Women: Discrimination
Baroness King of Bow Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Verma
Again, the noble Baroness has raised a serious issue that women face in these particularly fragile conflict areas. We need to praise the AU for the leadership it is showing, including in trying to tackle FGM and child and early forced marriage. The AU has taken a step forward, and we will be doing our level best, with other donors, to ensure that it receives the support it needs. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that we need to make sure that the perpetrators are brought to book.
Baroness King of Bow (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Kinnock for a lifetime’s work promoting gender equality. On the subject of harmful cultural and social norms, is it not strange that here in Britain, we persist in paying women less than men? At the current rate, it will take us 47 years to close the gender pay gap. I know that we take a long view in this House, but does the Minister think that that is too long? If so, will she go further than the Government’s current position on pay transparency and legislate for equal pay audits? She would be surprised by what she would find. Is she aware that the government department responsible for ending the gender pay gap pays its women £2 an hour less than its men?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, closing the pay gap between men and women is a really important question, and one that this Government have been very committed to addressing. The noble Baroness will be aware of the work of the noble Lord, Lord Davies. We must ensure that companies are held to account. That is why my right honourable friend Nicky Morgan, the Minister for Equalities, is pressing hard for companies employing more than 250 people to publish what they pay to men and women.
Equality Act 2010 (Equal Pay Audits) Regulations 2014
Baroness King of Bow Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness King of Bow (Lab)
My Lords, today will see a coach and horses arrive in Parliament. That is not so unusual, but on this occasion I am sad to say I fear it will ride through the spirit of the law on equal pay. The Equality Act 2010 was a landmark piece of legislation that simplified, strengthened and extended protection from discrimination.
As we know, one of the most persistent areas of inequality, first addressed over 40 years ago, is the gender pay gap. The Equal Pay Act 1970 sought to remedy the fact that women were systematically paid less than men. However, instead of it narrowing, last year the gap actually widened slightly, by 0.1%. The figure might seem small, but not only are we riding in entirely the wrong direction, but we are witnessing significant hidden regional and sectoral variations. In London, for example, women are now paid 13% less than men, while across the UK women in full-time employment in the private sector are paid a staggering 19.9% less than their male counterparts.
Against this backdrop we need firm leadership from the Government. Given the Government’s pronouncements on equality, I was hoping they would take all the measures necessary to address what I am sure everyone here recognises is blatant discrimination in the workplace against women. After all, this gender discrimination also impacts hugely both on the children who women care for and pensioner poverty once those women retire.
Reading through the regulations we are debating today shows this clearly is not the case. In effect these regulations turn a blind eye to many breaches of equal pay. Let me set out exactly why I feel this is. Equal pay audits are an extremely important mechanism for bringing the gender pay gap to light. Essentially, where companies have broken the law and a tribunal orders an EPA, the lights get switched on and for the first time everyone can clearly see what is going on. Cloaking pay structures in darkness—which is one of the reasons this problem has dragged on for so long—does nothing to solve the problem. It just increases a company’s liability at some future employment tribunal. The best companies carry out voluntary EPAs. Most, however, do not.
The Government have set out circumstances in which an audit must not be ordered and the Minister set some of them out. According to Regulation 3(1)(d), this is where,
“the disadvantages of an audit would outweigh its benefits”.
However, this wording is so broad it gives employers a blank cheque to argue that an EPA would, on balance, in their view, be disadvantageous. There is no guidance, as far as I am aware, on how the disadvantages and benefits are to be assessed. The disadvantages put forward by an employer are likely to be cost-related and, if you look at what has happened to date in employment tribunals, employers are, unfortunately, likely to exaggerate the costs of doing an audit. Quite often we find that employers who have broken the law portray employment legislation as dastardly red tape. Where the costs of doing an audit are significant, it is likely to be because there is a high risk of equal pay breaches. This in turn is due to no transparency in pay, no clear and up-to-date job role profiles, no method for assessing where jobs are of equal value and no clear reasoning or objective systems for determining pay.
In other words, there is no proper management, no transparency and no accountability. Of course, this will make identifying differences in pay for those doing equal work—as well as the reasons behind those differences—particularly difficult to work out. This is the real world, so I would be grateful if the Minister could give us some real-world examples of the circumstances covered by Regulation 3(1)(d) when a company is saying that the disadvantages will outweigh the cost. The Minister gave us one example, I believe—for instance, where a company feels that the cost could push it over the edge and make it bankrupt.
