Childcare Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting)
Alex Cunningham Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 14, in clause 3, page 3, line 14, at end insert—
“(bb) make provision to enable priority to be given to qualifying children who are also assessed as being disadvantaged in the allocation of childcare places in childcare settings that have been classed as outstanding (or equivalent) following inspection;”
To require priority to be given to children who have been assessed as disadvantaged in the allocation of childcare places in childcare settings that have been classed as outstanding (or equivalent) following inspection.
Many of us have sat on Bill Committees before, but I have never led on one before. As with so much in life, I actually understand what is going on now—at the end.
When I first came into Parliament in 2010, given my background of working in education for 25 years, the former Member for South Shields, David Miliband, used to send me his speeches on education occasionally, asking me to have a look at them. After the first couple of times of me going back to him and saying, “You know, this is really important, but it is not the most important issue in education”, he stopped sending them to me.
The most serious problem in education today is not the limited number of children from disadvantaged homes who are making it into Oxford and Cambridge, or even into Durham University, wonderful institution though it is; it is not the perception of grade creep at GCSE, whether real or not; and it is not how many of our children are achieving at grade A or A* at GCSE, or at the C-D or B-C borderline, undoubtedly serious as those issues are.
The most serious problem in education today is not even the number of children who get five A to Cs at GCSE; it is the number of children who do not. Decreasing, but still significantly large, numbers of children of average, close-to-average and above-average ability in this country are failing to achieve five good GCSEs, and an even larger number are failing to achieve five good GCSEs including English and maths. The most serious and worrying issue in education today is the percentage of those children who are on free school meals, and the percentage of those children who are assessed as having special educational needs, even the most minor SEN. I am not talking about children who have profound or even serious or moderate SEN; I am talking about those who fall in the wide band between close to average and above average. They can and should achieve five good GCSEs.
The attainment gap has narrowed slowly. It was narrowing slowly in the period 2007 to 2010 and continues to narrow marginally, but the rate at which it is closing has slowed down significantly. If that is not addressed, it will start to go the other way quite soon. That gap leaves us without the trained and experienced workforce that we need in industries such as engineering, construction, childcare, catering and many others. It is creating a widening gap in productivity between the UK and the rest of Europe and the far east. If the gap is not addressed, history tells us that it will lead to serious and costly social problems throughout society.
I already talked on Tuesday about the Ofsted report that was published last week, in which Sir Michael Wilshaw expresses concern about the number of disadvantaged two-year-olds who are still failing to access early education. He is concerned that even if disadvantaged two-year-olds are accessing early education, a large percentage are not getting access to the best and most outstanding provision.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I have heard it said that the higher the income a person has and the more articulate they are, the sharper their elbows are when it comes to fighting for their children. Parents at the other end of the scale, however, do not have the sharp elbows and they certainly do not have the income. That might be all the more reason why we have to give them and their children a helping hand at the earliest point in their lives.
Pat Glass
I do not think the sharp elbows are necessarily linked to income. I have met some very sharp-elbowed parents at the bottom of the income scale, and I certainly do not blame any parent for trying to get their child into the best provision that they can. However, too many of the children who need access to the best provision and the best teachers are simply not getting such access. Even in secondary schools where there is a particular issue—I know we are talking about early years—one of the arguments I used to have with headteachers, particularly in schools that required improvement, was about the tendency to put their best teachers at key stage 4 and not at key stage 3, which is where they need to be.
Alex Cunningham
I am pleased to support amendment 14, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham has outlined, would require children assessed as being disadvantaged to be given priority in the allocation of childcare places in settings that have been classed as outstanding. Members will recall from the Committee’s sitting on Tuesday that there is substantial evidence to show that high-quality early education and childcare have a positive impact on children’s development. Importantly in the context of amendment 14, that is particularly true for children from low-income families, who are more likely to fall behind. There is overwhelming evidence that children assessed as being disadvantaged are less likely to be able to access outstanding childcare provision, as my hon. Friend has said. Instead, they are much more likely to be able to access childcare that requires improvement.
We face the sorry reality of knowing that children from disadvantaged backgrounds are much more likely to fall behind. My hon. Friends and I have spelled out the facts in earlier Committee sittings. One in four children in England arrive at primary school without good early language development, and that figure rises to one in three for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, who, as I mentioned in support of new clause 1, start school on average 15 months behind their peers in language and vocabulary skills.
Many organisations with expertise in the sector have agreed that action is needed to close the attainment gap between the most disadvantaged children and their better-off peers. Closing the gap has been an aspiration of successive Governments over the last 20 years or so, but despite record levels of spending on education between 1997 and 2010, some of which the current Government have built on—a little, at least—that gap is still much in evidence. The Government will have the support of all Opposition Members if they can narrow it over the Parliament. The Minister knows, as does everyone else, that closing the gap has to start with our youngest. If he gets that right in the Bill, he will go down as a success, but if he does not, he will simply end up with a report card that says, “Could do better.”
Alex Cunningham
Yes, and that is good news, but there are still 15% who are not. The organisations that we speak to and that brief us tell us that the most disadvantaged are still the most likely to lose out on the best provision. In the testimony given to the House of Lords Affordable Childcare Committee, published in February this year, there was strong consensus on the evidence for the persistence of the gap and its effects. Barnardo’s, for instance, noted the
“consistent and large gap in educational attainment in the UK, based on income”.
The Early Childhood Research Centre noted a
“19 month vocabulary gap at age 5 between children from the poorest and most affluent families”.
The Child Poverty Action Group spoke of intergenerational poverty being far greater in the UK than elsewhere, with children
“far more likely to follow in their parents’ footsteps in terms of income and educational level.”
For context, 53% of children in the 30% most deprived areas of England in 2014 achieved a good level of development in the early years foundation stage profile, compared with 65% of children in other areas. As the Minister knows, that gap of 12 percentage points has remained unchanged since 2011. That hiatus should be all the evidence we need to convince us that positive steps are required actively to address the sorry situation and revitalise efforts to close the attainment gap.
I am clear that the only route to resolving this unacceptable situation, and righting the inequality of opportunity that many children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds face growing up, is to take action to level the playing field from the outset. We all accept that early education has a crucial role to play in helping disadvantaged children to catch up with their most advantaged peers. The Minister has accepted that as the case for investment, and he has made that clear. I do not need to remind him that in the light of the evidence of the difference to school readiness that early education makes, he suggested that
“being able to invest in it early, especially for the disadvantaged”
was key to narrowing the attainment gap. Indeed, the House of Lords Committee recommended that the Government consider targeting more resources at the most disadvantaged children because that is where the strongest evidence of the impact of high-quality education lies. It is not, however, clear that the Bill addresses that recommendation. I am therefore pleased to support the amendment to correct that oversight. It would give priority for high-quality childcare provision to those children identified as being from disadvantaged backgrounds and who are more likely to fall behind. Such a step would not only be a move towards closing the attainment gap, but would contribute to raising overall attainment levels. It is the right thing to do and I hope the Minister will join me in supporting the amendment.
Mr Gyimah
Once again, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. At the start of the line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill, I said that there were three aims behind our childcare policy: to enable parents to work more hours; to help parents with the cost of living; and to give children the best start in life with high-quality early education.
Mr Gyimah
Obviously helping women in education is a broad aim of the Government, but those are the three objectives of this particular Bill. The amendment addresses the third objective of giving children the best start in life, and I am grateful to hon. Members for tabling it, as it draws attention to the importance of closing the gap in achievement between disadvantaged children and their peers. I am pleased to say that more children, including those in receipt of free school meals, are now achieving a good level of development at the end of the early years foundation stage. In 2015, 66.3% of children achieved a good level of development. That figure was up from 51.7% in 2013. In 2015, 51% of children on free school meals achieved a good level of development compared with 45% in 2014. That is the equivalent of an extra 5,800 children. The gap in achievement between disadvantaged children and other children has narrowed from 18.9 percentage points in 2014 to 17.7 percentage points in 2015, which is welcome news. However, the gap is still too large and the Government are absolutely committed to narrowing it.
Alex Cunningham
As the Minister says, that development is very much to be welcomed. I appreciate that the current Government and the previous coalition Government built a little bit on what Labour achieved in government when we funded education properly for the first time in a generation. However, there is still the same attainment gap that there has been since 2011. There has been a slowdown. What will the Minister do about that? Backing the amendment would help.
Mr Gyimah
I will come to the practicalities and issues of the amendment, which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire pointed to so deftly in her comments. The hon. Gentleman asked what we are doing to help to narrow the attainment gap. That is the reason we extended the pupil premium into the early years with the introduction of the early years pupil premium this year, providing £50 million of additional funding to support the early education of disadvantaged three and four-year-olds. The extra funding, worth 53p an hour—about £300 a year—goes directly to providers to help them to increase the quality of their setting. I am pleased that the feedback from local authorities is that providers are using the additional funding to achieve exactly that.
Mr Gyimah
On good providers taking on disadvantaged children, specifically in the early years, we must acknowledge that the early years setting is very different. Schools are in the maintained sector, but here we have private providers. There are parents who have different ideas of where they want their children to take their early education. Some parents prefer childminders because they want their children to have their early education in a domestic setting; some would prefer a private nursery; and some would prefer a nursery in a school. In practice, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire mentioned, making this proposal work would be tremendously difficult, because we would have to compel a private provider to take a specific type of child rather than operating on a “first come, first served” basis, which is how the system currently works.
The important news is that there are many good examples of how the pupil premium is working.
Alex Cunningham
I thank the Minister for giving way. However, even if his figures from the former Deputy Prime Minister’s pupil premium initiative are correct, we have got to concentrate on what is happening long before the pupil premium kicks in for young children. We need to be kicking in at the offer for two, three and four-year-olds. That is where we need the quality and the funding.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Gentleman is talking about having an intervention long before the early years pupil premium, which is for three and four-year-olds, kicks in. This is the Government who introduced for the first time ever early education for disadvantaged two-year-olds, spending something like £750 million a year on that. I would argue that we are already making that intervention. However, the Bill is about providing 30 hours for three and four-year-olds. I will just mention a few examples of how the early years pupil premium is helping disadvantaged three and four-year-olds.
In one nursery, the funding has been used for staff training and equipment, to help children achieving below their age-related averages on entry in mathematics, and in communication and language skills. Another provider has been able to employ a dedicated early years special educational co-ordinator and language specialist, to help children to develop attention skills, turn-taking and speaking in sentences. Another provider has put the funding towards the recruitment of specialist staff to communicate with the families and children who have English as an additional language, as well as to support their other learning needs. These are the sorts of interventions that really make a difference in narrowing the gap, and we will look to roll them out across the sector.
I am sure that hon. Members will share my view that the additional help and support can make a real difference to the most vulnerable children in our society, particularly as they get ready to start school. That is why the Conservative-led Government introduced the two-year-old entitlement, which has been maintained in the spending review. In June, local authorities reported that around 167,000 two-year-olds were already benefiting from a funded early education place, and that figure continues to rise.
That is an achievement for an entitlement that was only introduced as recently as three years ago, I think. We have seen rapid increases in take-up in local authorities that had initially struggled, with some remarkable increases in London, for example. However, we must remember that the offer to parents, as far as the education for two-year-olds is concerned, is voluntary. Parents do not have to enrol their two-year-olds in a nursery setting, and one of the projects that I worked on when I was first appointed as the childcare Minister was to consider how we can encourage more parents to take up the offer for two-year-olds.
Alex Cunningham
I am pleased to support amendment 15, which would ensure that parents were given the flexibility to use their 30-day entitlement to free childcare throughout the year. It would ensure that they were not restricted in when and how they take the additional 15 hours.
As my hon. Friend said, the concept of flexibility is central to the success of the 30-hour offer. All children aged three and four are currently eligible for 15 hours of free early education each week, or 570 hours each year. That offer can be taken over the 38-week academic year or be stretched over the calendar year to provide roughly 11 hours of free childcare a week. Although those 15 hours are of some help to parents, we are all too aware that they are often available only in inflexible morning or afternoon sessions, and that they frequently do not correspond to parents’ child caring needs.
We have already heard that the availability of affordable and flexible childcare is widely recognised to be a central issue for families across the country. According to figures published by 4Children earlier this year, nearly one in five parents are considering reducing their hours or giving up work altogether because of the cost of childcare.
Mr Gyimah
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Bill doubles the entitlement to 30 hours, and that parents will be able to stretch it across the year and take it alongside tax-free childcare or the childcare element of universal credit—whichever applies to them? We are giving parents a lot more flexibility than he is acknowledging.
Alex Cunningham
That is extremely helpful. That is the reassurance we seek, but we need it to be spelled out in the Bill. Perhaps the Minister will say that in his speech.
When the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in the summer Budget that the Government would extend free childcare, he said that there would be a pilot in 2016 and that it would be rolled out from 2017. The Minister has just said—this was not clear at the time—that there is elasticity around the additional provision. I hope he will reiterate that in his speech and tell us how he is going to spell it out in regulations—preferably, he will do it in the Bill—to give parents the flexibly that they need.
