Child Care

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Elizabeth Truss

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am sorry, but I want to talk about child care.

As well as complete economic ineptitude, Labour seems to have learnt nothing from its time in office about child care or nurseries. It still thinks the answer is spending more money, rather than reform. Baroness Hughes, children’s Minister under the previous Government, admitted that their approach was “probably wrong.” She said:

“We were so keen to stimulate demand from parents but in retrospect that was such a mammoth task. We ought to have focused on the supply side, supporting providers, then we could have done more and quicker.”

I could not agree more, yet Labour has nothing to say about supply; it talks only about spending more money. Let us remember what happened last time it did that. We ended up with some of the highest child care costs in the OECD, parents were paying out 27% of their income on child care, staff had some of the lowest salaries in Europe, contrary to what the shadow Secretary of State said, and under Labour’s preferred measure, prices increased by 50% during the Labour years.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Reports suggest that the Government will not meet their own target of supplying child care places to the 40% most deprived two-year-olds in the country, so will the Minister be open and transparent with the House? Will she meet that target—yes or no?

[Elizabeth Truss]

We have more than 200,000 full-time places available in our system, and we have said that all those eligible children will have places if their parents want to take them up.

[Andrew Gwynne]

What about the target?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I have just answered the hon. Gentleman’s question.

I was talking about why Labour made such a mess of child care. It piled red tape on schools and nurseries, making it harder for them to expand. Furthermore, even though parents like flexible, affordable, home-based care, the number of childminders halved under Labour, because of the level of regulation, the difficulty of becoming a childminder and the fact that the funding system was skewed towards nurseries and away from childminders.