However, I really must interrogate this cost issue a bit further. The Government are exempting micro-businesses and new businesses, because this is a burden, again presumably mainly on the grounds of cost. The TUC argued against any such exemption—of course, we would expect that—but its argument is extremely compelling. It argues that the right to equal pay applies regardless of the size or age of the business. Surely this must be right. Think about it if we were talking about black people. Can you seriously imagine the logic of saying, “It’s not fair to pay black people less than white people for work of the same value, therefore we won’t allow big business to get away with it, but small business can’t be burdened with equal pay legislation, so if they break the law we’ll just leave it at that”? It is absurd and simply does not hold water.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has even produced guidance on how to do equal pay checks for small businesses. The EHRC estimates that for a business twice the size of a micro-business—that is, one with 20 people and, say, five job roles—an EPA will take half a day to carry out. For a micro-business half that size, we are looking at about two to three hours’ work. If you are talking about a business with three or four employees, it would be even less—you could be talking about one hour’s work. How hard is it to get out five pay cheques and look at them over a year along with the job descriptions? It is frankly not good enough to say that this is a burden on anyone.
Baroness King of Bow
I thank the noble Baroness for raising the subject of statistics. For the sake of clarity, I should say that the figure that I gave of 0.1% was for last year, 2013, and not the last quarter. However, I will go away and verify that, although I got it from two different sources. In general, could the noble Baroness tell us whether she feels that we are moving in the right direction in terms of the gender pay gap?
Baroness Northover
The figure that the noble Baroness gave was actually for the last quarter, as she will probably find out when she investigates.
One thing that I find striking and encouraging is that the gender pay gap between men and women under the age of 40 who are working full time has narrowed considerably. The difference in the gender pay gap is for those above that age and those working part time. One reason why there is a major difference in part-time work is the type of work that men and women are in. We know that equal numbers of kids are going through school and that often girls come out better qualified. More are going to university, but they are grouping in different subjects. Some of those subjects lead to better-paid careers, which is something that we, like them, seek to address—I am referring to the STEM subjects.
The most important thing is the caring responsibilities that women often have, which is why you start to see this difference as you go through life. That is why in some ways it is quite encouraging to see that the gender pay gap has narrowed so much for those up to the age of 40, although we need to do much more to make sure that that carries on through.
Baroness Northover
I think that the noble Baroness would be reassured by the progress being made in this regard. I will probably need to write to her with the details but, again, I looked at this and I did not see the negative trends that she may be hinting are there. I will write to her and clarify that.
I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady King, welcomes the audit. Obviously, that follows on after cases have been lost by employers. She is quite right, as is the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, to emphasise that it is in the interests of the companies and for the health of the companies to make sure that their employees are paid fairly between the genders. If they are not, there will not be a happy and effective workforce. I think that forward-looking companies recognise that now; indeed, they should recognise that it is in their own interests to make sure that this moves forward. If they lose such cases, they need to take action to put it right.
The kind of pay audits that we are talking about help to shine the spotlight that the noble Baroness mentioned on this. She mentioned the exceptions and seemed to imply that a company could say to the tribunal, “We can’t afford to do this”. I hope that she will be reassured by the fact that the tribunal, not the company, decides whether there are reasons for exemptions. I hope that I illustrated, in listing the four cases where there might be an exemption, how tightly drawn that is. I gave an example in each case of the kind of thing that we are thinking about there. Clearly, if they persist—suppose that they said they were about to go bankrupt and the tribunal thinks that that is the case, but then another case is brought and it turns out they had misled them—they are obviously in a much weaker position.
I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady King, that new businesses only have that exemption for the first year, not for 10 years. She grouped them together, but the committee asked for further elucidation about micro-businesses, which I hope that we have provided.
Baroness King of Bow
Before the noble Baroness moves on, as I understand it, micro-businesses and new businesses will be exempt for 10 years.
Baroness Northover
No, I will clarify that. As I understand it—I am sure I will be corrected if this is not the case—new businesses are protected for one year only. Micro-businesses are protected, potentially, for 10 years, but providing that they remain micro-businesses. I hope that clarifies the position. I take it the noble Baroness would rather that is not the case, but that is the settlement we have reached on this to try to ensure that micro-businesses do not have disproportionate burdens placed on them. However, they are obviously still subject to the law, and their employees are protected by the law. We are talking here about whether the audit would follow the loss of such a case.