The 30-hour offer must account for parents who work atypical hours, irregular patterns and inconsistent shifts. The Family and Childcare Trust highlighted that 29% of mothers routinely work at atypical times, such as during the evening or at weekends. Childminders are the principal means through which flexibility is offered in formal childcare provision. Other parents—my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham referred to some of them—work full-time hours but are on zero-hours contracts, so they require even more flexibility in accessing childcare because they do not know when they will be working from one week to the next. I would welcome further clarification from the Minister on that issue.
There is also the challenge of ensuring that childminders have a role in providing flexible care. The Government’s proposals are not straightforward. Because of the increased competition from centre-based providers and the low levels of remuneration commonly available to childminders —often due to reduced fees from local authorities following central Government cuts—less than 1% of free early education for three and four-year-olds is currently delivered by childminders. If the Bill is to succeed in allowing parents to enter and stay in the kinds of jobs that are available to them, it is self-evident that childcare must be available to cover the hours they work. For that reason, it is important that free places are offered flexibly. The Minister has said that that is possible, but the sector must provide places when shorter or longer sessions are required. Parents must not be required to pay top-up fees because of when they need childcare.
It is also essential to get the balance right and ensure that quality is maintained as the free entitlement is extended. That means that the quality of the existing 15-hour entitlement should not be compromised by the reforms in the Bill. At the same time, questions remain on the pressing issue of how sessional and maintained providers will be both funded and supported to extend their offerings from part-time to full-time hours.
As the Committee has heard previously, 73% of three and four year-olds accessing free childcare at any one time are attending a school-based setting or sessional pre-school. Those schools and sessional pre-schools face barriers in extending provision to 30 hours each week.
The Chair
Order. Mr Cunningham, could you please stay within the scope of the amendment?
Alex Cunningham
I thought I was staying within the scope of the amendment, about the flexibility required for 30-hour provision.
For instance, if pre-schools are to extend childcare across the full day, they face having to dramatically reduce the number of places they can offer. Similarly, there are core logistical hurdles that need to be overcome. Many sessional pre-schools, for instance, use shared community premises for part of the day at vastly reduced rates of rent. Those institutions would need to move to new premises and access additional funding to extend their offerings and provide the flexibility that is needed, unless the funding is available to keep complexes accessible. In the same vein, nursery class facilities in schools may not be suitable for day care, with many lacking vital rest areas and requiring significant adaptation to cater for children across a full day.
It is important to be absolutely clear that the 30-hour offer is valuable, at least on the face of it, because it significantly increases the potential flexibility available to parents to go out to work or progress towards work. Certainly, the extension of the free childcare entitlement can play an important role in providing parents with the support they need to balance work and childcare responsibilities. However, the extent to which that potential is realised is, of course, dependent on the degree of support and malleability the Government offer providers.
It is therefore imperative that we do all we can to ensure that the Bill delivers provision that is inclusive, high-quality and supports good outcomes for all children. That, in my view, necessarily entails a comprehensive package that gives parents a realistic option of using their 30-hour entitlement flexibly. Of course, it is all very well being able to use entitlement flexibly, provided the facilities and the offer are there for the community to access.
Mr Gyimah
The amendments are focused on ensuring that the 30-hour entitlement delivers sufficient flexible childcare for working parents. I completely agree with the principle of the amendments tabled in the other place and by the hon. Members for North West Durham, for Birmingham, Yardley and for Stockton North, which is that the extended entitlement should be delivered flexibly to support working parents.
However, delivering flexible provision is not simply about ensuring that childcare is available outside the hours of nine to five, as the amendment made in the other place suggests, or during the school holidays, as suggested in this debate. Each parent has different needs. Some parents will need childcare to cover the period between leaving work and picking up their child, while a number of parents of children with special educational needs want their child to spend part of their time in a mainstream setting and part of their time in a special educational needs setting.
Real flexibility, therefore, is about responding to the specific requirements of working parents, and I am passionately committed to delivering that. I feel strongly that setting out in primary legislation a requirement for local authorities to secure provision to meet each parent’s individual needs will not work in practice.
Alex Cunningham
I am interested in the school-based settings for nurseries. What work is the Minister planning across Government, and with local government in particular, to see how the provision and facilities that exist can be utilised during school holidays, thus offering flexibility to parents?
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Gentleman is alluding to the announcement we made earlier this week on wrap-around care, which will allow private providers to bid to use a school site to provide care for school-age children during the holidays. So we are already working on that. I will come later to what we can do for children under five.
Local authorities depend on the market to supply childcare places. We want them to work with local providers to transform the market and increase flexible childcare provision for parents with out-of-hours working patterns. It would not be reasonable to place a statutory duty on them to guarantee out-of-hours or holiday provision for every parent who wants it, since their local childcare market may not be able to deliver that.
Returning to the hon. Gentleman’s point about school nurseries, there are a number of local authorities, particularly in the north-east, where the majority of childcare is delivered by sessional providers such as maintained schools or nurseries. A large number of those providers cannot offer out-of-hours or holiday provision. As Lord Sutherland said in the other place, for those providers
“to continue provision outside their normal hours may well stop them operating completely”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 October 2015; Vol. 765, c. 265.]
Placing a duty on local authorities will not change that overnight. It is also important to note that local authorities, rightly, cannot require private providers to deliver the free entitlement. Therefore it is simply not right to give them a legal duty to secure flexible provision for every parent in their area.
In my view, the way to promote flexible provision is to work with local authorities and providers to look for innovative ways to meet the needs of parents, and to encourage new providers to enter the market to give parents more choice. We should encourage provision to respond flexibly to demand. It does not make sense to require every local authority to secure a particular type of provision when parental working patterns and the type of demand for childcare will vary from area to area.
I reassure the Committee that there is already flexibility in the system used for the existing 15-hour entitlement, and we intend to build on that flexibility in delivering the extended entitlement. There is no requirement that free entitlement places can only be in line with school term dates, or during the hours of nine to five.
In fact, the previous Government changed the statutory guidance to enable local authorities to fund providers to allow parents to access places between 7 am and 7 pm, so that parents can drop off their children earlier in the day or collect them later. Providers can also stretch their entitlement across the full year rather than limiting them to term-time only provision, and a number already do that.
The Bill is very carefully drafted at clause 2(1) to say that the free childcare must be available for a period
“equivalent to 30 hours in…38 weeks”
so that the primary framework allows for the stretched offer. Some local authorities are already promoting flexible childcare provision, including Brighton and Hove City Council, where 82% of year-round nurseries offer a stretched entitlement; Blackpool local authority, where nurseries and childminders work in partnership to offer out-of-hours provision, including weekends and evenings; and Bradford Council, which offers a community nanny scheme, providing flexible childcare for lone parents struggling to access work or training. In Tuesday’s discussion of eligibility I mentioned the great work that Swindon Council is doing to offer weekend sessions from January 2016. In addition, we will set up a flexible funding model to support providers to deliver flexible provision to meet the needs of parents.
Although it is great that some local authorities are already delivering flexible provision to meet parents’ needs, I want more local authorities to deliverthe 30-hour entitlement in that way. I have been clear that the extended entitlement needs to support parents to work. We have been working with the Local Government Association to set up an expert local government working group in the new year, to build on existing flexible provision and make the extended entitlement even more flexible.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady raises an important point. First, it is difficult to use legislation to clearly define flexibility. Indeed, doing so in primary legislation is almost a contradiction; it cannot work. Secondly, she points out why our approach is the right one. It allows local authorities to work with providers to deliver the sort of flexibility that works in their local area. The flexibility that her constituents will need will be quite different from that required by parents in a rural area, which is why we cannot define it in primary legislation. However, we want to ensure that the 30 hours is equally accessible by all parents, which brings me on to my next point.
It is clear that the market will need to adapt to support a flexible childcare offer in the extended entitlement, and we will encourage different types of providers to offer the additional hours. The hon. Member for Stockton North mentioned the role of childminders in flexibility, and I agree that they have important part to play. There are currently over 46,000 childminders on the early years register, but not all offer the free entitlement due to local authorities’ payment terms, for example. We want to consider that carefully to see how they can be encouraged to offer the entitlement, because they can contribute to flexible delivery. For example, some parents could use a school nursery and have a childminder either pick their children up or drop them off. A shift-worker at the airport might use a childminder during evening or weekend work alongside some nursery provision.
I have said to the Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years, which represents childminders, that there is a big opportunity for childminders to work with nurseries and schools to deliver a full offer of the 30 hours. In the previous Parliament, we allowed childminders to operate outside their domestic premises for 50% of the time. Childminders can now team up with schools to offer after-school provision. If a child does a morning session, they can be looked after by a childminder on school premises for the afternoon to allow parents to pick them up. That flexibility for childminders will come into force from January 2016 and will open up many new opportunities.
I also recognise that a number of parents already use multiple childcare providers, such as sending their child to a nursery and then getting someone else to pick them up, as I have said. I want to ensure that the system continues to allow parents to make the right decisions for their children and will encourage information sharing between different providers so that there is continuity for the child and that their best interests are taken into account when multiple providers are involved in childcare delivery. On Tuesday, we discussed the Government’s plans to introduce the 30-hour entitlement early in some areas, and flexibility will be a focus. The early implementers will look at ways to encourage different providers to enter the market, including childminders who are not currently offering the free entitlement.
I hope that Committee members are reassured that the Government are absolutely committed to ensuring that parents have access to flexible childcare to fit their working patterns. I would therefore encourage Committee members to support Government amendment 4 and urge the hon. Member for North West Durham to withdraw amendment 15. I emphasise that the Government are committed to delivering flexible childcare for children of all ages, as I said in response to an intervention from the hon. Member for Stockton North. That is why we will consult on parents having the right to request wraparound and holiday care at their child’s school, as the Prime Minister announced on Monday. Providers will also have a right to request use of a school’s facilities when the schools are not using them. That will help local authorities to ensure as far as possible that there is sufficient childcare in the area that responds to parental demand.
Alex Cunningham
What will happen when an agreement cannot be reached with a local school or local authority, or when the private provider is not prepared to be more flexible in its provision? How do we ensure parents’ needs are met if the system in their particular area is not flexible enough?
Mr Gyimah
My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North made an interesting point on Tuesday: we have significant additional investment in the sector which should be attractive to many new providers. If a provider does not want to offer flexible childcare to all parents in an area, they will struggle to find business somewhere else, because the majority of parents of three and four-year-olds will be entitled to the 30 hours of childcare. Providers that refuse to respond to parental demand may therefore struggle to stay in business.
Alex Cunningham
Government Members have talked about the particular challenges in rural areas, where there might be very little provision. Here we face a situation in which there might be 20 children in a local community who access care; all of a sudden the amount of available care will need to double, and yet there may not be the capacity in that small rural area to do so. How will we cope with that?
Mr Gyimah
As the hon. Gentleman knows, local authorities have a sufficiency duty. I hope that what we will do to encourage providers on the early years register that currently do not offer the free entitlement—such as childminders, who he pointed to—will work. We will also use £50 million of capital investment to target areas where there is a need for more places. Finally, local authorities can fund providers in a way that incentivises flexible provision, so a number of levers can be used to deliver flexible provision for parents.
Alex Cunningham
Does my hon. Friend agree that, although the vast majority of childcare providers do their very best, some will benefit from specifically knowing that discriminatory behaviour against children in the care setting will see them prosecuted?
Pat Glass
The situation is so bad that we need to send out a strong message, which is why I want the amendment included in the Bill.
I will read from the parliamentary inquiry into childcare for disabled children. A parent told us:
“Even now, at age 3, we have only managed to secure 6 hours a week at a nursery, during term-time”.
One said:
“I feel like the 15 hours scheme at the moment is really invented for normally functioning kids”,
but it could be easily turned into something that could help children like hers. Another parent said:
“This is a nightmare. I have tried for a year to find an out of school provider that is suitable for my daughter...and...have not been successful.”
One told us:
“We have contacted every single private childcare provider (childminders, holiday clubs, day care nurseries etc) yet no one is willing to take on a disabled child”.
Another parent said:
“I have tried to access childcare. I contacted many child-minders and had a very negative experience. Some of the things they said were very hurtful and eventually I gave up as it was so demoralising.”
Pat Glass
Before I give way, can I make it clear that we do not want to put anyone in prison? As I said to the Minister, if the amendment is carelessly worded, I am happy to change it. The current situation cannot continue and I simply want to change it, however that may be possible, so that it is line with Disability Discrimination Act.
Alex Cunningham
I do not believe that the vast majority of care providers want to discriminate against children with disabilities. They do it possibly because they are ill equipped and do not have the experience, understanding and skills to cope with disabled children. Perhaps the answer is, as we discussed earlier, an upskilling programme across all situations, so that staff can feel confident that they can take on and deal with disabled children.
