Childcare Bill [HL]

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in welcoming the Bill and the promise of extended childcare that it offers, as indeed I welcome the extension of long-overdue childcare over the most recent years.

The Bill has also been welcomed in principle by the people in the field who know most—the expert organisations and the providers. However, like them, the House has already identified some of the key issues that we have to address during the passage of the legislation, and the crucial one is: how workable is the Bill? Can free, quality childcare be expanded from 15 to 30 hours without putting the existing system at risk? To help solve the problem, it is welcome that the Government have set up a funding review and a consultation programme for parents, and we look forward to the findings. Yesterday the Minister was good enough to hold a briefing session to explain the Bill to noble Lords, and we learned that the review and the consultation will report in the autumn. However, that presents this House—and I suggest that it presents the Government—with a genuine problem. I am afraid that I have many questions and I hope that the noble Lord will be patient with me.

Can the Minister tell me whether he expects the Bill and the regulations to reflect the findings of the funding review and the consultation, and, if so, how does he expect the present timetable for the Bill to work? Would it not have been eminently sensible to hold back on the Bill until the Government knew what the recommendations of the funding review would bring forward and design the regulations around those recommendations so that we could indeed debate them, as he says, as thoroughly as we should? Better still, why not put some of the design and detail in the Bill so that we would have a proper opportunity to challenge and change what we thought could be improved? We cannot amend regulations, as the Minister knows.

If the Government do not intend to reflect the changes that must be under consideration in the funding regime in the regulations, how does the Minister actually intend to implement them? If he does not intend to reflect these changes, what is the point of this Bill in this form now? This matters profoundly to this House. The Bill has been introduced here and it is our duty to test and scrutinise policy against what the Government claim are their policy objectives and in terms of its sheer workability. That is what we are for.

The Prime Minister, as we know, is not a man for detail, but even he has to concede that getting this massive expansion of childcare provision right is going to take time. As he said, for,

“the best way of making sure that”,

childcare providers are being,

“properly paid for the level of childcare that they provide”,

the time must be provided to get it right. Given the challenge of finding the right balance so that providers and parents are not, as now, cross-subsidising the system, and providing sustainable as well as better- quality childcare, I have to ask the Minister why we are discussing this Bill before we have the answer to some of these questions. I think that it is almost an abuse of process, because we are not able to discuss this Bill in the way that we need to in order to have an impact on the process itself. I know that the Minister will want to explain the logic of his position in his summing up.

My second point is the nature and scope of the regulations in the Bill. I do not think I have ever seen a Bill that is, frankly, so vacuous but on which hang so many regulations, some of them novel and contentious, such as that to create a new criminal offence. The Bill and the regulations raise the question, as has already been alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, of who will be held accountable for its delivery. The Bill creates a new duty on the Secretary of State to provide for childcare. This is, in many ways, very welcome. However, the question surely is, how does this new duty sit alongside the existing duties on local authorities to provide for childcare? Is it intended that the Secretary of State will police the local authorities to establish more consistency in terms of access and funding? Whatever happened to localism? I would be very grateful for a specific answer on that point.

On a related point, what will be the function of the new and mysterious “body corporate” set out in the regulations mentioned in Clause 1(5)(g)? Why is this not in the Bill? This is nothing less than a new quango. I wonder whether the Minister has brought this new quango to the attention of the Cabinet Office on the grounds that none of the existing agencies can actually manage the complexity of the existing or new system.

This underlines the point that I want to make: these regulations are not technical—some of them may be technical—but they provide for substantial new delegated powers. Which of them will carry the affirmative orders? We await the report of the Delegated Powers Committee with unusual interest.

My third set of questions is around how this will actually work and what difference it is going to make. I welcome the consultation in principle because it is always good to see government wanting to take evidence. However, there is no need to look very far for solutions as to what needs to change. It is all set out in the report of the Select Committee on Affordable Childcare and in the response to the Bill by the childcare agencies and providers.

There is consensus around the failings of the present system. There is a lack of capacity, with 40% of providers saying that they have no spare capacity. There is a lack of flexibility in the hours provided, which means, as we learned from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, that many parents who work irregular hours have not been able to access the provision that is already there. There is a lack of trained and qualified teachers, particularly in the private and voluntary sector, which means that the poorest children in particular are not getting the enriched childcare to lift their learning and life skills. In short, the Minister will hear from all the organisations involved that the childcare system is hugely stretched, unfair and locally erratic in terms of funding and delivery, inchoate in relation to the benefits system, and missing some of its key objectives. The Minister and Ms Patel will hear, loudly and clearly, that unless the extension to 30 hours’ funding provides for the right degree of uplift for providers, which means that they no longer have to subsidise the system themselves, there will be a meltdown. These are not my words but those of the Pre-school Learning Alliance. Does not the Minister agree that this is an obvious opportunity to put these failings right and to create a more robust and fair system of provision?