The noble Baroness thought that the penalty of £5,000 should be much higher. The penalty is specified in primary legislation, so we cannot impose a greater penalty in the regulations which follow on from that. It derives from the Equality Act 2010, which she no doubt played a part in, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. When the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act inserted this penalty into that Act, the party opposite did not oppose it.
Baroness King of Bow
Would the noble Baroness then agree that we have all got it wrong? Surely it does not make sense for the penalty to be less than the cost of continuing the breach.
Baroness Northover
We will all, no doubt, be monitoring this to see what the effect is. One of the things which happens to a greater extent these days is that people put information about the place they work on social media. This is not the kind of thing which any company wishing to attract talent wants to have flagged among potential employees. Nobody will want to head down the route of losing equal pay cases, and they will certainly not want to have an audit thereafter which shows further challenges within the company. I am sure that we will all monitor this to make sure that it is heading in the right direction.
Similarly, not having a pay audit may make micro-businesses that have lost cases more vulnerable to further claims. Again, I am sure that those businesses will not want that to happen.
Baroness King of Bow
I thank the noble Baroness for her indulgence on this, but are these regulations not setting up a scenario where the same employer can breach the same law again and again, and never be forced to take any action? There is no sanction, even if they are ordered to take an equal pay audit and choose not to.
Baroness Northover
I am suddenly inspired to say that the regulations allow the tribunal to apply a £5,000 penalty repeatedly if the employer remains in breach. Therefore, it could have quite an effect cumulatively. I hope the noble Baroness will be somewhat reassured that there is a possibility of that follow-up if they are not taking action. I think that I have addressed most of her questions.
I now come to the main points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy. I agree absolutely with her support of the notion that unequal pay does not help the business or the economy. That has to be a major incentive for companies to ensure that this moves forward. I do not think I have an answer to what happens if a company goes into bankruptcy and then resurfaces; maybe I have and I have buried it somewhere.
Baroness Northover
That is extremely kind of the noble Baroness. She asked me quite a bit about narrowing the pay gap. I hope that I have helped to address some of those. This is obviously a lever to help in these cases. It is very important that the law is there, that we ensure it is implemented and that companies are heading in the right direction. However, we all know that there are much wider reasons why this is difficult to shift. We are in line with what is happening in northern European companies—many more women are working than in the eastern European and southern European countries where, curiously enough, there is a narrower pay gap. That is because many women are not working. We share that particular challenge with our northern European neighbours, but we all need to ensure that we take forward the kind of support and legal changes that help to underpin women’s ability to participate in the labour force as equal to men’s. We also need to ensure that we tackle instances where there is genuine discrimination.
Baroness King of Bow
May I ask the noble Baroness what I hope is one last question? How many cases do the Government envisage being brought in circumstances where businesses will be asked to carry out an equal pay audit?
Children: Affordable Childcare
Baroness King of Bow Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness King of Bow (Lab)
My Lords, I thought I would start with a reflection on what a strange breed working mothers are. All you really need to know about us is that we never sleep and continually stress over childcare. Between 1 am last night, when I gave the baby his last feed and started jotting down a few notes for this speech, and 5 am this morning, when my husband got up to feed him, I was woken six times. I have four children so I have no one else to blame but myself. It is my bed and I made it; I just wish I could lie in it, but that is a problem entirely of my own making.
What is not a problem of my own making is that when I drag myself out of said bed and complete several school runs, as I did this morning, and when I finally arrive at my two year-old’s nursery, I find that I must pay £1,100 per month if I want her to go full-time, five days a week. Despite the fact that I am, by definition, extraordinarily privileged because—look—I am standing in this gilded Chamber as a Member of Britain’s most prestigious LinkedIn group, the fact remains that I cannot afford £1,100 a month. So my daughter does not go full time; she goes half time—two and a half days a week. For that I pay £660 a month.
When I previously had two pre-school children, the cost for me to place them in the local children’s centre was £880 per child, or £1,760 per month. That is why, as my noble friend Lady Prosser said, once you have two pre-school kids it is simply impossible for most people to afford that childcare. At the time I had what most people would consider to be a really good job. I was senior policy adviser to the Prime Minister but still I could not afford to spend £1,760 a month on childcare. So I left Downing Street and got a job where I could afford more childcare. So what? Who cares? My point is this: if you are a woman working in the Prime Minister’s Office and your employment choices are governed by the lack of affordable childcare, then you know that women with fewer resources and fewer networks have no chance at all of being able to pay for childcare out of their salary. They are forced to stay at home or make arrangements for their children that put those children at risk and do not take care of them.