Pat Glass
I agree. I also think there is an element of childcare providers and even maintained settings not being aware of the law regarding refusal to take a child on grounds of disability. It is not absolutely clear to them.
I want to talk about the evidence given by one young couple. They had a lovely baby girl who had severe and multiple learning difficulties. The mother told me that she had approached every provider in her London borough. As soon as she explained the extent of her child’s problems, they were suddenly full. This young woman told me that she was attending mother and toddler groups with her child, and other mothers, who approached the same providers later, found they were not full. That is awful. One needs to sit face to face with this mother to understand how deeply she was disturbed and upset by that. It is wrong and should not be happening, but it is happening time and time again.
I appreciate that the childcare providers might be frightened. They will feel that they do not have the skills, knowledge or training to admit such children. However, when a child is born with a major disability the parents do not magically acquire skills and expertise. The NHS does not give parents special training.
Childcare Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)
Alex Cunningham Excerpts(9 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Pat Glass
You know what, I do not go back that far, but I am happy to concede the point. I do understand, going back an awfully long way to the 1970s, that local authorities were unable to provide nursery education; it was the former leader of the Conservative party, Mrs Thatcher, who introduced that. I am happy to concede those points.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
On that point, there was a Conservative Government for 18 years and it took them 17 years to get to the point of believing that free childcare was necessary in our society. Could they not have come up with it a wee bit earlier? They left it to a Labour Government to deliver it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)
There are only 1.4 million three and four year-olds in the country—therefore there cannot be 1.4 million parents. The hon. Lady should check her figures, because they are incredibly wrong.
Pat Glass
Well, most children, although not all, have two parents. I am happy to check that, but I did say that it was an early analysis of the thresholds changing.
The biggest issues are the massive question marks that we hope the Minister will be able to resolve. On Second Reading I said that even during the passage of the Bill the Government’s manifesto promise of 30 hours’ free childcare had been whittled away. Thresholds and delays have increased. The gap remains between what the Chancellor has made available to pay for this and the real cost.
Childcare is vital to our future success. We need our brightest and most able parents to be part of the recovery of our economy and to help it grow. We need good-quality, inclusive, accessible and affordable childcare to help us close the developmental gap pre-school, which is critical to a child’s development and their outcomes throughout their life. High-quality, flexible childcare is critical not only for the economy, but for the child’s wellbeing and development. I am happy to say that, across the House, we have made great strides in childcare over the past 20 years. I would tend to suggest that the Labour Government did more, but I am happy that this Government are going to make their contribution now.
Important policy challenges remain. Our rates of maternal employment, particularly for mothers with children aged one to four years, are poor compared with those of other OECD countries. In not supporting our brightest and most able mothers back into the workforce, we risk our future economic stability. Over one third of mothers who want to work say that they are unable to do so because of high childcare costs. Two thirds of mothers would like to work more hours but are unable to do so because of unaffordable childcare bills. That is particularly true for second earners, as the Resolution Foundation and the Institute for Public Policy Research have illustrated.
Let me give an example from my family. When my daughter-in-law had three small children, she told me that she was spending almost all her salary—she is a head teacher—on childcare. If that is true for head teachers, it will be doubly true for families on lower incomes. Many mothers still face a pay and status penalty in the labour market for having children, yet increasingly work is becoming the only option for both parents, as pressures on family budgets have increased. For families up and down the country the chances of keeping their heads above water, let alone owning their own home and providing the security that their family needs, depend on both parents working. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, single-earner households are now more likely to be in poverty. To boost our economy and give families the chance of a decent job, home and income, childcare investment is essential.
High-quality childcare is also vital in tackling disadvantage. We know that many of the most disadvantaged five-year-olds are starting school 18 months behind their peers. That gap begins to open up at 24 months and by five years old our brightest children from our poorest homes are already falling well behind less able children from more advantaged homes. This is wrong; it is a waste, ultimately, of talent, and it holds back our whole economy.
Good childcare could close that gap and give children a firm foundation for school and later life. However, it is a fact that sometimes the two aims of economic output and early education require different policy solutions. They are too often conflated, and sometimes seeking to improve one element can come at the expense of the other. Our concern in scrutinising and challenging the Bill is that getting more women and more mothers back into work does not come at the expense of children’s development. That is why supply-side support, such as extra hours, is a good way to deliver both. Tax-free childcare, although some way—
Pat Glass
Now I am even more confused because I want to know where the £1 billion is that the Minister is talking about. My understanding is that the figure is £650 million, but I can come on to that in some detail because I think the Government are all over the place on costs. The Minister is going to show us how he will do the basic maths on this. I have an MSc in maths and, quite frankly, I am confused about this. I always think I am reasonably good at this sort of stuff, but I am absolutely confused.
Alex Cunningham
The IPPR says that the Government’s policy costing of £365 million in the first year is inexplicably low compared with other estimates, as well as with current funding. They warn that any
“shortfall could drive down childcare quality and leave the needs of working families unmet, with poorer outcomes for children and less choice for parents as the market shrinks”.
Surely an organisation such as that is clear about its figures.
Alex Cunningham
Directly on amendment 10, there was an independent parliamentary inquiry into childcare for disabled children, which highlighted the continuing failure of the early years system to provide adequately for children with special educational needs and disabilities. Does my hon. Friend agree with me that for that reason, we need the amendment that has come from the Lords? The Lords have made it clear that we need to look into the detail, and understand exactly what we are doing and the related costs so that we can provide for all children, including disabled children.
Pat Glass
That is right, but I also understand that the review mentioned in clause 1 is about reviewing the sustainability and financial support for the Bill. The Lords were concerned that the Bill was not sustainable without looking at the issues of funding, the workforce and the capacity of the industry to deliver the provisions of the Bill. I am trying to tease that out. There are serious issues with capacity in the workforce. Nurseries tell me that they cannot recruit the level 3 students that they need to deliver the 15 hours.
There are serious issues around cross-subsidy. At the moment, nurseries are delivering the free 15 hours by charging beyond the 15 hours for parents who want more than 15, so anybody who gets more than 15 hours is basically subsidising the Government’s 15 hours. If the ability to extend that is taken away because nurseries have to offer 30 hours, the only way in which they can deliver is by charging substantially more for babies, one-year-olds and two-year-olds. There is a real concern that if the provision goes through without the adequate funding, the Government will be putting us in a position whereby women returning to work after maternity leave will not be able to afford childcare because the costs for younger children will rise sharply and dramatically.
Pat Glass
It is, but one problem is that the Bill has come through as an education Bill; yet, this small Bill with a few clauses largely appears to be an economic Bill about getting people back into the workforce. I do not see children anywhere in the Bill. Children’s development should be central to it . We should not be giving one at the expense of the other.
Alex Cunningham
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Norwich North for raising the issue of fathers. My son and his partner pay £41 a day for childcare, which, if my grandson is there for five days, is £205 a week. How will they be able to benefit from a scheme like this if it is not properly funded?
Pat Glass
That is at the core of our concerns. We are concerned that if the Government remove the review, issues such as the capacity of the workforce and buildings, who will get access, eligibility and so on may mean that the funding will simply not happen. Can the Minister explain in some detail—he has not been able to so far—where the funding is coming from, what it will be spent on and whether the second 15 hours will be the same as the first 15? How will he improve the capacity in the workforce at a time when nurseries are already struggling to recruit qualified staff for the first 15 hours? All those issues would be in that review. If we lose that, there is a danger that we will have no detail and that, ultimately, this very well meant and excellent policy will result in less provision, less choice for parents and less quality in the provision for children. Ultimately, that will have a detrimental effect on children’s development, particularly for our most disadvantaged children, who are getting the least out of the system as it stands.
Pat Glass
Sorry, I meant amendment 10. I think we can all agree that increasing access to 30 hours of free, good-quality, inclusive childcare will benefit all children, but the amendment would ensure that all children and not just some can benefit from the policy. The reality is that many children, and many disabled children, do not benefit from or get access to their 15 hours of current entitlement.
The Minister will know that I chaired a parliamentary inquiry in 2014 into childcare for disabled children. I am not sure whether he has read the report or the recommendations that came out of the inquiry, but he is yet to act on them. On Second Reading I said that I was not shocked by the findings of that inquiry, but deeply saddened and disappointed that so little value is placed on our disabled children and their families and that things have not improved for them as they have for the rest of us.
The thing that I am most proud of with the inquiry I chaired is that it is no longer possible for anyone—Ministers, Department for Education officials, council officials, head teachers, teachers or childcare providers—to say that there is no problem and that everything is okay, because it is clearly not okay. Department for Education officials appeared before that inquiry, and they were still trying to tell us that there was no problem and that there was sufficient legislation to ensure that every disabled child could access the 15 hours of childcare. The inquiry and the follow-up report, “Levelling the playing field”, showed that for disabled parents that is absolutely not true.
Some 40% of families with disabled children are not able to access the current free childcare offer of 15 hours a week. That percentage is 10 times more than that for families with a non-disabled child. Of the families who say that they are not taking up the 15 hours of entitlement, more than a third said that was because they did not think the childcare provider could care for their child’s safely. There is a serious issue that needs to be addressed on the qualifications and experience of childcare workers working with all children and, in particular, with disabled children, and later amendments will seek to address that.
Alex Cunningham
I know the passion that my hon. Friend has for childcare, particularly for disabled children. One in five councils apparently report that they do not have enough childcare for disabled children in their area. Is that not all the more reason why we need a comprehensive review over the next few months to ensure that we can understand the real provision that is available and take measures to fill the considerable gap?
Pat Glass
I agree, and I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. There needs to be a comprehensive review, not just of the costs of childcare, but of funding, the kind of childcare that will be offered in the additional 15 hours and what is happening to those children who cannot take advantage even of their existing entitlement. That is why we would like the amendment to be made.
Of the 38% of parents who did not take up the childcare offer, 30% did not think that the childcare provider had adequately trained staff to meet the needs of their child. A quarter said that the nursery or childcare provider refused a place or excluded their child purely because of their disability or special educational needs. That is illegal under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, but it has been going on for many years. Nothing will change unless we in this House do something to stop that happening. The Government have given us lots of nice warm words on that, but little action. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) said on Second Reading,
“warm words butter no parsnips.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 1441.]
My Irish grandmother used to say that warms words do not buy the bairn a bonnet, but the meaning is the same: we need decisive action to improve the situation for the families of disabled children.
For the children who were refused a place or were excluded, nearly half—49%—said that the childcare providers had claimed that they could not meet the child’s additional needs, although no evidence was given of what reasonable adjustments had been considered. Parents were simply being turned away.
One parent I saw told me that she, living in London, had tried 50 childcare providers, some of them maintained, and they had all said that they were full; they said that they did not have a place, although they seemed to have places for children who did not have a disability. Some 47% of those who said that their child needed one-to-one care or other additional support were told that that support was not available to them, or not available at a cost that was affordable.
The parents of disabled children are often charged higher-than-average fees: 80% reported paying £5 an hour or more for childcare; 38% said that they paid £11 to £20 an hour; and 5% reported paying more than £20 an hour. That is in comparison with the national average of £3.50 to £4.50 an hour. The inquiry heard from parents who had been forced to give up work because they could not afford suitable childcare, and from parents who had had to give up their jobs and move to other parts of the country to get help with childcare from family members, because that was the only way in which they could work.
One couple I saw had an autistic child. They had a business in London, but they had to shift their entire business to Cornwall so that they could get access to childcare from relatives. That is not good for them, for our economy or, certainly, for their child. Access to good-quality childcare is important to all families, because it has a positive impact on children’s learning outcomes and enables parents to work. For families bringing up a disabled child, however, access to good-quality childcare is particularly significant, because such families are far more vulnerable to living in poverty than most.
Childcare for children with a disability is frequently a trigger for poverty, because such families incur considerable additional and ongoing expenses relating to their child’s disability and they often encounter significant barriers to entering and, possibly more importantly, sustaining employment. Disabled children are more likely to live in poverty, because it costs three times as much to raise a disabled child as it does to raise a child without a disability; the families of disabled children are 2.5 more likely to have no parent working for more than 16 hours a week in paid employment; only 16% of mothers of disabled children work, compared with 61% of all mothers; 83% of parent carers say that the lack of suitable childcare is their main barrier to work; and only 28% of local authorities say that they have sufficient childcare for disabled children, compared with 54% for all children under two, 69% for three and four-year-olds and 35% for children aged five to 11.
The inquiry I chaired made a number of important recommendations. They were not big asks. We asked the Government to take a number of steps that would begin to improve childcare for disabled children, such as undertaking a cross-departmental review of funding to identify where support needs to be improved to meet the extra costs. We did not ask them to come up with the money; we simply asked for a review to find out where the gaps are. That would have been easy for the Government to do—just to undertake a review—but it did not happen.
