimum requirements covering efficiency, efficacy, accountability, and governance. The review will follow guidance published in April 2022 by the Cabinet Office: “Guidance on the undertaking of Reviews of Public Bodies”.

Arts Council England is an executive non-departmental public body, and was established by Royal Charter in 1946. It is one of the Government’s primary vehicles to support the arts and creativity in England. Its role encompasses funding and investment, research, support and advice to the sector, and partnership promotion.

The Government are proud of the work they have undertaken with Arts Council England, providing increased investment in arts and culture through its most recent funding portfolio, and spreading opportunity across the country to a record number of organisations.

The Department has agreed to commence a full-scale review into Arts Council England, and Dame Mary Archer has been appointed as the independent lead reviewer. She will work with a review team composed of officials from the Department and an advisory board of people with a range of experience in the arts and culture, detailed below.

Dave Moutrey (Chair)

Sir Damon Buffini

David Butcher

Tony Butler

Leila D’Aronville

Nathaniel Hepburn MBE

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall

Sir Simon Robey

Gurvinder Sandher MBE DL

Professor Katy Shaw

Sarah Staniforth CBE

Jo Verrent

Dr Sharon Watson MBE DL

Sue Williamson MBE

The terms of reference for the review have been drafted following consultation between the lead reviewer, the Department and Arts Council England, and the review will broadly look at the following areas:

Arts Council England’s delivery model and whether it is correct to deliver effective outcomes for the public;

Arts Council England’s grant monitoring procedures and overall efficiency;

Arts Council England’s statutory functions;

Departmental sponsorship; and

Arts Council England’s accountability to the Department, respecting the importance of the arm’s length principle and the Arts Council's responsibility as custodians of public money. In conducting the review, officials will engage with a broad range of interested parties in the arts and creative sectors across the UK.

As set out by the Cabinet Office guidance, the review will report to the Government, and the Government will publish the conclusions of the review and any Departmental response in due course.

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Single Source Contracts: Baseline Profit Rate 2024-25

Friday 15th March 2024 Written Statements

[The Minister for Defence Procurement (James Cartlidge)]

Under the Defence Reform Act 2014, the Secretary of State for Defence has a legal obligation to announce whether he will accept the Single Source Regulations Office recommendation for the baseline profit rate to be used in single source defence contracts for 2024-25. He must make and publish this decision by 15 March 2024.

In making its recommendation, the Single Source Regulations Office must aim to ensure that good value for money is obtained in Government expenditure on qualifying defence contracts, and that suppliers who are party to qualifying defence contracts are paid a fair and reasonable price under those contracts.

This year, I, the Minister of State for Defence Procurement, on behalf of the Secretary of State, have agreed with the recommendation from the Single Source Regulations Office.

Therefore, today I am announcing that I have set the baseline profit rate for single source defence contracts at 8.24%, in line with the rate recommended by the Single Source Regulations Office. This a decrease of 0.05% from 2023-24. I have accepted the methodology used by the SSRO to calculate these figures. The underlying rate has fallen 0.35 percentage points from 8.44% to 8.09%. A full explanation of the SSRO methodology is published on its website.

I am also announcing the capital servicing rates and the removal of the SSRO funding adjustment as recommended by the SSRO, which can be found at table 1 below. These rates have been published in the London Gazette, as required by the Defence Reform Act.

All of these new rates will come into effect from 1 April 2024.

Table 1: Recommended rates agreed by the Secretary of State for Defence.

Childminders: September Childcare Entitlement Expansion

Friday 15th March 2024 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)]

This Government are delivering a brighter future for Britain, with long-term economic security and opportunity: where hard work is always rewarded; where ambition and aspiration are celebrated; where young people get the skills they need to succeed in life and where families are supported.

In March 2023 the Chancellor announced transformative reforms to childcare for parents, children, the economy and women by vastly increasing the amount of free childcare that eligible working families can access. These reforms also included measures to make it easier for providers to deliver their childcare provision, including changing the staff:child ratio for two-year-olds in England and updates to the early years foundation stage framework. This is the largest expansion of childcare in England’s history.