Many others can hold down a job only if they have a sympathetic boss. Working mothers and working parents, therefore, often become unfairly beholden to the individual views of their boss. I was in a situation—a lot of us have been—in which I had a sympathetic boss. My boss in Downing Street was, after all, the first Chancellor and then Prime Minister to recognise the importance of massively increasing funding for childcare. He recognised that it was a national investment, as important in terms of infrastructure—certainly to women—as, say, transport.
Notwithstanding that, when I arrived at the local childcare centre that I mentioned and found a sign on the gate saying, “Closed due to staff sickness”, I felt sick in my stomach because I was due to have my first one-to-one briefing with the Prime Minister on my policy area. It was Sod’s law. I arrived in Downing Street with a 16 month-old on my hip and was shown in to see Gordon Brown, who had a face like thunder. To be fair, he often has a face like thunder, so I was not entirely sure if it was because I had a baby on my hip. However, I knew that I would not be pleased if a member of my staff turned up with a baby on their hip for a meeting. The baby started to cry, I was jiggling him and when I turned back, Gordon had disappeared. I thought, “Oh my God! He’s just walked out and is going to sack me. He is outraged and I do not really blame him that much”. Then his head popped out from the side of his desk. He was on his hands and knees and he said, “Maybe your son will like this little train set. My sons play with it”. He pushed it round and round for 10 minutes, and then said, “I think he’s settled now; we can get down to business”.
The point is that even though he was a sympathetic boss, let me get away with bringing the baby into the office, presided over a sea change in funding for childcare, and created and funded Sure Start, the fact is that now we see the gains falling back. Too often we see Sure Start being used as a political football or, indeed, not being used at all. When Labour was in power, Michael Gove said, “The Tories may well be wary of Sure Start because they believe it is the nationalisation of childcare”. If childcare is affordable and of high quality, I frankly do not mind who provides it, whether it is the voluntary sector, the private sector or the state. In reality, it is only the Government who can ensure that affordable, quality childcare is available to all children who need it. I thought that the point made by my noble friend Lady Prosser about the role that trade unions have played in providing childcare was important. I am reminded of the school run that I do each morning. Every day I pass a small blue plaque at the bottom of my street saying that this is where Sylvia Pankhurst set up the first crèche for working women—those otherwise known as the matchstick girls. Of course, times have changed since then, but not enough. Although we have poured in that money—and I recognise some of the very important points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin—we need to be smarter about how we invest it. We need to do as well as or better than our European competitors. However, I imagine that as well as spending the money more smartly, if we are to deal with all those children—and parents—who need childcare we are also going to have to bite the bullet and invest more.
This is where we come to the nub of this debate. What is the case for increasing access to affordable childcare? We have the economic case and we know that it is worth £15 billion to £23 billion per annum to the Exchequer, but what is the social case? In my few remaining minutes, I want to talk about how childcare impacts on tackling inequality and on improving social mobility, and how it can also improve parenting across social classes. I hope that we will also take note of the early intervention debate and how we can improve outcomes.
Let us remember that childcare is first and foremost about care of the child, and the best way to take care of children who would otherwise be at risk is to invest in their early years. I want to quote briefly from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, which has already been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. It says that,
“by age 3, there are already large gaps in cognitive and other areas of development between children with high-income or well educated parents and those with low-income or less well educated parents. These gaps get harder and more expensive to tackle as children get older”.
The point is that if we cannot come to a political consensus in this country that we need to invest in this area then we will just spend more and more of our money at the other end of the system in crisis, and that is not an intelligent way for us to spend our money. The OECD has stated that greater spend and higher enrolment in early education is correlated with increased social mobility. Universal, affordable and high-quality childcare helps in two ways. First, it lifts maternal employment rates and, secondly, it improves child development for the most disadvantaged children. I hope that we will note the report of the Early Action Task Force, entitled The Deciding Time—Prevent Today, or Pay Tomorrow, which reinforces those points.