We asked the Government to introduce a requirement for local authorities to publish, as part of their special educational needs local offer, information for parents and providers on access to childcare inclusive of support. We simply wanted the Government to ask local authorities to publish their information on what is available and where but, again, that did not happen.
We asked the Government to write to local authorities—simply a letter—to make it clear that all eligible disabled children aged two, three and four were entitled to access their 15 hours of free childcare and to clarify the arrangements for redress. We only wanted the Government to remind local authorities that they were under a duty to ensure that disabled children could access their 15 hours and to tell parents what they could do if they were unable to get that childcare but, again, that did not happen.
As I said, those were not big asks. I do not know whether the Government did not agree with those three simple actions, or whether the suggestions simply got lost among the many other things that the Government have to do. However, the situation remains the same for families with disabled children. High-quality, flexible childcare helps children’s education and social development and enables parents to maintain paid employment, but it remains a pipe dream for many families with disabled children.
Over the past 20 years we in this House have, collectively, improved things for working mothers—I am not saying that we have made things easy, but we have improved them. I have only ever had one child, and I go back a long way, so there was no such thing as maternity leave when I was pregnant. People had to leave their jobs and then reapply for them three months later, or however long it was. If they were lucky, the job was there; if they were not, it was not, and they had to go somewhere else. At the time I had to work, because I was on my own with a little baby.
Over the years, therefore, we in this House have, between us, really made a difference and improved things for working mothers. We now have maternity leave and maternity pay, paternity leave and paternity pay, childcare, improved nursery access and children’s centres. All those things have improved the situation for working parents. However, for parents of disabled children, there has been little—perhaps even no—improvement.
That is something that we, collectively, can do something about. We can make things better for the families of disabled children. We are asking the Government not to spend money, but to look at the additional childcare costs for those families and reflect them in the funding provided. That is the kind of thing that the people who voted for us wanted us to come to the House to do; they wanted us to make a difference to the lives of those people. That is certainly why I came here.
The amendment tries to reflect the true costs of childcare for disabled children. The Government have already acknowledged the additional costs and acknowledged the principle in their tax-free childcare policy, so they need to reflect the costs for disabled children in this policy too.
Alex Cunningham
My hon. Friend will be aware of the report “Levelling the playing field” from Contact a Family, which talks about the early years single funding formula provided to early years settings being extended to include a mandatory supplement, like schools’ notional special educational needs budget, to help early years settings provide support for disabled children. Is that not one of the ways forward that the Government should consider as part of a longer term review?
Pat Glass
That is what we are trying to do as part of the amendment. We want to acknowledge the additional childcare costs that exist for families with a disabled child and to have the issue included in the review.
The amendment asks the Government to look at the additional costs of childcare for disabled children and to consider providing additional funding and additional flexibilities so that such children can access what they are entitled to. Many families cannot access their 15 hours’ entitlement. Many of the families that came along to the inquiry told me that they would get five, or perhaps seven, hours of childcare. For them, extending free childcare to 30 hours, when they know they will still get only five or seven hours, actually makes things worse.
We are asking for no more than that the children of these families can access what they are entitled to, like any other children. As I said, the principle has already been established. Minister, we can make things better for these families, who get very little, and we can do that collectively, so let’s do it.
Jess Phillips
The shortfall has been identified by the Pre-school Learning Alliance in its research. I can only work on the evidence that has been given to the Committee. There is already a clear shortfall with the 15-hour provision, which is why nurseries tell us time and again that they use other people’s fees to subsidise their rates. The cost of childcare has increased over the past five years.
Alex Cunningham
Would my hon. Friend be surprised to find out that in the Minister’s constituency, childcare already costs £4.85 an hour? That is today, at 2015 at prices. There is a tuppenny shortfall today; what is it going to be like in future?
Jess Phillips
Also, although one welcomes some of the increases in wages that the Government have instigated, they have to be taken into account in the cost of childcare provision. If the cost is already £4.85, by 2017 something will have to give. There is undoubtedly a shortfall. I really hope that the Minister proves me wrong, and that there is no rise in childcare costs for children aged nought to three. However, the evidence suggests that something quite different will happen. All I am asking is for reviews to be put in place to ensure that the Government take any rise in childcare costs into account in their policies, and perhaps that they adjust things to make the situation fairer.
As I have said, where I live, the average wage and the average cost of childcare mean that women pay 103% of their salary towards childcare and men pay 90%. I recognise the comments made by the hon. Member for Norwich North about a society in which men are also child carers. My husband is, and has been almost exclusively since my children were aged three, the full-time carer of my children. However, the simple fact is that is very uncommon, thanks to the gender pay gap. When parents have to decide who goes back to work, they usually do so on the basis of who earns the most money. Unfortunately, that is usually not the girls.
The cost of childcare where I live is a problem in itself, but the Government’s costing of the 30 hours of free childcare has the potential to push that burden even further, to the point where it will be completely unrealistic for the lowest earner in the household to maintain employment. It will be no surprise to anyone here that the lowest earner in most households is usually a woman, and there is a real threat that the rising cost will prohibit women from returning to work for the first three years after they have had their baby.
It should not be a shock to anyone in this room that women’s time out of the labour market is the single biggest contributor to the gender pay gap. For my constituents in the west midlands, where the national trend of the narrowing of the gender pay gap has not quite reached us, last year the pay gap grew from £98.90 per week to £105.60 per week. It is getting worse, not better. The Women and Equalities Committee, of which I am a proud member, is undertaking an inquiry into the gender pay gap. Although I do not want to pre-empt any of the report’s findings, I can guarantee—
Jess Phillips
I apologise for going on to my favourite subject. I can almost guarantee that the findings of the review will show that the cost of childcare and women’s time out of the labour market are major driving factors behind the gender pay gap. There is real potential for the Government to exacerbate that with the proposals in the Bill, rather than helping matters, if they are not properly funded.
Alex Cunningham
There is another issue as far as income is concerned, because those who work in the care sector are predominantly women. If the proposals are not properly funded, one of two things will happen. Either wages will be screwed down and people will lose income, or there will be an increased ratio of children to adults in childcare settings. Both those ideas are unacceptable.
Jess Phillips
I totally agree. Without a proper funding structure, if the clause stands part of the Bill, we will need a real focus on quality. Any one of us who has ever left their children with a childcare provider wants to know that their kids are in the best care possible. For those of us who can afford it, sometimes the best care costs a bit extra.
Will the Government commit to a review of the rising cost of childcare for children aged nought to three, and of the issue of women dropping out of the labour market while their children are that age? Will they adjust the funding scheme accordingly if it is found to affect families negatively? For the same reasons, will they also review the rising cost of wrap-around care? The same private sector providers will often provide before and after-school transport as well as the 30 hours of childcare. If there is a shortfall, there will be a knock-on effect for all nursery costs.
To further assess whether the Government have their sums right, they could conduct a simple review of the number of places in the private sector and, more importantly, the maintained sector, when the 30 hours provision comes into being. My children both received 2.5 days a week of free early years education for a year, in a brilliant maintained nursery setting attached to the school that they both now attend. The nursery operated 45 places for school hours on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesday mornings, and a further 45 places for Wednesday afternoons and school hours on Thursdays and Fridays. I do not know why more nurseries do not do it like that, because it seems much better for parents. Having 2.5 hours each day seems as useful as a chocolate teapot to me.
The nursery building that my children attended simply could not manage 90 children for the full 30 hours of a school week. No matter how tiny their little bottoms are on the mats, there is no way that 90 children would be able to go there Monday to Friday. That means that the brilliant, highly sought-after maintained nursery where I live, which is helping many disadvantaged children, has a brilliant special educational needs service and offers a service to disabled children, will go from being able to offer 90 places to, most likely, being able to offer 45 places. That will reduce the availability of childcare in an area where it is really needed.
We cannot just say that we will build extra room on the side. Not only will the £500 million that has been allocated for capital funding not touch the sides for the whole country, but there just is not enough space in city schools such as the one my children attend. Last week, I visited Yardley primary school in my constituency. It is being pushed to go to five-form entry. I imagine that the idea of a five-form entry primary school is probably not that likely in the constituencies of most Conservative Members.
Alex Cunningham
Even if there were the physical space, I wonder about the availability of sufficiently trained staff. There is greater demand from parents who want higher-quality staff, but there seems to be no plan to provide staff. That is all the more reason why we should review the measure over some time.
Jess Phillips
I think we have time to do that before the roll-out in 2017. I do not wish to delay it any further than 2017, and the Government have the time to make it right. On the training of staff, speaking from personal experience—my son has special educational needs; he has Asperger’s—I want to ensure that people who work with children such as my son every day have the training, qualifications and skills to make their lives and his life a little simpler, although I have not managed it yet.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
I apologise for making the schoolboy error earlier of not turning my phone to silent and therefore disrupting the Committee. I meant no disrespect, Ms Dorries.
I would have expected the Government to welcome the opportunity of a pause and a review because it would provide a breathing space for them to dig themselves out of a hole. We should remind ourselves of the genesis of the policy of 30 hours a week of childcare which, in common with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley, I genuinely welcome. The political genesis of the policy was that my party had offered a fully costed and prepared proposal for 25 hours a week, and the Conservatives entered the general election campaign determined to trump that with 30 hours a week, yet without doing the sums to work out where the money would come from, so I would have expected the Minister to welcome the proposal for a review and pause.
Christian Matheson
That would be handy, because I need to read something from my iPad, which has turned itself off.
Alex Cunningham
I am not sure that that was the role that I had intended to undertake.
The Government have said 30 hours, which trumped our 25 hours, but is that not to be welcomed? An extra five hours a week is a tremendous figure. We want the scheme to work, but we want it to be funded, and all the organisations are saying that there is not enough money and that the estimates are based on the wrong data. The Government need to get it right so that we can all celebrate the wonderful fact that the Tories have trumped the Labour party.
Christian Matheson
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I also thank the Minister for, and congratulate him on, the extension to 30 hours, which will be welcomed by parents up and down the country, as long as it works. I do not wish to be churlish and I hope that my comments will be taken in the spirit with which I offer them.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady talks about the money paid to local authorities. I was making the point that no parent will be worse off in terms of the childcare that they get.
I will come to this in more detail later, but we have announced that we will consult on an early years national funding formula to ensure that we smooth out the allocations for local authorities. It is not fair that one local authority can get £9 an hour and afford to offer 20 hours’ childcare, while another local authority, such as in Birmingham, gets £5 an hour. We need to ensure that a local authority gets the funding that reflects the needs of the children in that local authority, rather than the amount being based on history, as is currently the case. I will come to that point in more detail later.
Alex Cunningham
What the Minister said was quite helpful. In Mid Dorset and North Poole, a week’s childcare costs £94, whereas in the Minister’s constituency of East Surrey, that costs nearly £180. If local authorities are not properly funded to take local circumstances into account, how on earth can they provide the cover that he wants?
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Gentleman raises precisely the point I am making: we want to fund local authorities fairly to take account of local circumstances. The current funding formula is based on historical fiat and historical local spend; it does not reflect local need. In addition to increasing the hourly rate, we want to consult on a national funding formula to ensure that local authorities get funds that reflect their needs.
Alex Cunningham
In Surrey, the cost of childcare has gone up by 36% in the past five years. It will cost £9,000 for a family with one child to access childcare in Surrey. Is the Minister saying that he will ensure that the county council for the constituency he represents as a Member of Parliament will have sufficient money to fund that level of childcare in the future?
Mr Gyimah
Let me put the hon. Gentleman’s mind at rest—I am glad he is taking so much interest in my area, rather than his. As a result of the combination of policies that I have talked about, a parent could get up to £40,000 of subsidy towards their childcare for two children. That is how far the Government are going to subsidise parents with the cost of childcare.
We are discussing amendment 10 and clause 1. I understand the arguments made by some members of the Committee about funding for disabled children and children with SEN to support them in accessing the free entitlement, but let me be clear that I do not believe that clause 1, on the funding review, should remain in the Bill.
Before I address the key points, I want to thank hon. Members for their contributions. I particularly thank the hon. Member for North West Durham for her extensive work on improving access to childcare for disabled children. That is clearly an area of her expertise and I thank her for her contribution to the debate. I also want to put on record that, beyond our line-by-line scrutiny in Committee, I want to work with her and officials on how we can improve access to childcare for disabled children, so I invite her to the Department to discuss that.
I want to be very clear that the Government believe that parents with disabled children should have the same opportunities as other parents via increased choice of and access to high-quality childcare. The Government’s commitment to improving the system for children with SEN and disabilities was strongly demonstrated in the previous Parliament, during which we legislated through the Children and Families Act 2014 to introduce the biggest reform to the SEN and disability system for 30 years. The reforms, which introduced a nought-to-25 system, with an emphasis on early identification and the importance of integration between education, health and social care for children across the age range, were supported on both sides of the House.
