Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
Main Page: Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (Crossbench - Life peer)Affordable Childcare (Select Committee Report)
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
That this House takes note of the Report of the Select Committee on Affordable Childcare.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)
My Lords, it will not have escaped noble Lords’ notice that today is the day of the Budget. Noble Lords who have a speech will doubtless be pleased to know that there will be no jokes about two kitchens and that the financial statistics that I quote will be unambiguous, clear of criticism and contradiction and absolutely pellucidly in the forefront of what we may accept.
I thank the usual channels for making time for this debate so soon after the publication of the report and before the House rises in anticipation of a general election. There is good reason for that, which I will come to in a moment.
I want to begin by changing the mood away from Budgets and from what I regard as a minor key to a major key. It is not often done in this House, but I shall quote a line of poetry to start the consideration of the issues before us. The line comes from our greatest English-language poet of the 20th century, TS Eliot:
“In my beginning is my end”.
That is the opening line of “East Coker” in Four Quartets. I have no doubt that our subject today is not best understood through the angularity of Eliot’s verse, but there is a resonance there that encourages me to steal or adapt a line fashioned in his world for our world today. My only possible justification for such a crime of literary criticism is Robert Crawford’s recent, magnificent book Young Eliot because, as he makes plain, Eliot pillaged and refashioned lines, descriptions and names from his early boyhood for his poetry in later life. Did you know, for example—this is a pub quiz question—that “Macavity” was the name of a schoolboy in his class whom he did not like very much? He had his revenge. There will be none of that in my speech, I promise.
The line,
“In my beginning is my end”,
has resonance for our subject. I have no doubt that the point will be easily grasped by those who share the enthusiasm of my excellent committee members for early care, education and child development. Simply put, the earliest years of life and what they offer—“my beginning”—resonate and echo throughout all that is to follow in the years thereafter. Some who have a deprived early onset to activity rise none the less phoenix-like from the ashes of early need unmet, but many bear its scars throughout life. Half of the adult male population in England are either illiterate, innumerate or both, and that has its beginnings in what was not done for them very early, before formal education took its course. For most of us, including those least likely to be classified as deprived, how we begin has huge significance for how we continue through life. I will return to that point in a few moments, as doubtless will a number of my fellow committee members.
Early child development and provision for it helps those with great need and those who perhaps are from a less deprived context, but the greatest help inevitably for those who are in need. I have no doubt that successive Governments should be commended for their grasp of this point and response to this correlation. In 1990, in England and Wales 59,000 nursery places were available; there are now 1.8 million. That shows that successive Governments have taken the issue seriously and have put resource, backing and initiative into bringing about high-quality early education.
Clearly, other factors are at play, and I will turn to some of those at the moment, but first I wish to underline in triplicate the impact of all this on children. It is not a matter of teaching nine times tables to three year-olds, although I dare say that a little bit of help with numbers is good. It is rather a matter of helping by laying the very foundations for a whole education and a mature life. Early in life that is what happens—the foundations go down—and it is especially important for those suffering from various forms of deprivation, sometimes personal, sometimes social, sometimes institutional. But there are, as I have stressed, benefits for the many.
The help given in early education and development, just so we are aware of the realities, stretch from changing nappies through learning how to communicate with the help of a good teacher, tutor or assistant, to learning the basics of language, because these are often not available at home. This objective of early child development is clearly at the heart of the policy of all three main political parties, and it is the reason why the Department for Education has such a central role in providing and ensuring that provision is adequate.
There is, however, another main objective, which we picked up in the course of our discussions and in the evidence given to us. This significant additional responsibility lies not with the Department for Education but with the Department for Work and Pensions. The intention is to increase the possibility of joining the workforce for parents—usually mothers, I have to say—with young children. Some family groups need to contemplate this because of poverty, and some wish to do this for the excellent reason that there is a career that has been temporarily laid aside but that will be resumed, and a great contribution will be made to the public through the development of that career. The even greater financial pressure on one-parent households will, I think, be discussed later by one of my colleagues.
