Childcare Entitlements

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

On building capacity, the department has awarded £100 million to local authorities to help expand capacity. On the quality of space, as the noble Baroness knows, early years settings are regulated by Ofsted. It has very clear standards that they have to meet, and we expect them to meet them.

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My Lords, the NAO report suggests that many of the issues and challenges that we have heard about this evening would have been mitigated if the Government had not cancelled the £35 million pilot. I wonder whether the Minister can tell us why we cancelled the pilot and what assessment has been made for phases 2 and 3 of the scheme, having not done it.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness hits on perhaps the one thing on which we do not accept the recommendation from the National Audit Office. We made a decision not to run the pilot because we did not think that it would contribute meaningfully to readiness or provide value for money. The key decision we took was that this would be a phased rollout, so that local authorities, providers and parents all had time to adapt. We are continuing to test and review delivery on an ongoing basis; we are piloting different interventions to support workforce expansion through financial incentives in 20 local authorities. What we found from the evaluation of the 2017 rollout was that providers were willing to offer more hours, and were able to offer sufficient hours, and that there were no adverse impacts on other provision. We also found that providers were really flexible. We are very fortunate to have providers that are so focused on outcomes for parents and, of course, for their children.