Mr Gyimah
I am coming to precisely that point. The changes will not solve all issues in the system overnight, but they are at the early stages of implementation and are starting to make a real difference for families. As I pointed out in relation to funding for parents of disabled children, tax-free childcare for families with disabled children will provide support of up to £40,000 until the child turns 18. So, from nought to 18, a parent with a disabled child will get twice the allowance that a parent with a non-disabled child will get through tax-free childcare.
I recognise that the extensive work carried out by the parliamentary inquiry into childcare for disabled children, co-chaired by the hon. Member for North West Durham, found that some parents have difficulties accessing childcare. That is disappointing. I am clear that the entitlement to 15 hours’ early education is for all children. It is not acceptable for children with disabilities to be unable to access their entitlement.
Alex Cunningham
As the Minister knows, 40% of families with disabled children are not accessing care, which is 10 times more than in the wider population. I accept that there is sufficient money, but how do we ensure that there is the expertise needed in all our nurseries to provide the expert care that meets the specific needs of disabled children?
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The truth is that disabled children have very different needs. There are a range of needs, which is why I would like to work with the hon. Member for North West Durham.
I will develop my argument further on how we can make sure we have the right expertise in the right setting. For some disabled children there needs to be an overlap between early education and nursing care, and in some situations there also needs to be a speech and language therapist, or a music therapist, on hand. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to childcare for disabled children. We need to work out the right way to do this, and if the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I will make some suggestions during my speech.
Local authorities are required by law to secure free entitlement places for parents who want their children to take them up. There is a clear legal position enabling all three and four-year-olds to receive 15 hours of early education, and it is clear in the Bill that all such children are eligible to receive an additional 15 hours. Local authorities are also under a duty in the Childcare Act 2006 to ensure that there is sufficient childcare in their area. The requirement is for all children, and it is not acceptable if there are no places for children who have additional needs.
Mr Gyimah
If a childcare provider wants to say to parents, “This is how we price; it is a market,” parents can pick and choose the spots that work best for them. We are saying that there is more scope to look at under-occupancy. It may work for some providers and not for others. We will work with the sector on that.
As I said, the review had extensive input from the whole sector. I will name some of the key organisations that provided input: the National Day Nurseries Association, the Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years, the Family and Childcare Trust and Contact a Family, as well as providers that attended round-tables that we held in the summer. The review does not just reflect costs in the south-east and London, because those round-tables were held around the country. I would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who contributed to such a significant achievement, with the review being the first of its kind.
We are debating the impact of the provisions on children with additional needs, and the review also considered the impact on the cost of provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities. We held thematic discussions on childcare for children with additional needs, including special educational needs and disabilities. The review found that the nature and level of support required by those children can vary significantly, as does the prevalence of additional needs across each setting. The cost estimates reported in the review made allowances for some of those factors.
Our analysis of the responses to the call for evidence also highlighted that providing for children with additional needs, special educational needs and disabilities drives up costs for providers, particularly salaries. That is because children may need more one-to-one support, and there may be a need for greater involvement of other services—for example, health services or therapists—to support the provider in caring for the child. I saw that for myself when I visited Bath Opportunity pre-school, a specialist nursery providing childcare for children aged nought to five with a range of additional needs. The pre-school delivered excellent care for the children, but it was clear that the cost of delivering that care depended on children’s level of need. To deliver that care, the provider needs to work closely with a range of agencies, supported by the local authority to access funding from the high needs block, which is for ages nought to 25.
Alex Cunningham
The Minister heard me raise earlier the issue mentioned by Contact a Family, about the early years single funding formula. Is he saying that the higher-level funding will compensate and provide sufficient funding for people with a disabled child, who are finding the costs extremely high?
Mr Gyimah
First, I have outlined how parents could get tax-free childcare. Secondly, we confirmed in the spending review that there will be protection for high-needs funding, which will ensure that it rises in proportion to the number of children, including those under five. For parents with disabled children, there will be a number of funding sources to help them buy childcare provision based on their needs.
Alex Cunningham
Is the Minister reassuring the Committee that a person with a disabled child will not be disadvantaged financially in any way whatever, in comparison with a person with a child who does not have a disability, when they come to buy childcare?
Mr Gyimah
By having tax-free childcare and the high needs block, and also by having increased the hourly rate, we will ensure that local authorities continue to have the flexibility to target funding where it is most needed to help children with disabilities and their families, including the youngest children.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady pre-empts my next point. When it comes to funding for children with additional needs, we know that one size does not fit all. That is why I have committed to considering early years funding for children with special educational needs and disabilities as part of our wider consultation on allocation and a fairer funding system in 2016—specifically to look at the issue that the hon. Lady points out.
However, we also know, going back to a previous point, that access is not just about funding. We have heard throughout this debate that although funding is important, it is not the only issue. I am sure that in a later debate we will talk about how the workforce support children with additional needs, but the way in which local authorities and providers work together to ensure that all children access their entitlement goes beyond funding into how services work together and how the workforce are supported. I therefore want very clearly to commit that as part of our early implementation of 30 hours from September 2016, we will seek to encourage innovative approaches to providing flexible childcare for working parents whose children are disabled or have special educational needs. I am sure that the hon. Lady will have a view on that when we sit down to discuss how we can make that happen.
I would now like to talk more widely about clause 1 and why I do not believe it should stand part of the Bill.
Alex Cunningham
I am grateful to the Minister for taking another intervention. He said about 10 minutes ago that he would address the issue of staffing to ensure that there is the necessary level of expertise in nurseries so that they can offer appropriate support for children with disabilities. I do not know whether he intends to address that later in his speech, but it appears that he is moving on, so I would appreciate it if he addressed it now.
Mr Gyimah
I believe that there is an amendment specifically on the workforce. When we debate that, we can debate all the staffing issues together. I want to focus on amendment 10 and clause 1.
Clause 1 was introduced in the other place in response to concerns about a lack of detail about how the Government would fund their commitment to provide 30 hours of free childcare for three and four-year-olds. Critically, it was also about the opportunity to scrutinise how that would be done. Before the Bill was introduced, we committed to increasing the rate paid to providers that was announced by the Prime Minister in March, and to a comprehensive review of the cost of childcare.
Alex Cunningham
No one wants to delay the implementation of this fantastic policy, but the review, and the consideration of the issues that were raised in the other place, could happen in parallel without inhibiting that implementation. They would inform it considerably and perhaps make it possible to get the right numbers, which we need to understand the cost and the number of placements available. Surely the Minister accepts that something could be done in parallel, and that he does not have anything to fear from that.
Mr Gyimah
I do not see the case for a further independent review after a review has been held. The autumn statement set the Government’s budget and spending plans for the entirety of the Parliament. We have a very generous settlement: we will be spending £2.9 billion in 2018-19, having spent £2.8 billion in the last Parliament. That is a significant increase.
Finally, Members have asked questions about the detail in the Bill. The hon. Member for North West Durham is a veteran of childcare debates in this House, and I say to her that regulations are the right place for much of the detail. The full eligibility criteria, and the details about the childcare providers that local authorities are required to fund for the current entitlement, will all sit in regulations. The previous Labour Government made the same choice. We set out our intentions in a series of policy statements, and the regulations will be subject to the highest degree of parliamentary scrutiny.
Childcare Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)
Alex Cunningham Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Pat Glass
That is exactly what we are arguing. There is confusion here, and we are not happy. I have listened to the Minister, but he has not convinced me that the necessary funding is there. There may be more than there was a couple of weeks ago, but the necessary funding is not there, which is why we believe that an ongoing review is a good idea.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
Some of the things that the Minister has said in the past add to the confusion. He was quoted as saying that the increase in childcare entitlement by 10 hours would cost an additional £1.6 billion. He talks about £1 billion and extra money in the spending review. Numbers seem to be coming out of hats all over the place. Does anybody really know what funding is available?
Alex Cunningham
This is not just about people who good things working with charities and so on, but about people who want to go out and get work experience, because they tried to get on an interview panel for a job but were rejected because they did not have any experience. This gives them an opportunity; if they were to get childcare, they could get the experience and then get into work at a later stage.
Pat Glass
I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention; he is absolutely right.
For critically ill or disabled children, access to good-quality childcare is particularly significant, because their families are far more vulnerable to living in poverty than most. Childhood illness and disability are frequently attributable to poverty, because those families incur additional ongoing expenses relating to their child’s illnesses, stays in hospital and frequent hospital and medical appointments. They also often encounter significant barriers to entering and, possibly more importantly, sustaining employment, exactly as my hon. Friend said.
The reality for many of those parents is that they live in poverty; that it will cost them more to raise their child; that they will not be able to get paid work for more than 16 hours a week; that they will not be able to work at all; and that local authorities will simply not have the kind of childcare necessary, with the training needed to meet their child’s medical or other needs. Parents in such circumstances pay more for childcare; as we have heard, in some areas they can pay up to £20 an hour, compared with the national average of between £3.50 and £4.50 an hour.
Mr Gyimah
That is a good question, and I am happy to provide clarification. The national living wage applies to people over the age of 25, so, in their case, the eligibility criterion would be set at that rate, which is £115.20 a week. Those who are under 25 will be on the national minimum wage, in which case the earnings criterion will be £107 a week. Even if someone is doing voluntary work, if they can combine their voluntary work with earning £107 or £115.20 a week, they will get the additional 15 hours of childcare.
Alex Cunningham
I hope that the Minister enjoyed his long career as an investment banker and subsequently running his own business that specialised in recruitment. He will know that experience is absolutely critical to people getting a job. Surely, if people are to achieve the work experience they need to get on to an interview list, we should value all their work. Some of these jobs, like interns here at the House of Commons, are unpaid full-time roles. Surely we should value that, let them have childcare and then move on into a career.
Alex Cunningham
I will place on the record that I have never taken an intern because I cannot pay one. If I were able to pay one, I would, and I think the same should apply to every MP within the House.
Pat Glass
I understand that and welcome it, but equally, we cannot get away from the facts. Whether it is at the beginning or the end of the course, it is clearly putting off students. If there has been a 56% fall in new applicants since the introduction of the GCSE requirement to replace functional skills and there was no argument, as I understand, that students were coming out who were not literate or numerate, the Government must recognise that the requirement may well be part of the problem rather than of the solution.
The situation has not been helped by the Government’s lack of a workforce strategy, although I think that we may be inching towards one; I will wait to see what the Minister says. It was not helpful that the previous Minister tried to change ratios, and then changed her mind and forged ahead with the graduate early-years qualification, which did not have qualified teacher status. Those chop-and-change policies brought her into conflict with the sector and others, including the Education Committee. We have been proved right on that. I understand that to date, the course for early-years graduates, which offers 2,000 places, has recruited about 800, and that the numbers recruited have fallen year on year since it was implemented. I know that such things are not within the Minister’s gift, but in his discussions with the Secretary of State, he needs to point out that they are not helping in a sector that is already struggling to get qualified staff.
The amendment would require the Government to set out what qualifications staff are expected to have or require when providing childcare for disabled children for the purposes of the Bill. I remind the Committee of what I have already said: more than one third of parents, 38%, who were unable to access their entitlement of 15 hours of free childcare said that it was because they did not think that the childcare provider could provide for their children safely, and 30% did not think that the provider had adequately trained staff. One quarter said that the nursery or carer had refused a place exclusively on the grounds of their child’s disability.
I have talked to the Committee about my experience that it is not simply a question of training or even money. In many cases, it is about confidence. Once providers have had some training and support, they feel more confident opening up to more significant difficulties. I welcome the Minister’s offer to work with me to explore the issue, and I ask that the qualifications for providers form part of that offer.
Alex Cunningham
I join others in taking pleasure in serving under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. My remarks will cover new clause 1, which stands in my name and seeks to address workforce qualifications across the childcare sector. Ultimately, for me, it is about the reassurance that parents need that their children are being cared for by professional people, not just to aid their children’s development but to put them in the safest possible hands. That is no reflection on the people who work in the industry, or the service as we call it today. They do a tremendous job generally, but I believe that they, like everybody else, should have continuing professional development.
We all know that there is a clear link between the level of practitioner qualification, the quality of early education and childcare and the outcomes for young children. Just as individual practitioner qualification is important, so are the leadership skills of the people running the establishment. Just as in schools we know that a top-class headteacher and management team can often make the difference between a school being considered excellent or found to be inadequate, there is substantial evidence that early education and childcare have a positive effect on children’s development, particularly for boys and children from low-income families, who are more likely to fall behind early. We need some of the best people caring for our youngest children.
At the same time, there is strong evidence that early language skills provide a solid foundation for school readiness, with strong links to learning to read, attainment in English and maths, earnings potential in adulthood and wider outcomes, including better mental health. Furthermore, high-quality early education, specifically nursery led by graduate early years teachers, has the most significant impact on the early language skills of young children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are more likely to fall behind. Figures show that, for instance, one in five children, including more than a third of the poorest, are not school ready because they fail to meet the expected level of early language development by the age of five. That equates to almost 130,000 children finishing their reception year in 2015 without achieving the expected level of language skills.