In summary, investment in early years education and childcare is possibly the single most effective policy that government can implement. That is why I am proud of Labour’s vision on this issue, and I am glad to hear that we may have cross-party consensus here. However, over the long term what we need is more radical than what we have heard mentioned. Over the long term, we need free universal pre-school childcare. As Labour’s shadow Minister for Childcare, Lucy Powell MP, has stated, there is a clear economic argument for it: it will pay for itself over time.
Therefore, my only question for the Minister is a big, overarching one: does she agree with Labour—and, by the sound of it, the Liberal Democrats—that in the long term we must deliver free universal pre-school childcare? I hope that she does. I would certainly get a bit more sleep at night if she were able to consider that.
Baroness Northover (LD)
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for tabling today’s debate on access to affordable childcare and for introducing it so effectively. She has a long track record in fighting for the rights of children and families, as I know from sharing with her the position of trustee for UNICEF, a position which my noble friend Lady Walmsley also held. I also thank all noble Lords who have spoken in today’s debate. As ever, this has been a very powerful debate and we all agree that the cost and quality of childcare matters. As the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Bakewell, my noble friend Lady Jenkin and others have pointed out, life has changed over the past few decades. Of course men and women have long worked but as social and economic patterns have changed, so too has the way that children are brought up. Increasingly, from the Second World War onwards, women took up paid work and, what is more, nuclear families often lived away from other family members. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, we have here a large-scale social change.
Many of us here had the experience of the huge challenges of arranging paid childcare, as the first ones to do so in our families. The noble Lord, Lord Graham, thought that I might inject my own experience and I must not disappoint him. I recall my experience as a lecturer at UCL, returning to work with a baby and finding that I would have needed to reserve a place in the nursery at the moment of conception, not birth. My baby accompanied me, and I kept him as quiet as I could for the first few months until he secured his place. I knew to act faster when I became pregnant the next time. Although that then almost obliterated my salary, I had a very good and wonderful workplace nursery.
However, I identify with those who felt guilt, as expressed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey, Lady Bakewell, and Lady Morgan, my noble friend Lady Jenkin and others. I still have this image of Munch’s “The Scream” from when my second child’s face was one large, gaping, wailing hole as I left him one day in the nursery when he was aged about one. I wondered what I must be doing to him. I also recall the black looks of my male academic colleagues at the Wellcome Institute as I had to leave work when the nursery closed at 5.30 pm, but their wives were looking after their children and they did not have to worry about it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, mentioned, I then had to carry my tired children home and the evenings were no fun.
I recall when I was first here phoning home and speaking to my then six year-old daughter, to discover that her eight year-old brother was in possession of a power drill—and did it matter? No adult was at home and the person supposedly looking after them had taken my other son to something. I was phoning from just outside the Chamber while waiting for a vote and the noble Lord, Lord Peston, was on the other phone. He heard my desperate reaction as I heard about the power drill and reassured me that they would survive, and they did—but they might not have. So I am extremely familiar, as so many here are, with what this actually means.
It is now commonplace that both parents will return to work before their children are fully grown. I am glad also that we have made the moves we have to make sure that there is shared parental leave. We are not talking here only of children who are under school age but of those going through school as well, including their holidays. Of course, not all parents will want to place their children in childcare and parents should have that choice, but for those who return to work who, as I say, are increasing in numbers, it is essential that they have access to good quality childcare. I am sure that we all agree with that and I do not quite follow the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, when there had been so much agreement across the Chamber. We all understand the significance of this.
Childcare is obviously particularly important for enabling mothers to work, as the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, my noble friend Lady Walmsley and others have said. That is because it remains the case that the primary responsibility for children is seen as being the mother’s, rightly or wrongly. We know from many surveys that women still carry out the bulk of caring for children and for the home so, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, this is all part of a long process of establishing more equality for women.
The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, asked whether we are facing a childcare crunch. I do not agree; what I said about my own experience and what others have said indicate that as this social change goes on, childcare has been a challenge all the way down and continues to be so. It was so under the previous Government and I pay them credit for what they did. We have been building on that and are taking a number of positive steps that are beginning to demonstrate an impact but, as the noble Baroness and others all said, all Governments have faced this challenge and will do so. We all, from whatever party, need to continue to address this. It is best to be working together on this, in my view.
Research shows that more than half of stay-at-home mothers would prefer to be in paid employment and that nearly a quarter of employed mothers would like to increase their working hours—although they can do so only if they can arrange reliable, convenient, affordable, and good quality childcare, as the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, and others made very clear.