Some parents wish to provide a combination of parenthood and developing responsible careers, but it is important to say that some groups gave evidence that not all parents, not all mothers, wished to do this. Some choose deliberately to remain at home, and nothing we say in this report—and, I hope, nothing that is said in this debate—raises questions about the validity of that fair choice.
I have sketched out the two major objectives of government policy: early child development, and the enhancement of careers or the possibility of joining the workforce. If that was all there was to it, we would all say, “Yes, well done”, and we might have gone home to the Back Benches in October, but it is more complicated than that, as noble Lords will assume. We did not pick up the Oliver Twist approach and say, “Thank you very much”, and hold out our begging bowl for more money; rather, we spent our time examining in some detail how effectively and efficiently the huge sums of public resource were being spent in pursuing these objectives.
In examining these twin policies and the difficulties they face, sometimes individually and sometimes because they interact with each other, I pay tribute to my colleagues on the committee, most of whom come from various political parties but who were content to seek common agreement on this issue. I have no doubt that all the political parties will have something about it in their manifestos. However, my colleagues showed the restraint and good common sense characteristic of this place and looked for a common core: namely, what can we all agree on, and what markers should future government policy observe?
The two main areas are early child development and creating additional places in the workforce. Evidence points to the effectiveness of childcare that takes place in a community and a group and is provided, ideally, by professionally qualified people. The life options it opens up to recipients are very wide indeed and very important. As I suggested, this applies to all children, but particularly to those from a needy background. However, the committee stressed that if the relevant policy is to be effective, it will depend on provision by the PVI sector—the private, voluntary and independent sector.
Given that we have a dual economy, it is important that the Government recognise that maintaining the health of this sector is a prerequisite of the policy working and of the places that are created having a realistic option of being filled. I believe that the future of this sector rests on consolidating the quality of what is provided, as we found that the PVI sector gets less money to do the same job. Therefore, the possibility of graduates being employed in this sector is reduced. Graduate employment is the usual external marker of quality and is justified in this case. While that is the case, the PVI sector will not be able to do all that successive Governments have wanted it to do.
A role of government here is to look at how the money goes down the system. We ask for assurances that this will be done and that any incoming Government will have this on their agenda. They should look at how the money goes down the system so that a PVI nursery and a state-maintained one are on a level playing field. It is also clear that PVI provision would be very successful if it were embedded in state schools. There is a sotto voce assumption that this will happen and that somehow schools will increase their intake to include two, three and four year-olds. This would be nice if it were to happen, but there are practical constraints. As we all know, primary schools are under significant pressures of space. Even if they wanted to include these children, they might not have the space to do so. Furthermore, many teachers went into the teaching profession to teach five to 12 year-olds, not necessarily to deal with the rather different problems of very young children. Therefore, these places will not automatically be provided through the state system. Again, I stress the importance of the Government ensuring that there is a healthy market out there so that the PVI sector has reason to expand to meet government targets.
The evidence that we received points to the need to recognise professional links between providers and the homes of young children. Where this is done, the impact is much greater. I could give noble Lords examples of schools and nurseries where this is done very effectively. It means, however, that additional resource is required to meet the additional costs. People will go and talk to parents and ensure that they understand the importance simply, for example, of reading to young children; language lies at the core of this stage of education.
We also looked at what Ofsted does in the inspection system here, and we simply put up a warning signal: if, as is happening now, inspections extend provisionally to two year-olds, perhaps the systems used for five, six, seven and eight year-olds will not transfer down as easily as they do to reception classes, so we would like Ofsted to be encouraged to look at how it assesses what is going on in these classes.