Alex Cunningham
Sorry, I think that was a minimum qualification. I want to see continual professional development. As I have stressed time and again, the higher the qualification, the better the outcome for children.
Children growing up in poverty are, on average, 15 months behind in vocabulary development at the age of five compared with their peers, and those eligible for free school meals are 75% less likely to reach the expected standard of language and communication than their peers at the age of five.
Mr Gyimah
I think my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire was pointing to a contradiction in the Opposition’s position. Their Front-Bench spokesman said that insisting on GCSE maths and English rather than focusing on functional skills might be making things more difficult. The hon. Member for Stockton North seems to be arguing for even more stringent qualification criteria. The Government believe that, given that qualifications are the biggest determinant of the quality of the interaction with the child, it is right that we set them where they are.
Alex Cunningham
I do not think there is any difference between me and my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham. We both believe that we should be driving up quality and we both believe that we should see qualifications driven up.
Pat Glass
There is no difference. The difference between us and Government Members is that we understand the different levels of the staff working in childcare. It is absolutely right that teachers will have a GCSE at grade C in maths and English. They need it to matriculate. They cannot get on the course without it. I was talking about level 3 staff who would be working under the direction of a graduate leader in the nursery or a teacher. That is completely different.
Alex Cunningham
Exactly. I hope that that clarification helps the Minister and others. The issue is leadership and different qualifications within the workforce in any one setting.
Despite knowledge of the failure of people in poverty and the 75% of children who are less likely to have the expected standard in language and communication at the age of five, we have seen childcare in England failing to meet the quality standards necessary to improve the outcomes for those children. Only if early education and childcare is of the highest quality and delivered by well qualified staff will there be a positive impact on children’s learning and development, which will help to narrow the gap in attainment for the most disadvantaged. My new clause would provide the Government with the power and the responsibility to ensure that children are cared for and stimulated by a highly qualified workforce.
Ofsted grades are not just a stand-alone proxy for the standard, because the inspection framework does not capture all the elements of quality that are predictive of outcomes for children. Evidence shows that, to ensure that the free offer meets its primary intended purpose of improving outcomes for children, the Government should focus on delivering high-quality, graduate-led care from the age of two to school age through a qualified and well supported early years workforce.
We had a debate earlier today about the needs of disabled children and the specific training that people need. I hope that the Minister will address that when he talks about the workforce and how we can ensure that the people in our nurseries have the necessary qualifications and experience to deal with a whole range of disabilities in the children who come their way.
Back in 2012, the coalition Government commissioned Professor Cathy Nutbrown to undertake an independent review of early years workforce qualifications. Her findings recommended that, if the Government set out a 10-year plan to move to a fully qualified early years workforce and increased the proportion of settings led by a graduate, it would have the greatest measurable impact on children’s outcomes. However, the coalition did not take a lead on that, nor does the Bill.
The quality of childcare is gradually improving, but there are still insufficient high-quality, free places for three and four-year olds, and disadvantaged two-year-olds.
James Berry
The hon. Gentleman should read my speech on childcare. He would see that we agree on a lot, and in fact some of the lines are very similar. Does he agree that we could achieve what he intends in his new clause with encouragement from the Government rather than the straitjacket of legislation?
Alex Cunningham
I am pleased that we can agree on much that was in my speech. I cannot understand what the problem is with requiring people to have qualifications. If you want to be an engineer, you are required to get an engineering degree. I think that if you are required to lead the best-quality care, perhaps you need some form of graduate qualification in childcare, or something associated with it. Of course, we face the possibility that we will have children attending poor-quality settings where they will be unable to access provision that meets their individual needs. This is why new clause 1 would require the Government to publish proposals for the development of the early years workforce to ensure that all three and four-year-olds receive access to high-quality, flexible and accessible early education and childcare provision, delivered by those well qualified, confident and experienced practitioners, and led by that early years graduate.
Mr Gyimah
I want to draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to what is actually happening on the ground, as far as the quality of the workforce is concerned. The number of graduates in the workforce continues to rise. Between 2008 and 2013, the proportion of full day care staff with a degree or higher increased from 5% to 13%. The National Day Nurseries Association June 2015 survey showed that 88% of centres employ a graduate early years teacher. Since 2007, 16,159 individuals have achieved early years professional status.
Alex Cunningham
That, Mr Hanson, is tremendously good news for the childcare sector, there is no doubt about it, but it is not good enough. We are looking at a situation in which there will be a demand for increased provision, yet we have insufficient people coming through the system to fulfil those roles in the future. To my mind, it is clear that the expansion of free childcare requires that we first invest in the very people and infrastructure standing behind it. The Minister just talked at length about the fact that people are getting better in the situation, but we still have this tremendous gap, particularly if we are to provide everything that he wants us to provide.
This amendment would set the Secretary of State the achievable target of laying a report before both Houses within six months of the Act coming into effect, setting out how the Department intends to support such development of the early years workforce. I cannot understand how there can be a problem with that. All we are asking is: what are the Government’s plans? How are we going to see development happen in the future? The report should specifically include targets for increasing the number of practitioners holding level 3 qualifications and the proportion of children receiving early education and childcare led directly by an early years graduate.
The requirement for teaching qualifications has made the headlines over the past few years. Indeed, we all know that Labour committed, before the general election, to ensure that all teachers in all maintained schools should become qualified and continue to expand and strengthen their qualifications through high-quality professional development. As a former member of the Education Committee, I have considered the need for qualified and competent teachers in detail. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham shares my interest in this subject.
With a background focused on children and young people at local authority level, I have witnessed at first hand the importance of education and education policies —as a route into work, a means to attaining personal potential, a mode of better understanding the world we live in, or simply the quenching of a thirst for knowledge. Education is a powerful tool for young people of all ages and provides the foundations on which the future of our country sits, but with this power comes a concomitant responsibility, and that responsibility rests ultimately with those who motivate, inform and inspire our young people. That is why we must take steps to ensure that our education system is designed to deliver the skills and knowledge that the young people of today will need to succeed tomorrow. The crucial requirement of this is making sure that our teachers—their teachers—are fully equipped to do the job. That is the crux of the matter.
The thinking behind new clause 1 is remarkably simple. At its core, it is inspired by the aspiration for our children and young people to have the best possible start in life, and it is informed by the evidence confirming that good quality early education can have a range of benefits for children’s early development. Research indicates that the benefits of such early education extend beyond the early years and right through primary school, adding further weight to the case for mandating qualifications for early years teachers. For example, the “Effective Provision of Pre-School Education” study has shown that children who attend good-quality childcare settings are, on average, seven months ahead in literacy skills, compared with their peers who did not attend pre-school, when starting school. The development that takes place during those early years is crucial and forms the foundations on which all later learning is built. It is, therefore, essential that we equip early years education staff with the skills that they need to support children’s early development and to ensure that no child falls behind before they even reach primary school.
The ramifications for children who start to fall behind in key areas such as early language development are, too often, lifelong, and they affect not only those children’s educational attainment but their future life chances. We face the sorry reality of knowing that children from disadvantaged backgrounds are much more likely than others to fall behind. One in four children in England arrives at primary school without good early language development, and that figure rises to one in three for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, who, as I have mentioned, start school an average of 15 months behind their peers in language and vocabulary.
I am clear that the only route to resolving that unacceptable situation, and to righting the inequality of opportunity that many children and young people grow up facing, is to level the playing field from the outset. Research shows that a well-qualified, confident and experienced workforce are central to the delivery of childcare that improves outcomes for young children. Indeed, the Department for Education went so far as to recognise in its policy statement on the Bill:
“The main driver of quality in a setting is its workforce.”
If those arguments are not already compelling enough, Ofsted has identified that settings in which at least 75% of practitioners are qualified to level 3 achieve better inspection results. A further analysis of private, voluntary and independent sector settings against Ofsted ratings also found a direct link between graduate-led settings and better Ofsted ratings, which demonstrates that graduate-led settings reduced the quality gap in provision in the least and most deprived areas.
Alex Cunningham
That is a tremendous statistic, but, as the Minister says, there is always room for improvement. It is important that we maintain high quality and that we have continuing professional development for everybody so that they can keep their skills up to date and maintain the outstanding outcomes that he has alluded to.
The analysis shows a gap of 10 percentage points in the quality of childcare provision between non-graduate-led settings in the least and most deprived areas. However, when examining settings led by graduates, the research found almost no difference between the quality of provision in the least and most deprived areas. That is a crucial finding, not least because evidence shows that children who grow up in the most disadvantaged areas are least likely to attend a private, voluntary or independent sector setting with a graduate compared with their peers in better-off areas. To top it off, evaluation of the graduate leader fund adds further evidence to the extensive stock showing that settings that employ a graduate leader improve the quality of provision compared with settings that do not, with the findings confirming that employing an early years graduate is a key way of raising the quality of provision in a childcare setting. Further analysis of the graduate leader fund highlights that settings employing a graduate made significant improvements for pre-school children, not just in overall quality of provision but in other key areas such as child-staff interaction, support for children’s communication, language and literacy development, and supporting reasoning, thinking and scientific skills. The Minister’s last intervention demonstrated that that is very much the case.
It appears to be irrefutable that high-quality childcare has a range of benefits for all children, and for disadvantaged children in particular. What is more, the research also shows that there is added value beyond the school gates in supporting those children’s development, reducing the risk of behavioural issues and even supporting parents in the home. We must recognise the challenges that are likely to be faced in delivering such a commitment. Government figures suggest that 600,000 families will be eligible for the 30-hour offer. Providing sufficient places will clearly pose new challenges for the early years system, and many providers will have to be supported to extend their offer if all eligible parents are to be able to access the 30-hour offer.
Alex Cunningham
I am grateful for the Minister’s clarification. On top of this, we must factor in the need for highly qualified and experienced graduates if we are to deliver the high-quality childcare that we need so much. I bear in mind everything that the Minister said, but 20-odd per cent of providers still do not have any graduate leadership. We need to build on that. On the effectiveness of the expansion—it is an expansion—we are going to need more people in the system. The expansion of free childcare will be dependent on ensuring that there are sufficient numbers of highly qualified and experienced staff to work directly with all three and four-year-olds.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that there will be an expansion. We welcome that; it is the purpose of the policy. It is also worth stating that although we are doubling the entitlement, we are not necessarily doubling the demand. A number of children in the system are already doing 15-plus hours instead of 30 hours. Therefore, the need that he has identified might not be as great as he thinks it is.
Alex Cunningham
To the best of my knowledge, we have not actually quantified what the total need is. That is one of the reasons we had the debate on clause 1, which has now been ditched by the Committee. We want to review and understand exactly what provision will be needed. I do not think that is particularly clear.
Currently, a significant proportion of practitioners do not hold a level 3 qualification—the minimum recommended by the Nutbrown review. Roughly a third of childminders, 50% of nursery staff and only 13% of staff in private, voluntary and independent settings currently have a graduate level qualification, compared with as many as 40% in maintained settings. I accept that that will take some time to address. I hope new clause 1 reflects that by allowing some flexibility in setting the targets for the proportion of staff in the early years workforce to have that relevant level 3 qualification and in setting the timescale in which the Government will seek to meet those targets. However, at the same time as including measures to enhance standards, we must do more to boost the status of early years teaching to attract the very best, brightest and most able into the profession.
I understand that some 15,962 individuals have achieved early years professional status and early years teacher status. Since the start of early years initial teacher training in September 2013, 3,206 trainees have been trained, of whom 2,358 have graduated and been awarded early years teacher status. Should we not celebrate that? Of course we should, but in 2014-15 only 860 applicants started funded places. That is quite a reduction—1,467 down on the intake of 2,327 applicants in 2013-14, and 1,140 applicants short of the 2,000 target set for 2014-15. I would like to know what the Minister will do about boosting those numbers and meeting his Department’s targets.
Mrs Drummond
Yesterday, I learned that there are 23 different ways of getting into the teaching profession. Would the hon. Gentleman agree with me that there could be lots of different routes to get into childcare? Some people might want to start at low levels and graduate while they are still working in childcare provision.
Alex Cunningham
I think that people should have the opportunities to start jobs—all sorts of roles—in different ways. I believe very much in that but the Government are making it even more difficult for applicants to come into this role. The reason that we are seeing the fall is largely connected to the debate about pay and the status of early years teachers compared with applicants in programmes granting qualified teacher status.
Childcare workers in England are some of the lowest paid workers in Europe. The average salary of a supervisor in 2011 was just over £16,000 compared with an average of £22,000 in Finland, £23,000 in France and £28,000 in Germany. In private, voluntary and independent settings, non-managerial or supervisory staff are paid, on average, £6.80 an hour in full-day care settings and £8.60 in sessional settings.
