Affordable Childcare (Select Committee Report)

Earl of Dundee Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, for introducing this debate on affordable childcare. I should like to refer to a few aspects of the current arrangements. There are the so-called trade-offs: how children’s early learning and their parents’ employment prospects may or may not be jointly promoted. Then there is the scope for simplified presentations and procedures to achieve greater take-up. There is also the need to enhance quality and narrow the gap between public and private delivery. Not least, there is the importance of proper assessments and evidence.

As several noble Lords have reminded us, the Select Committee’s report acknowledges that government policy implies trade-offs even if it does not stipulate them: on the one hand to promote child development while at the same time to facilitate parental employment. For example, cheap, low-quality childcare might help parents to work but it would fall short of the Government’s child development objectives. Does my noble friend agree that there is an inherent tension between those two objectives? Will the Government clarify how the competing aims of the policy are prioritised and what mechanisms exist between government departments to address necessary trade-offs?

As the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, implied, it appears that take-up of the schemes might rise significantly as a result of better procedures and presentations. We are told that measures are planned for this autumn to simplify childcare accounts. However, their envisaged scope may not advantage all income groups of parents. Perhaps my noble friend would, therefore, adjust and extend the proposed arrangements so that all parents benefit.

Then there is the quality gap in delivery between the public and private sectors, where the latter produces less good results. Regarding PVIs, the Select Committee recommends that they ought to be more fully reimbursed than they are. As my noble friends Lady Shephard and Lady Walmsley have already observed, staff qualifications should be more thoroughly scrutinised in the first place. Does my noble friend concur that those two expedients alone, if adopted, would help to narrow the current quality delivery gap between the public and private sectors?

Early learning offers for two and three-year olds began here in the late 1990s. Since then, however, there have been no systematic assessments. As result, there is still insufficient evidence of efficacy. Does my noble friend agree? What plans are there to put that right?

We should certainly begin with analysis of our own performance, but it is also very useful to know how other states may have built up good practice. The United States, not least, has a good record in this field. Should not the Government thus also study results from there and elsewhere?

Apart from comparisons with other states, does my noble friend accept that there are a number of well evidenced and creative interventions of which we should also take proper note? Such include the teaching of music, which has proved to be of inestimable value when introduced in the right way to early learners.

For encouraging confidence and ability at the start of life, this subject is clearly of key importance; and one in which the United Kingdom is well placed to succeed. However, we may all believe that a number of adjustments suggested by your Lordships today are urgently called for. Meanwhile, we are very fortunate to be guided by the excellent report of the Select Committee.