As anyone knows if they have left a child in care, knowing that they are well looked after is absolutely vital. It is complex and not easy to leave your child with another but when you see that they are safe and happy, that is of key importance. When I saw my daughter gazing with adoration at the wonderful person who looked after her, that too made me happy. My noble friend Lady Walmsley is quite right about the benefits of good quality care. As I listened to the noble Baroness, Lady King, I also recalled that when my daughter was about seven days old that same young lady, who is now a university student, left a particularly large wet patch on Paddy Ashdown’s carpet here. I was trying to maintain my career, which meant that my daughter came with me, so that swam into mind. I left very rapidly then and this may be the first evidence that my noble friend Lord Ashdown has that I, or she, was responsible for that wet patch.
The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, mentioned that childcare is a low-wage profession with high turnover. We agree with the noble Baroness that the quality of the workforce is key; evidence shows that this is extremely important. The Government have introduced the early years teacher status from September 2013, in recognition of the impact of graduate teachers on children’s development. We have introduced apprenticeships and bursaries of £3,000 to increase the number of staff educated at least to A-level and to have English and maths GCSE. I learnt quite a bit from the person who was caring for my daughter about how to bring up three children who were close in age and in competition with each other. At that stage she had been taught but had not had her own children, which she now has.
We all agree that we need to aspire to having good quality childcare available at a reasonable cost, and that it is vital that we get that right. Noble Lords have also emphasised the economic benefits that this would bring to the country, as my noble friend Lord Kirkwood and others have emphasised, as well as to the families themselves. We realise the significance of that.
As I say, we recognise what the previous Administration achieved, but all would recognise—this has run through the debate—that more needs to be done. That is why we have taken a number of steps to seek to reduce parents’ childcare bills. In September 2010 the Government increased the free entitlement to early education for three and four year-olds to 15 hours a week—570 hours per year—up from 12.5 hours a week. My noble friend Lord Kirkwood and others are right to emphasise the importance of early years education. It so happens that early years education can also help in terms of childcare, but I would not necessarily conflate the two.
However, 96% of three and four year-olds are now accessing a free place. As my noble friend Lady Tyler mentioned, from September this entitlement was extended to around 130,000 disadvantaged two year-olds, and it will be extended still further from September 2014 to two year-olds from working households on low incomes, for whom the costs of childcare are such a burden, and more than 260,000 children will be eligible. My noble friend Lady Walmsley stressed the importance of that educational provision.
The total funding for early years education has also increased by more than £1 billion over the life of this Parliament. My noble friend Lady Jenkin is right about the proportion of GDP that we put into this yet, as she emphasised, we still see the challenges in the cost both to the state and to families. The noble Baroness, Lady King, talked about universal free childcare. As I say, there is universal childcare for three and four year-olds, and the Government are proud of extending that to 40% of two year-olds. There are arguments for extending that further, of course, but the Department for Education estimates that universal full-time childcare for children aged one to four would cost £18 billion. She seemed to indicate support for that by her reference to her colleague in the Commons but it sounds from what the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, indicated that that is not actually an agreed position. That kind of provision was made in some countries, obviously—I remember visiting nurseries in Russia—but it sounds as if the Labour Party has not signed up to that.
Baroness King of Bow
I would like to clarify that the shadow childcare Minister has said that this is an aspiration to which we are attached. It is a vision that we recognise we should work towards, and I hope that perhaps all sides of this Chamber agree with that.
Baroness Northover
I appreciate that clarification. I am sure that that is something that a lot of us would ideally wish to see.
However, on its own, simply providing more funding will not halt the long-term increase in childcare costs or provide the childcare places that we need for the future. Nurseries find it difficult to expand without jumping through many hoops, especially in planning. In addition, a complex registration system and duplicatory inspection regimes have created barriers to new entrants to the childcare market. We are not making enough use of the many excellent facilities in our schools. In Denmark, for example, 88% of six to eight year-olds take advantage of before-school and after-school or holiday care, compared with only 22% in England. What the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said about wraparound care in schools was not exactly accurate; a number of the schools that she was referring to were simply pointing parents in the direction of care, not providing it themselves. Unfortunately, I do not think that in the past this has been cracked, and it is therefore important to be clear about what the situation actually is.