Alex Cunningham
I would welcome the new national living wage if it were the actual living wage. It is important to drive up wages across all sectors and I especially welcome it in this particular setting. The evidence suggests that if a setting is graduate led there is an impact on pay. In 2013, in graduate-led settings the average hourly pay of staff in full-day care settings was £8.70, compared with £8.20 in non-graduate-led settings. In sessional settings led by graduates, the average hourly pay was £9.80, compared with £8.20 in non-graduate-led settings. It can be little wonder that low pay is frequently cited as a key challenge to recruiting and retaining graduate-level staff. That makes me fear that more needs to be done to attract new entrants and to retain experienced practitioners.
I hope that the proposals in new clause 1 would allow the Government sufficient leeway to design measures to ensure enough well-qualified and experienced staff to deliver free early education and childcare and to make certain that that is of high quality. I see no reason why the Government should not have sufficient scope to put in place measures that would also offer to support practitioners to work towards a level 3 qualification to increase the number of settings that are graduate led. As I have mentioned, the Department has already recognised in its policy statement on the Bill that the workforce is the main driver of quality. I hope that the Minister will support new clause 1 as the means to optimise such quality and to maximise the opportunities for our children and young people—after all, that is what we are here to talk about.
Mr Gyimah
The debate on the amendment and new clause 1 is important because it concerns the quality in early years education.
As the father of a 20-month-old who is in a full-day care setting, in common with all parents I want my child to be in a safe and secure environment, looked after by people who are well qualified and know what they are doing. I am therefore grateful to the hon. Members for Stockton North, for North West Durham and for Birmingham, Yardley for raising the important issue of the qualifications of the workforce and the impact on the care and early education of the young children involved, including those with special educational needs and disabilities.
The hon. Member for North West Durham has specialist knowledge about provision for disabled children. She most expertly deployed that knowledge and her commitment to ensure that all children should have access to quality care in her role as the co-chair of the parliamentary inquiry into childcare for disabled children.
I support the purpose of the amendments. I agree that the quality of the workforce is a vital ingredient in providing good-quality early education and care to meet the needs of all children, including those with SEN. The experiences of children in childcare settings are shaped by their interactions with staff, so it is critical that staff are suitably qualified and skilled.
I hope that it will be helpful if I set out the existing requirements for staff qualifications under secondary legislation. In recognition of the fact that the qualification levels of staff affect the experiences of children in early education and childcare settings, the early years foundation stage framework sets out minimum qualification levels. Those qualification requirements make up part of the staff-to-child ratios. I have already confirmed on Second Reading and in speeches outside the House that we are not changing ratios or qualification requirements to deliver the 30-hour entitlement.
The qualification level of the early years workforce has risen in recent years. Continuing this increase has been a key aim of the Government’s workforce strategy through the introduction of early years educator qualifications at level 3, and early years initial teacher training. Research tells us that in group day-care settings, 87% of the workforce have a relevant qualification at level 3—that should be welcomed. Indeed, many of the workforce are qualified at graduate level. Since 2007, more than 16,000 individuals have achieved the specialised qualifications of early years professional status and early years teacher status.
Moreover, the inspection framework carried out by Ofsted is clearly focused on children’s outcomes and the quality of teaching and learning in the early years. Providers are showing the arrangements they have in place for staff supervision and professional development that then drive high-quality interactions with children. Ofsted’s new common inspection framework is also bringing more consistency to its inspection approach across early years providers and schools. The latest outcome statistics, at August 2015, show that 85% of providers on the early years register were rated good or outstanding for overall effectiveness.
Alex Cunningham
I hope that this is not out of order, but I have to be elsewhere on Front-Bench duties, so I want to say that I appreciated the explanations given by the Minister in his many interventions during my speech and I do not intend to press new clause 1 to a vote.
The Chair
For information, whether the hon. Gentleman is here or not, new clause 1 would not be voted until the end of the Bill.
Mr Gyimah
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for tabling new clause 1, and I understand that he has other duties. I will carry on setting out our argument on the workforce strategy, which he can follow in Hansard, in his absence.
Despite the good indications of progress so far, we cannot be complacent. For example, members of the sector have told me that some childcare businesses are having difficulty attracting and retaining staff at level 3. I have asked the sector to provide evidence of that, and I am committed to working with them to understand the challenges and to find ways to tackle them while ensuring that a quality workforce remains.
Many comments have been made about why the Department has insisted on GCSE English and maths on exit and about whether that is having an impact on people getting their level 3 qualifications. I see maths and English, the two most important vocational subjects, as a requirement for any job. Functional skills, which the hon. Member for North West Durham specifically asked about, at level 2 do not have the same breadth of content as GCSEs and are sometimes described by awarding bodies as roughly equivalent to half a GCSE, which is why we have taken our position. As I said to the sector, if evidence can be provided that that is having an impact on recruitment, I am willing to consider it. The collaborative approach has already proved successful. Over the summer, I responded to calls from the sector to amend the entry requirements for level 3 courses to enable more trainees to undertake childcare training. I am told by childcare employers that that is helping more staff access training. As Sue Robb, head of early years at 4Children, said:
“We welcome the government’s decision that apprentices can work for their childcare qualifications at the same time as studying for their GCSEs in maths and English. This will encourage more apprentices into childcare and early years.”
I have spoken previously about this, but I want to be clear that I am committed to publishing a workforce strategy that will enable staff to reach their potential and forge a successful career in early years. As my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South indicated in an intervention, career progression must be the central strand of any workforce strategy, which needs to consider the role of qualifications from entry level to graduate level and on-the-job training in order to attract and retain a good quality workforce. It is not only about getting people in at level 2 or level 3, but about getting the right ladders in place so that they can progress throughout their career.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alex Cunningham Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Nick Boles
Through our growth deal with the Heart of the South West local enterprise partnership, we have invested £6.5 million in the Hinkley Point training agency. Yeovil college and its partners can bid for that funding to build capacity and deliver skills training for Hinkley Point. The LEP is leading work with partners, including Yeovil college, to develop an action plan to deliver the construction skills that the area will need.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
T9. The Minister appears to be a little shy about telling us exactly when the compensation scheme for energy-intensive industries such as steel is likely to be introduced, or whether it will be ahead of the original planned date. While she is thinking about that, will she also give thought to other industries, such as chemicals, ceramics, paper and cement, with a view to providing sufficient compensation for them? They face greater competition, uniquely, because of the high cost of additional UK Government energy and climate change electricity taxes.
Anna Soubry
At yesterday’s excellent meeting held by the Secretary of State in Brussels, the presidency agreed that this matter should be prioritised. We are now waiting for the European Union to sign off on it, and we are told that it will be in a matter of weeks. We are doing everything we can to advance that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alex Cunningham Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Nicky Morgan
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that when somebody in a family, particularly a younger person, is struck with mental ill health, it affects the whole family. That is why funding through the voluntary and community sector programme and organisations such as Mind and Place2Be, as well as the MindEd website, which provides resources for parents, are important. I strongly encourage any parents who are worried about the mental health of their children to have an early conversation with people in their schools, including headteachers and teachers, so that they can then make the referrals.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
5. What assessment she has made of the effect of recent changes in 16-19 funding on the (a) breadth and (b) viability of post-16 education.
The Minister for Skills (Nick Boles)
Since 2013-14, all 16-to-19 institutions have received a national funding rate, which we have held steady in 2015-16. We understand the financial challenges facing the sector and have therefore launched a national programme of area reviews to ensure that we have strong and sustainable institutions delivering high-quality routes to employment.
Alex Cunningham
The Secretary of State said earlier that she cannot guarantee funding or protection for any one age group, but the Minister knows that the further education sector has suffered a disproportionate cut in funding over many years and the area review does not even include sixth forms in schools. When are the Government actually going to do something to protect 16 to 19-year-olds?
Trade Union Bill
Alex Cunningham Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab
: I have been a trade unionist since I was 18 and am currently a member of Unison. I have also spent six weeks on strike. My then young family suffered the consequences and we got into debt as a result. It took a while for us to recover, but recover we did, and we benefited in the longer term after the dispute was settled. Nobody wants to strike. I had two young boys and I went on strike not for the fun of it, nor in some bizarre attempt to damage my employer or his customers, but because my employer was being unjust and it took a walk-out for him to come to his senses and offer a fair wage settlement.
The law allowed us to strike, but only after we had cleared the hurdles or met the criteria laid down by the then new Thatcher Tory union legislation. We did not like Thatcher’s restrictions but we worked within them. The Tories of the day thought they were balanced and provided protection for the employers and the wider public; I thought they were extreme. But now the current Tory Government want to impose more restrictions, which could see local unpaid trade unionists dragged into court for all manner of reasons including placing messages on Facebook or Twitter without giving the requisite notice demanded by the Government.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that every time the Tories come to Parliament to introduce these sorts of powers, which are ever-more draconian, they always say they are balanced and reasonable?
Alex Cunningham
They certainly do, and they have said the same of this legislation today.
The Tories have made a big thing about opposing identity cards, but now demand that trade unionists have them as well as armbands to help single them out, yet it is unclear how compliance with these and other requirements are connected to the prevention of intimidation of non-striking workers. Laws already exist which prevent that and unions must comply with a detailed statutory code of practice.
Peaceful protest is an important part of an open and democratic society, and there should be no place for a law that makes criminals of people making their voices heard in this way. But the Minister’s eagerness to undermine the trades unions, and put limits on their members’ rights to freedom of expression, makes me wonder exactly what it is that he is scared of. Perhaps this is just a mechanism to sting the unions in the pocket and to silence the inevitable protests that will come as the Government continue to erode the rights of workers and screw down pay, particularly in the public sector.
Let us not forget that public sector workers in particular are already under the cosh. The recently announced extension of pay restraint will hurt these workers for a further four years, with most having already been hit pretty hard with poorer deals on pensions, and many others now facing the prospect of losing their job as deeper cuts to the public sector continue to bite.
The ability of workers to withdraw labour is fundamental to our democracy and I am not aware of any democracy elsewhere in the world that imposes such severe restrictions on legitimate industrial action. It is worth remembering that the UK already has one of the most regulated systems of industrial action in the world.
The Bill dictates that industrial action, including strike action, will only be lawful if a minimum 50% turnout among those trade union members entitled to vote is achieved, while additionally requiring 40% of those members balloted to vote in favour of industrial action across what the Government term “important public services”. This term is of great significance. The Tory manifesto, as well as the subsequent Queen’s Speech briefings, stated that the 40% requirement would apply only to four “essential public services”: health, fire, transport and education services. Yet the Government have now extended this list to include other sectors, such as border security, the decommissioning of nuclear installations and the management of radioactive waste.
I would also welcome any clarity the Minister can provide around how he intends to escape the inevitable confusion arising when attempting to ballot a workplace where some occupations are covered by the “important public services” provisions and others are not. Will the Minister give further details on the requirement for “reasonably detailed” information to be provided on ballot papers? If a failure to provide such information is to be a basis for legal action by employers against workers taking industrial action, it is crucial that the House should be informed in advance of how “reasonably detailed” is to be defined.
The Government also peddle the claim that the 40% requirement will legitimise any ballot outcome. Have they considered what that would have meant if applied to them in the ballots they faced just a few months ago? I have, and it is a fact that 16 of the 27 Ministers who attend Cabinet would never have been returned to Parliament if they had needed 40% of their total electorate to vote for them.
The Bill will create substantial legal and administrative costs for unions, which will be required to report annually to the certification officer on levels of industrial action and on how political funds have been used. This is on top of additional cost burdens elsewhere, should the changes to check-off procedures and facility time pass unamended. There is no parity under these rules with the functions of other civil society or campaign groups. If the political use of union funds has to be reported regularly and in detail, perhaps we should have a parallel system for those companies whose donations fund the Tory party. They, too, should be compelled to outline in similar detail to shareholders, at regular intervals, how they have spent their money funding their friends on the Government Benches.
In relation to modernisation, the last Tory-Lib Dem Government continued the good progress made by Labour to promote e-government and all manner of new ways of doing business more efficiently. Surely our unions should be able to do likewise, with online ballots to maximise participation and ensure a clear mandate for industrial action. Sadly, the Government do not appear to favour that. Will the Minister tell us why not?
The Government claim to be the party of working people, but threatening the right to take industrial action tilts the balance of power in the workplace too far in favour of employers. It will mean that workers are unable to stand up for decent services and safety at work, or to defend their jobs or pay. It is clear that the Government are not interested in encouraging workplace democracy. Instead, they are attempting to prevent midwives, firefighters, teachers and cleaners from protesting against cuts in jobs, pay and conditions. I find this unacceptable, and I very much hope that the Government will reconsider these calamitous proposals.
Skills and Growth
Alex Cunningham Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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John Howell
That is a difficult question to answer. I attribute it partly to that, but the role of schools needs to be worked on further, because they can do more.