From this April, eligible working parents will access the first 15 hours of funded childcare each week for their two-year-olds. In September, they will be able to access 15 hours each week for their nine-month-olds. From September 2025 all eligible parents will have access to 30 hours free childcare for children aged nine months all the way until they start school.

In this spring Budget, the Chancellor announced that the hourly rate childcare providers are paid to deliver the free hours offers for children aged nine months to four years would increase in line with the metric used at spring Budget 2023 for the next two years. This is an estimated additional £500 million of investment over two years. The sector has welcomed this certainty on future funding and the additional confidence it creates to expand.

We continue to make good progress supporting the sector to ready to provide parents with the places they need.

We launched our new “Do something BIG. Work with small children” national recruitment campaign in February. Already thousands of people are visiting the campaign website every week to find out more about early years and childcare careers. The website also directs users to search for roles on the Department for Work and Pensions’ “Find a job” platform, where there are now thousands of vacancies to explore.

As we had hoped, parents are enthusiastic to take up the new support from Government, with over 100,000 entitlement codes now issued to families of eligible two-year-olds. We recently announced that based on our latest projections, we expect at least 150,000 children to benefit from this by April, collectively saving parents over £500 million in childcare costs.

During February we updated the wraparound programme handbook https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/wraparound-childcare-guidance-for-local-authorities for local authorities and published new guidance for schools and trusts https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/wraparound-childcare-guidance-for-schools setting out our expectations of schools in providing wraparound childcare. We have also updated the “right to request” guidance https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/wraparound-childcare-guidance-for-schools/responding-to-requests-for-wraparound-childcare so it is clear how parents can exercise their right to request childcare from their school and how schools should manage these requests.

Applications for September 2024

We have announced today, 15 March 2024, that applications for the second wave of the largest ever expansion of Government-funded childcare will open on 12 May 2024.

From 12 May eligible working parents of children from nine months old will be able to register to access 15 hours of Government-funded childcare a week from 1 September 2024, with many receiving support with childcare costs for the first time. We are encouraging parents to apply as early as possible within the application window from 12 May and they can find out more information on www.childcarechoices.gov.uk.

Childminder consultation launch

Childminders make up an important part of the early years sector, and provide high-quality, flexible and more affordable childcare for parents. We have taken action to support them, through the uplift in funding for early years, new wraparound funding and the new flexibilities provided for by the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023. In November 2023, we launched our £7.2 million start-up grant scheme, worth up to £1,200 for childminders who registered on or after 15 March 2023, and we have introduced new flexibilities for how many other childminders and assistants they can work with, and how much time they can spend working from non-domestic premises.

Today, we have launched a new consultation to improve childminder recruitment and retention. The proposals in this consultation address some of the issues that childminders have told us are important to them. This includes simplifying the registration process for new childminders, offering flexibilities to childminder agencies, and ensuring local authorities pay entitlements funding monthly where this is the childminder’s preference. Depending on the outcome of the consultation, we will also consider extending this final measure to ensure all early years providers are paid entitlements funding monthly, if they request it.

The consultation also seeks to further understand the property barriers childminders face, the best ways to support childminders to remain in the profession, and what more we can do to help childminders to deliver the new entitlements and provide more wraparound care. These proposals form part of our ongoing work to support the sector in continuing to deliver a fantastic standard of childcare and helping to deliver our transformative expansion of childcare.

Experience based route consultation

Last year the Government consulted on proposed changes to the EYFS, including the introduction of an “experience based route” for staff in early years settings to be included in ratios following a period of supervised practice. Following the supportive responses to this proposal, the Government intend to proceed with this change to introduce an experience-based route for practitioners. We will continue to monitor the needs of the EY workforce as the new entitlements begin to roll out and will use this to inform how we develop the route and when it will be introduced. We will provide more information in due course. Implementing these changes will help early years practitioners to continue to deliver their invaluable, high-quality education and care to millions of children each day.

Safeguarding consultation

The safety of our youngest children is our utmost priority and I have seen at first hand the excellent practices that early years providers have in place to keep children safe. We continually monitor and review safeguarding within early years settings. As part of this ongoing work, it is my intention to consult on changes to the early years foundation stage statutory framework to ensure the safeguarding requirements are strengthened for the youngest children as entitlements roll out.

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