Will the Minister do as the Select Committee asked—the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, alluded to this in his speech—and clarify the objects of the policy in the Bill? What is the prime aim of this policy? Is it about boosting child development, through childcare, for the poorest children, or is it about working parents? Of course they are both important and fit together but the policy objectives need to be integrated and articulated in such a way that we can see where the funding is going and what impact it will have. Cheap low-quality childcare gives to parents an opportunity to park their children, but it does very little to lift child development.

In the letter the Minister sent to noble Lords he referred to working families and reducing the cost of childcare, but there is no mention of providing quality childcare as an objective. I am sure that was an oversight rather than a deliberate omission.

However, if the prime objective is to close the attainment gap for children, which disables so many from accessing the curriculum, will he provide in his new plans for more early years specialist teachers in the voluntary sector? Will he follow the leading example of Wales and provide for cultural enrichment to aid language, social and reading skills for the most disadvantaged? Will he correct the situation whereby the poorest children are in settings which are neither good nor outstanding in many cases? Will he now provide for additional provision for disabled children? In short, will he commit to developing a proper strategy for the early years workforce to improve training and qualifications and to increase capacity?

If the prime aim of the policy is to get as many parents back into work as possible, the Minister will know that the evidence suggests, as already quoted, that it is reaching far fewer working parents than anticipated at a formidable cost. Does he accept the findings of the IFS? Can he tell the House how the Bill intends to enable providers to move to full daycare and greater flexibility? How much will it cost to do this? How much of that will be capital investment?

Finally and fundamentally there is the question of funding. What does the Minister think the Prime Minister meant when he spoke of the providers being properly paid for the level of childcare they provide? Does it mean, for example, that the Prime Minister and the Minister agree with the Pre-school Learning Alliance that the existing commitment to £350 million is around a quarter of what is needed? That evidence was provided to the Select Committee by the Minister in the other place. We need an answer on that. Does he agree that unless this is provided there are real fears of more and more providers withdrawing from the system, which will undermine and railroad the entire policy? Again I quote the Pre-school Learning Alliance.

Yesterday we heard the Minister, Mr Gyimah, suggest that the funding issue was less challenging than everyone seems to think because a high proportion of the extra 15 hours to be provided will be accounted for by parents who now pay for childcare but who will, under the 30 hours extension, be able to access it free for the first time. This raises some profound questions to which we need answers. What proportion of parents do the Government think will simply transfer from paid care to free care? If this is intended to bring more parents into work, what proportion will be likely and able to access free childcare for the first time? In short, if the test is to expand the provision for working parents and economic benefit, who will the policy provide for and what will be the outcomes for parents and the system? At the moment, as we have heard, parents who pay are, in effect, subsidising the shortfall in the cost of free places, which varies hugely from place to place. What will be the impact on those precariously funded providers, as we heard from the right reverend Prelate?

Will the Minister guarantee that the uplift in funding will cover the cost not only of extending hours but of enhancing the skills and the capacity of the workforce to provide the high-quality, rich learning experience which will make a real difference to poorer children when they start school?

The Select Committee produced a devastating forecast of what will happen if underfunding in the system is not addressed. We understand the call for additional free hours of early education to help working parents. However, in light of the evidence of underfunding of free early education in the PVI sector, we believe that an extension of the entitlement to free early education would be unsustainable for the private sector at current funding levels. It would not be possible for providers to recoup the losses made on the delivery of free early education places if this were extended to 25 hours a week. We are talking here about 30 hours, not 25.

This report was the obvious place to start building a new and improved model of childcare. Quite simply, I fear that, by proceeding as they are, the Government are at risk of not taking advantage of thinking this through and creating a better start for the most disadvantaged children and poorest parents, and that this extended model could build on—and actually compound—some of the failings of the existing system. It is almost certain to do that unless the funding review finds the money with which to build, rather than undermine, capacity. I very much hope that the Minister will think again about the scope, as well as the process, of the Bill.