Childcare Bill [HL]

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Lords Chamber

I hope that the significant progress made on this Bill since it was last debated in this place in October will be welcomed. The detail on the wider policy and funding to deliver 30 hours of free childcare for working parents of three and four year-olds shows that the Government are committed to delivering their manifesto pledge in a way that works for parents, providers and local authorities. I hope that noble Lords are able to support the Government’s amendments today.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his progress report and for introducing the government amendments this afternoon. I am also grateful to him for the many meetings he has arranged since the Bill left this House, and in particular for the briefings on the outcome of the financial review.

As we stated at the outset and continue to make clear, we support the aims of the Bill. Our concern was that what could have been a more effective, ambitious and streamlined initiative to deliver free childcare has been let down by a lack of foresight and planning, and we continue to have that concern. So we were disappointed that the Government chose to reject our amendments in the Commons, because we believe that they would have enabled a more detailed analysis of the childcare funding system to take place, with properly costed long-term solutions to be put in place.

The amendments would also have ensured a proper degree of parliamentary scrutiny for a Bill which, as we rehearsed at the time, is skeleton in nature and relies on a raft of regulations to bring it to fruition. Instead, we will be reliant on debating secondary legislation —over which, quite clearly, we do not have the same influence—to agree the fundamentals of what the future childcare offer will be. I have listened carefully to the Minister’s outline of the next steps, and I am very grateful for the offer of continuing involvement in the regulations. I hope they will be as meaningful as he has now suggested, and let me make it clear to him that we will hold him to his word on this matter.

In the mean time, sadly, we are left with a Bill which is a pale shadow of its original ambition as set out by the Prime Minister at the election. The truth is that lots of parents who believed the election promises now stand to be disappointed. In order to bridge the funding gap, which, incidentally, we told the Government all along was a problem, the Government have now squeezed the eligibility for free places, so that less than half of all three and four year-olds will be eligible. The original plan was that 630,000 children would be eligible, and now that figure has been reduced to 390,000. It is the poorest parents who will lose out the most—those on the edge of the labour market with short hours, part-time work and zero-hours contracts. As we know, it is those parents, the most disadvantaged, whose children would benefit the most from the provision of quality childcare to help them to close the attainment gap. That is a fundamental regret of the Bill.

At the same time, despite the welcome injection of extra funds, the Government still do not appear to have squared the funding crisis. Research by the House of Commons Library has revealed a shortfall of £480 million over the Parliament, which means up to £470 per child per year. I am not sure that the latest figures announced by the Minister will square that figure. Those figures, which are backed by Ceeda research from the Pre-school Learning Alliance, make the case powerfully that the impact on the capacity in the system may lead to fewer rather than more places becoming available. In addition, as in the past, there appears to be no uprating mechanism, so that funding runs the risk of falling further behind over time. Will the Minister clarify how future costs will be evaluated year on year? He mentioned the national funding formula, but I am not sure that that will address those concerns.

I also regret that the Government did not pay more heed to our concerns and those raised by numerous stakeholders across the sector on these matters. Nevertheless, we do support the Bill. It clearly represents a step forward. For many parents, it will provide a welcome lifeline back into paid work and for many children it will become a new route into quality care, which will obviously give them a much better start in life. It addresses one segment of a much bigger problem of affordable childcare for all and the need to close the attainment gap between children on free school meals and their peers. In the mean time, we will continue to press this case. We will watch the rollout of the Bill with interest and we will participate in the scrutiny of the regulations with vigour. I thank the Minister for his commitment up to this point.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for what he said today and for the discussions that he organised during the course of the Bill. The Bill is very different from the one that first saw the light of day in this House, which was only notable by its lack of detail. It has certainly gained considerable flesh on the original skeleton, and I am grateful for that. However, it is not necessarily a fully formed being just because it has grown throughout its progress. We still have some concerns about the detail that the Minister has finally given the House today.

There has been a broad welcome across the House, which we agreed with, for the Government’s additional childcare offer. I will comment on two particular aspects of the Bill in its final form, in the light of the discussions that we had in this House. First, we have always been concerned about the funding. There were wide discussions in Committee and on Report about the viability of providers if there were no adequate recompense for the hourly rate, and we welcome the additional funding that the Government have put into that, albeit that it is 30p an hour. I have great concerns that it will not up be upgraded annually by either RPI or CPI. If it is not, that will put additional stress on the financial viability of providers.