During the election campaign, I became aware of the way schools in the constituency still regard apprenticeships in an academic light as providing an academic training rather than a genuine life option for people.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I am interested in the increase in the number of apprenticeships in the hon. Gentleman’s area. Despite the statutory duty on schools to provide a better careers service, the opposite has happened. We are finding that they are not giving people the option of doing very different things or telling them about the availability of apprenticeships. Does he agree that we need to invest more in the careers services in our schools so that people get proper advice and are offered the very different options that are now available?
John Howell
I think I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but I would like more effort to be put into encouraging schools to focus on apprenticeships being self-standing as a life’s ambition that can be fulfilled. So many schools approach apprenticeships as though such people were going to university and deal with them in the same way—the careers advice process still encapsulates the whole thing—which is wrong. We need to ensure not just that providers and companies provide quality, but that the schools regard them as providing quality. To that extent, I fully agree with the hon. Gentleman. There is therefore an onus on the Government to redirect some of their efforts towards schools to encourage them to do this, and to move the debate on so that in a few years’ time people will have genuinely equal opportunities, whether they want to go to university, as I did, or have an apprenticeship, as so many young people in my constituency want. I welcome the Government’s emphasis on apprenticeships, and the important part that apprenticeships play in delivering the long-term economic plan.
Steve Rotheram
No. The hon. Gentleman conflates two things, which is exactly what I am trying to highlight. Taking somebody in a job who is getting some training and re-badging them as an apprentice is wrong. That is not an apprenticeship. Most think of an apprenticeship as having a duration of two and a half or perhaps three years and involving people learning the skills of a particular occupation and going on to get a full-time job in that skills area. It is not the 16-week shelf-stacking example that one of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues gave.
In my constituency, we now have the worst of all worlds, as the plans for the UTC have been scrapped, and there has been a fall of 32% in apprenticeship starts in Liverpool, Walton for 16 to 18-year-olds since the Tories came to power.
Alex Cunningham
I am sure my hon. Friend’s majority is as narrow as the Mersey.
Our FE colleges are playing an increasing role in supporting apprenticeships. We heard some great examples of that on Monday, when the Association of Colleges held a reception. Yet colleges’ ability is restricted by funding cuts and the fact that they are paid up to a year in arrears for new courses that they develop. That is putting them at the mercy of the banks as colleges run out of money. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to sort out this funding mess, and release our colleges to drive the apprenticeship programmes we know they are capable of providing?
Steve Rotheram
My hon. Friend highlights just one of the anomalies in the funding system for FE colleges. I hope that I will be able to tease out one or two other anomalies in the time remaining.
I believe that we have to be honest about the scale of the problem facing our nation, so I want to talk specifically about apprenticeships in technical sectors. As colleagues will know, our country needs 82,000 additional engineers, scientists and technologists by 2017. To compete globally, almost half of those in technical roles will require upskilling to keep pace with technological advancements. Some 10,000 new technicians are required for the rail industry, of which 30% are required in London and the south-east alone. In aviation, 7,000 new engineers are needed between now and 2020, of which 30% need to have an NVQ level 4 and above. A growing number of engineering roles feature on the national shortage occupation list, and there is the stark statistic that two in five businesses requiring employees with STEM qualifications and skills are reporting difficulties with recruitment.
The time has come for the Government to roll out advanced technology colleges across the UK to match their, as yet undelivered, commitment for a UTC in every city. We have long lived in a country where the post-16 education system is geared towards results and targets, rather than businesses and young people’s needs and aspirations. In essence, this country faces a skills shortage in many leading industries, such as engineering and construction, because we have not focused our post-16 education system on equipping people with the skills that businesses need in order to thrive. Successive Governments have sometimes got this wrong, and I believe that one way to address the escalating problem is to increase the number of advanced technology colleges.
Last week, I had the privilege to visit Prospects College of Advanced Technology in Basildon. PROCAT is an advanced technology college that specialises in the engineering, rail, aviation, construction and building service sectors. It comprises three skills campuses, with more than 2,000 students and 850 apprentices. The previous Labour Government invested significantly in this facility, with a bursary of about £20 million. I visited to learn about how it recruits, trains and retains apprentices in specific sectors, because I am interested in how we can develop the ATC model across the country. In fact, in the 1950s a host of what are now known as universities, such as Brunel, Aston, Bradford, Cardiff and many more, were all ATCs before they became polytechnics and then universities. The beauty of an ATC is that it has a direct link to the business—it is a model, I think, of absolute success.
ATCs align themselves with businesses that invest in their apprentices, helping to provide a clear and professional training environment and a guaranteed job and career at the end of the training, which is exactly what I was trying to outline to the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman). The curriculum at an ATC is also aligned to the needs of that business, which helps to ensure that all apprentices leave with the necessary skills to be employable.
Lord Heseltine made it clear in his 2013 report on growth that university technical colleges, with links to businesses, are the way forward. I would not normally quote Lord Heseltine; it is not easy for me to quote him, but, after all, he was responsible for bringing Thatcher down, so every cloud has a silver lining and all that! Indeed, I think we must go full circle and return to ATC status in order to restore parity of esteem and to address the urgent need to deal with our growing skills shortages.
In my remaining time, I would like to touch on another issue. Another anomaly in the education system is the entry level for UTC students, which currently stands at 14. At 14, many students will have decided what path they wish to take and whether they want to specialise in any particular occupational area. A UTC is therefore perfect for them, as it allows them to begin their vocational training in a new college at an early stage and focus on that specialty 40% of the time, with the other 60% focused on STEM subjects.
I implore the Minister to study the faculty of foundation apprenticeships, which is being developed by PROCAT and offers pre-apprenticeship training to any 16-year-old seeking to enter technical apprenticeships. There is a gap in the system, and that would be a good way for the Government to address it. They should look seriously at promoting ATCs, step up their game and improve the quality of apprenticeship training to provide real choice for young people deciding between an academic or vocational route to the workplace. We could then finally achieve that parity of esteem we so often hear about in this place.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
I would like first to congratulate those Members who have made their maiden speeches. I was particularly taken by what the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson) said about a well-educated electorate. I represent Cambridge, so I recognise his description. The point he was making is that the better educated the electorate, the more sensible their electoral choice. If the Government are as successful in their education policies as they claim to be, we will have a much better educated country, so I think the future of progressive politics looks bright. We look forward to their success on that basis. I also agree with the comments of the hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) on university technical colleges. We have a university technical college in Cambridge, and it is doing excellent work and making a major contribution.
I want to reflect on not only some of the problems of the skills crisis, but some of the less well-rehearsed consequences. The problems that my constituency faces—we have an excellent further education college, Cambridge Regional College—are similar to those described so eloquently by many other Members. Unfortunately, there have been similar levels of cuts, with cuts in its budget every year since 2010, and it is facing funding cuts of between £2.5 million and £3 million over the next couple of years.
Yesterday we spoke to a number of representatives from the University and College Union, Unison and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. They fleshed out what those cuts actually mean. While Government Members are claiming that things are going well, the people on the front line are telling us what that means in practice. We heard about the effective deskilling of many of our key people. For instance, people who had been lecturers are becoming instructors. I do not think that many of us would like to be offered the opportunity to come back the following year to do effectively the same job for £10,000 a year less, and with a very different status, but that is clearly what is happening in a number of places. Whatever one feels about the effect on those individuals, we have to ask what the effect is on the learner experience. I do not believe that it can be good.
If Government Members do not want to listen to the people who represent the staff, I suggest that they talk to employers in their area, as I do in my area. The messages that I hear about skills shortages are absolutely clear. Our local enterprise partnership recently conducted a survey and found that about 91% of employers had problems recruiting in the previous year because they could not find people with the right skills. That is a block on economic progress in our area. Last week, I met the Federation of Small Businesses, which said that the biggest issue its members face is exactly the same problem: they cannot find people with the right skills to do the jobs.
Perhaps more surprising is what I heard from local housing associations when I met them yesterday. Housing associations have a lot on their plate at the moment, as Members can probably imagine. Should the Conservative party’s policies be implemented, they will be required to replace houses. The problem they face is that finding the skilled people to build houses in areas like Cambridgeshire is near impossible. That is the basic problem with that policy. I will tell Members what the answer is for the housing associations. It is migrant labour, because people from other countries have got the skills and will come here to do the jobs.
Interestingly, it is often claimed in debates on other issues that the pull factor to this country is benefits. Actually, the pull factor is the lack of skills in this country—our inability to train our own people to do the jobs that we need to be done. This is a five-year Parliament and there is a long time ahead, so I suggest to Conservative Members, in a friendly, positive way, that if they want to have economic success, they will have to analyse the problem correctly in the first place. If they misdiagnose the problem, they are certain to fail to get the right answer.
Alex Cunningham
One problem in this country is the difference between the regions. Unemployment is almost 50% higher in the north-east of England than in the rest of the country, yet there has been a shift of money from the north to the south. I appreciate that my hon. Friend has problems in his area, but there has been a shift of funding from north to south. Does he agree that the Government need to tackle that issue?
Daniel Zeichner
It is certainly right that we need different approaches for different parts of the country. That is why I have always been a strong regionalist and why I decry the savage cuts to the regional structures that were made by the last Government. However, I have funding problems and inequalities in my part of the world. Schools in Cambridgeshire are woefully underfunded compared with schools in other parts of the country. This is a complicated set of issues, but my hon. Friend is right that, in general, there has been a shift of resources from poorer areas to wealthier areas. That cannot be right.
I want to reflect on some of the alternative solutions. Given what I have said, it is obvious that in my view the policy that is being pursued of reducing the resources that go to those who provide our training services is not the right way forward. However, this matter goes beyond our colleges. As I just mentioned, our sixth-form colleges have suffered an enormous hit to their funding over the past few years. I understand that over the past five years, their budgets have been cut by as much as a third. My constituency has some fantastic sixth-form colleges—some of the best performing in the country—but they continue to perform well only because of the heroic efforts of their staff in very difficult circumstances. Some of them face appalling recruitment problems. That is not sustainable. We will not be able to go on producing good results with ever-diminishing resources. Frankly, that will not work.
We have seen the near destruction of the careers service in many places. That means that, all too often, the provision of careers advice falls to teachers, who are not necessarily trained in making the right suggestions to young people. Understandably, they tend to fall back on their own experiences. What happens far too often is that the advice given to our young people does not necessarily put them down the vocational route that would be best for them.
Some good things are happening. Marshall Aerospace is doing a very good job in my constituency, working with schools on a programme it has just launched, of encouraging more young people to go into engineering. Frankly, however, it is a drop in the ocean compared with what we need. We need a major change of tack to tackle this problem. I have to say that I have not heard much from Government Members to give me great confidence that that is going to happen. I fear we will to have to wait for a different Government to solve these long-term problems.
Nick Boles
Let me make it clear that I would be happy to give way to a Back Bencher, but I think we can all agree that we have heard quite enough from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) this week, in his not-so-pithy contributions to our debates.
We heard barely a word from Labour Members about our plans to ensure that anyone who has been failed in school and who has failed to achieve sufficient qualifications in English and maths should carry on studying them, through a further education college or whatever other route they take. That is a plan we have invested in and that we are developing.
Alex Cunningham
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. He mentioned trying to give opportunities to those who fail to achieve the necessary standard in maths and English. When will the Government provide parity of funding to our colleges so that they can do that job?
Nick Boles
I am sure the hon. Gentleman is aware that, unlike under the Government he supported, when sixth forms in schools received much more money per pupil than sixth-formers in other institutions, we have an absolutely equal funding system. Whether someone is in a sixth form or school, or a further education college or a sixth-form college, they will receive exactly the same amount of money per pupil, as he should know well.
We do not believe that we have a monopoly on good ideas, and we are not remotely complacent about the state of education for 14 to 19-year-olds, but we will oppose the motion because a review or, God forbid, the royal commission that one Labour Member called for would distract the Government at a time when we are making real progress. We are making progress in ensuring that everybody secures that vital passport to success which is a mastery of English and maths. We are making progress in reforming qualifications so that they are rigorous, respected and backed by employers. We are making progress with apprenticeships, not just by increasing their number to 2.2 million in the last Parliament, but by introducing reforms that got rid of programme-led apprenticeships, which the last Labour Government introduced. Those involved no employer, no job and a few months of training in a college, yet Labour dared to call them apprenticeships. We have got rid of those and our reforms will continue.
We are making progress with the introduction of university technical colleges, and I was glad to hear support for the concept from Opposition Members. We want UTCs, spearheaded by one of the greatest Education Secretaries that any Conservative Government have ever had, to be within reach of every city. But we want them to flourish too, and we will be looking to make sure that every UTC can succeed, both financially and educationally.
We are agreed on one thing at the end of this debate: we have huge ambitions for our education system, and they are not yet met. We have huge aspirations for every young person going through school and going into a further education institution in our country, and those aspirations are not yet guaranteed. We will not rest until everybody in this country, in this one nation—in Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland—is able to leave school and college with qualifications that equip them for a life of work; a life that is fulfilling and rewarding and that helps to make this country one of the greatest countries on earth.
Question put.