Childcare Reform Package

Debate between Stephen Morgan and Claire Coutinho

Wednesday 28th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for advanced sight of her statement.

The Government’s realisation of the importance of childcare remains striking, despite what the Minister says, for how long it has taken. Childcare is important for so many reasons—for giving every child the best start in life, for helping every parent to take on and succeed at the jobs they love, and for the foundation that it provides for success at school and throughout education. Above all, as my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Education has rightly said, childcare is important for supporting families to achieve and thrive together. Yet it is only now that the Government have arrived at the party. It is typical of this Government that they are not only late but focused on tweaks that they trumpet proudly but that do not deliver the scale of reform that is urgently needed.

The reforms reflect some of the changes to universal credit that the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has repeatedly called for. But, as he has also warned Ministers, they do not go far enough in giving people the chances and choices to go back to work at the scale necessary to tackle the challenges.

On childcare, the Government’s fixation on their broken hours model leaves them blind to the wider challenges around supply and demand of childcare and the extraordinary structure of the market for extra hours. The failure of that market is felt by every family. A decade of sticking-plaster politics from the Conservative party has caused them pain. But the announcement does nothing to ensure that childcare places are available in the cities, towns, and villages of our country. In some places, nursery and childcare spaces are outnumbered 10 to one by the children who need them.

I am delighted that the Minister has visited the seats of so many of her newest and presumably most nervous colleagues, but, as well as talking to parents who have found childcare, she would have done better had she spoken to parents who have not. The announcement does little to deliver the extra staff who will be needed to deliver the extra entitlements for parents that the Minister so enthusiastically announces. It does nothing to deliver the childcare places in which our children will be cared for and in which, we hope, they will learn in those extra hours and months of their lives. It is great to hear that the Minister will be listening to providers and local authorities, but listening is no substitute for action. It does little to retain or upskill the existing staff in the sector who are leaving in their droves for work that is more clearly valued. It does little to enrich childcare, to drive up quality, to make it a part of our education system, and to deliver a foundation for achievement and success right through school and life. It does little to deliver the flexibility that parents need not merely at work, but to get into work—to get the training and skills that they need and that our companies, communities and country need. In short, the announcement today is little more than a post-dated cheque. It is a promise of jam tomorrow—a promise that brings more questions than answers.

Madam Deputy Speaker, let me briefly set out a few questions in the hope that the Minister can address them in the debate today. When the 30-hours childcare entitlement is spread over a year, it is the equivalent of 22 hours a week. What steps is she taking, right now, to address the cliff-edge in costs between the Government-funded hours and the hours for which parents have to pay? Will she repeal the restrictions that councils face in making more childcare provision available? Is she genuinely confident that a new advertising campaign will be enough to attract workers to the sector? Is she aware that, for an increase in entitlements to childcare places to work, there must be more staff, and more settings, otherwise more parents will simply find that they cannot get the childcare that they need and to which they have entitlement? Finally, how does the Minister intend to ensure better uptake of childcare entitlements among eligible families given the complexity and bureaucracy of the existing system?

[Claire Coutinho]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his reply. Let me address some of the points that he raised in turn.

The hon. Gentleman talked about the ability of parents to look for childcare in the holidays. We have the £200 million holiday activities and food programme, which is particularly targeted at disadvantaged children. Last summer, more than 600,000 children accessed that. When we did our initial survey of that programme, about 70% of those children said that they had never been to anything like that before, which is a great sign of the opportunity that it is spreading. He talks about the work that we are doing with local authorities. To understand sufficiency and any challenges, we are contacting every single local authority as part of the roll-out.

The hon. Gentleman talked about getting more staff, and we have set out some flexibilities; I talked in my statement about the recruitment campaign we are doing next year. He talks about better uptake, but I would say that the uptake of the offer for three to four-year-olds is in the 90% range; for two-year-olds it is in the 72% range and tax-free childcare in recent years has gone from 172,000 up to 500,000. Yes, there is more to do, but we have very good uptake and any parent thinking about more childcare should look at our Childcare Choices website to see what they might be entitled to.

Overall, however, I get the sense from the hon. Gentleman’s comments that he did not listen to my statement. I talked about the £4 billion extra that is going into the sector, about plans for staff and for childminders and about routes for apprenticeships. I remind him that it was a Conservative Government that expanded the offer for three to four-year-olds and introduced the offer for two-year-olds, and now it is the Conservative Government making the single largest-ever investment into childcare.

What do we know about the Labour party policy? We know the Opposition wanted to do universal childcare, but they denied that last week. That was last week’s flip-flop—or I should say one of last week’s flip-flops. They have talked about means-testing childcare, which would mean taking away childcare from middle-class parents at a moment when we know that families are struggling with their finances. On the Government side we recognise that childcare is important for families and important for growth. Our childcare plans, as announced at the Budget, were called by the International Monetary Fund a serious point of growth in this country. We recognise that that is important.