Many more detailed points will be made by my colleagues. In the concluding section of my remarks, I simply want to hang on to the question of creating work spaces. I have to say that there is simply an element of naivety in government in all this. That came out in some of the answers that we got. There is too readily an assumption among some politicians that if we provide the cash and the numbers, and get the headline, all will be well. It is not as straightforward as that. There is, for example, tension between the provision made if one’s focus is the first objective, early child development, as compared with the second objective, creating employment possibilities. The difference is clearly illustrated and there are many aspects to it, but if one wants high-quality child development, all the evidence we have is that the best way of doing this is three hours a day for five days a week. If, however, one is trying to create flexibility of employment, employers will most probably be looking for two eight-hour sessions from the mother in question. These differences can be reconciled, but we did not see sufficient thought being given to the implications, hence my charge of naivety.
I have reservations about how well this is working. Again, it is assumed that places will be created—“We have put the resource in, and there will be places”. That is not inevitably so, and the evidence again is that in rural areas the availability of places does not always match the demand. There may be a long distance to travel between work, home and nursery school. We noticed too—and this is from the IFS—that in the recent round of funding £64 million was spent creating new jobs. That amounted to 12,000 new jobs. That is not a great return for £64 million and is certainly less than might reasonably have been expected by such a creative policy.
I have suggested that there is a potential tension between the two aspects of policy, and this shows up in the way in which the private and voluntary sectors will want to plan provision. They are under severe constraints and, for example, often end up cross-subsidising the so-called free places by charging extra sums for the additional hours to parents who can afford it. All this is part of the background that needs more thorough inspection than we believe the Government have given.
In conclusion, there are two areas of confusion. One is for parents who are trying to use this system. The evidence is that they do not find it clear, simple and available. The evidence is that they, as parents, have decisions to make, and the answers are perhaps not immediately apparent to them. This shows up in a variety of ways, but there is an assumption, usually by accountants who work for the Treasury or the Inland Revenue, that the country out there is full of people who are economically rational men and women. That is not so; nor do they have the skills of an accountant to work out what government process is or how the financial systems work.
We will be told that the new system is in fact such that all will be clear next autumn when it comes in. We will see. The guidance issued for the new way of supplying this says:
“For every 80p you or someone else pays in, the government will top up an extra 20p. This is equivalent of the tax most people pay—20%—which gives the scheme its name, ‘tax-free’”.
When you get government advice telling you what “tax-free” means, look out: I see the hint of someone spinning here. It is not clear.
This is my last point. The other unclarity is at government level, where two main departments deal with this—education and work and pensions. There is also the overriding dark space of the Treasury. As a Select Committee of your House, we could not get to the bottom of how these two government departments interact and discuss how a common set of policies will cohere. For the reasons I have given, there are difficulties. We could not get a picture of whether Ministers meet regularly, whether officials meet regularly, or whether there are minuted meetings. As I said, the Treasury was notable by its darkness and its absence, as I think the House now knows very well.
If this is to continue to be a source of investment—I hope it will—clearly we need to ensure that evidence-based policy has adequate research to back it up. I beg to move.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her detailed and, in places, reassuring reply and look forward to further comment in due course. I also thank all noble Lords who took part in the debate, not least those who are not members of the committee. We appreciate their interest and their presence, and what they bring to us that we did not find on the committee. I also thank our special advisers, who were both excellent and complementary in how they worked together. Finally, along with committee members, whom I have already mentioned, I thank the officials who guided us through the various pastures and, sometimes, the rapids of process. In fact, they are still doing so. I had a reminder note during the debate to say that, as I spoke initially, I missed out a couple of key words. I referred to half the adult male population being either illiterate or innumerate—I missed out that it was half the adult population “in prison” who are either illiterate and innumerate, which is rather different.
One thing I have learnt in this debate, apart from the continuing care of the officials, is that, if you quote a line of poetry, you certainly get noticed. I commend it to those who introduce debates in future:
“In my beginning is my end”.
Your Lordships will be pleased to know that my end is much shorter than my beginning.