I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, that we are indeed looking at this strategically. Our reforms focus on three key areas: increasing supply—we are working very actively to expand the number of places available with childminders and in nurseries and schools; streamlining inspection so that we can focus on what matters to improve children’s development and ensure that they are safe; and reforming financial support to parents, making it simpler and more consistent. That is an issue that the noble Baroness emphasised. On the simplification of funding streams, the Government are carefully considering how best to achieve that as the universal credit and the new tax-free childcare system schema are rolled out. It is important to get the balance right between stable funding for providers and flexibility and choice for parents.
As noble Lords have said, we need to increase supply. We are doing what we can to halt the long-term decline in childminder numbers—that has been a very long-term decline, as anyone can see from the figures; it is not recent—and provide new opportunities for high-quality private and voluntary nurseries and schools. Noble Lords here will be well aware that we are coming up to day four of Report on the Children and Families Bill, and we are legislating to enable the creation of new childminder agencies to make it simpler for people to become childminders, to provide training and support and to help parents to access home-based care. We are making it easier for schools to expand to take two year-olds and to offer out-of-school-hours childcare. In February we will have the first results from schools regarding our demonstration projects on this, and we will be assessing how they are working and what can be done to expand that. So we are taking a number of measures to try to address this.
The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, asked particularly about disabled children. I assure her that from September, as I hope she will know from the Children and Families Bill, all children with special educational needs and disabilities will for the first time be entitled to 15 hours a week of government-funded early education from the age of two. I appreciate that she is also talking about childcare in addition to that, though, and she is right to ensure that what is being provided covers all children.
A few noble Lords have made reference to children’s centres and indicated that they thought that these were closing in large numbers. We are well aware of the great services that children’s centres provide to their local communities for prospective parents before and after their babies are born, for the parents and children themselves until they are five. The noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Prosser, for example, thought that 576 Sure Start centres had closed. In fact that is not the case; as of 30 November, fewer than 2% had closed and more than 3,000 were open. The question of Sure Start comes up quite often, and as I looked at this carefully I found, and this is worth emphasising, that children’s centres provide only a very tiny proportion—less than 1%—of all registered childcare places. That does not mean to say that they not of value, but they are not central, and have not been, to what we are talking about today.
With regard to inspection, we have to ensure that while increased choice is important, if provision was not of a high standard it would leave parents with no real choice at all and be detrimental for children. The noble Lord, Lord Graham, made that point very clearly. Growth should not be at the expense of quality. Ofsted has recently announced reforms to early years inspection, and expectations will be higher and accountability increased. I have a lot of detail about the inspection process that I am happy to write to my noble friend Lady Walmsley about. She was also asking about childminder agencies. We are working with 20 organisations to trial how childminder agencies will work. As part of that, we are considering with Ofsted the most effective way of ensuring the quality of those childminders registered with an agency. I am happy to spell that out in greater detail, given what I need to cover.
We remain committed to helping families with the cost of living and supporting parents to work. We are improving support for middle-income families by introducing a new tax-free childcare scheme. Noble Lords will, I hope, know the details of that. Once the scheme is fully established it will benefit 2.5 million working families. For low earners, government will continue to pay up to 70% of childcare costs through working tax credit and universal credit. I am again happy to put details in a letter to noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds and my noble friend Lord Kirkwood asked about this. We are already investing £2.2 billion in universal credit childcare support and making a further investment of £200 million to provide extra support for working families earning enough to pay income tax. We are considering responses to a recent consultation on tax-free childcare and will respond shortly.
These are positive indications that the package of reforms that the Government have put in place are starting to have the desired impact. The signs are promising in terms of the cost of provision and maternal employment. The National Day Nurseries Association reported in July that 58% of nurseries have frozen fees. The average fee increase across all nurseries was 1.5%, which is well below inflation, and 200,000 women with children have gone back to work since 2011, which is more than during the five years before that.
However, we are not complacent. We know that a great deal needs to be done. We need to encourage growth in every part of the childcare market, place quality at the heart of childcare provision, create genuine choice of providers for parents and ensure that work really does pay. We are talking about a long and very important social change. This has been a very important debate. The right reverend Prelate, who will be much missed when he takes retirement, pointed out that it is part of the weft and woof of our society. It is vital that we have flexible, accessible, high-quality childcare available to those parents who wish to access it. We know that for better equality between the genders more parents will be seeking such assistance. I am glad to that so many noble Lords have contributed to this important debate. Their contributions have been very thoughtful. Once again, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for securing this debate.