An issue that we on this side particularly raised in the course of the discussions was that of the additional capital that should be made available to enable providers to offer the further 15 hours, and there were many discussions about how that could be achieved. I welcome the Government’s capital fund that they have set aside for just that purpose, which demonstrates that some of the arguments we made have been recognised, albeit perhaps not enough, in my view.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Pinnock]

My Lords, noble Lords will recall that, on this side, we secured the support of the House for our amendment to include a flexible approach to the implementation of the additional 15 hours of free childcare. We did so because parents and providers told us that the main barrier to their working hours was access to childcare after school hours and during school holidays. Indeed, many parents—especially mothers—expressed to us the horror with which they viewed forthcoming school holidays, particularly the long six-week summer holiday, because of the difficulties they had in either affording childcare or dealing with it in some other way through family and friends. I have read with interest, and noted with satisfaction, that the Minister in the other place conceded the need for flexibility when he said:

“I completely agree with the principle of the amendments tabled in the other place”.—[Official Report, Commons, Childcare Bill Committee, 10/12/15; col. 103.]

I have listened very carefully to the Minister today and welcome his statement in support of the need for flexibility. We are, at last, all agreed: flexibility is important. Although we can all agree on the principle, it is the implementation that interests me. I also welcome and thank the Minister for his concessions towards implementing a flexible childcare offer. I am glad that, on this side, we have continually raised the issue of flexibility, which has put that bit of pressure on the Government to think about it and come up with an approach to dealing with it. It is absolutely vital to the lives of many working families that we address their difficult daily conundrums of “Am I going to get back from work in time to pick the children up?” or “What am I going to do in the school holidays?”—in fact, to have an offer which enables people to go to work with the worries of childcare not first and foremost in their minds.

I really do thank the Minister for what he said today. I will summarise it and then I will have a think about whether it is enough. First, he said that he will put in the regulations the need to support local authorities in developing a flexible approach. That seems to have it written down and, as long as the regulations are up to scratch, seems something that will work in providing flexibility. He also said that four out of eight of the early implementers—the pilot schemes, in my phraseology —will test this out. That also seems a very positive and constructive approach. He mentioned extra funding. I did not quite hear how much he said it would be. Perhaps he could repeat that in his response. If there is extra money, I am always in favour of that, especially if it is for childcare. I think he said that local authorities would be required to be transparent in their offer. Using the examples he gave of Bradford, Brighton and Hove, Swindon and so on would show other local authorities what they could follow and replicate. If that is transparent and open, that would also be positive.

I welcome the approach to childminders, who play an enormously important role in the provision of childcare in this country. To encourage them to do more than in their own domestic setting is very much to be welcomed because it will enable a more flexible offer to lots of working parents, who often use more than one provider to enable their working lives to continue. They drop their children off with childminders before work; then the childminder takes them to a professional provider and collects them; the childminder has them at the end of the working day and the school day, and they are collected from there. To envelop all the providers into one—I hope—coherent package is very much to be welcomed.

It seems that great strides have been made towards enabling a more flexible approach, both out of school hours and during the school holidays. I hope that will, first, enable more parents to develop their own skills in the workforce without those constant worries that their children are not being properly and adequately cared for; and, secondly, enable more families to become financially secure, albeit not the families that I mentioned earlier. Given that the Minister has made such a great stride towards meeting the thoughts that I had on the flexible offer in childcare, I will hear what other noble Lords say but I thank him for the movement he has made. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly on these amendments. As noble Lords will know, we agreed with and very much supported the amendment originally proposed by the noble Baroness on Report and we still think that the principles behind it are important. We also noted, both on Report and in the Commons, Ministers’ wording when they agreed with what was proposed; that is, they agreed with the concept of flexibility and the need to build more flexibility into the system, so obviously that is very welcome. I suppose that my one remaining concern is that “flexibility” may be all things to all people. It can hide a thousand sins. I would like to drill a little more into what is meant by that word. The noble Baroness’s original amendment specifically referred to flexibility being in the context of extending opening hours beyond nine to five and making provision in school holidays. It would be very helpful if the Minister could confirm that “flexibility”, in his terms, is about those sorts of issues and not some weaker concept.

--- Later in debate ---

7: Clause 9, page 6, line 19, leave out subsection (2)

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I do not know whether this is the appropriate time to do so, but before the Bill passes, I wanted to extend my thanks to the Minister and his civil servants for their courtesy throughout its passage. I know that it will continue to be extended to my noble friend Lord Watson for many months to come.

Motion agreed.