Childcare Entitlements

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister began by saying that this is the biggest expansion in childcare, and she is right; we share those ambitions. But it is because it is the biggest expansion we have experienced in childcare that the NAO report is so worrying.

Among the things the report says, in many different ways, is the difficulty the DfE has in getting the right data to plan properly. While I have listened to what the Minister said about how the DfE will respond, with better benchmarks and so on, I find it very difficult to know how it will do that given the quality of data. I will quote from page 33 of the report:

“Given limited engagement, DfE does not know the market’s willingness and capacity to increase places … There remain uncertainties over whether the sector can expand”.


If you take that set of uncertainties, it becomes clearer why this is the DfE’s top risk. The risks have already been enunciated by my noble friends. They include risks to places, operational infrastructure, insufficient parent demand and an unstable market. That is an extraordinary range of risks. The risk register must be glowing red. Can the Minister share the risk register with us so that we can see where the DfE sees the greatest risks coming from and what the responses will be? If she cannot do that, maybe she can explain how the risks identified are being addressed on a systematic basis.

I turn to the conclusion of the NAO report. It says that the DfE

“has assessed its confidence in meeting milestones beyond April 2024 as ‘problematic’. It must now use available data to understand when it needs to intervene”.

But, as I said, if the quality of data and access to data are so limited, how will the department do that?

The conclusion ends:

“In extending entitlements, the government’s primary aim is to encourage more parents into work. Even if DfE successfully navigates the significant uncertainties”,


which are documented throughout the report,

“it remains unclear whether the extension will achieve its primary aim, represent value for money and not negatively impact DfE’s wider priorities relating to quality and closing the disadvantaged attainment gap”.

Each of those phrases carries tremendous weight, particularly the last one about the attainment gap. How are the Government going to respond credibly to that set of very authoritative statements?

Finally, I have a general point. The NAO report is a reality check. I have every sympathy with the Minister and with the DfE in trying to deliver this, because it is a huge challenge. One of the reasons for that is that it is an object lesson in how not to make policy. The Government did not consult the providers early enough or get an understanding of what the market was like on the ground. They did not address the historical underfunding, as we discussed when we debated this last November, which was built into the system from 2013 onwards, and did not understand the lack of resilience in the sector. The Minister talked about retention and recruitment but, in fact, between 2018 and 2023 an increase of only 5% was achieved in recruitment and retention. The target for the coming years is much higher.

This is a very serious report, and it is going to demand from the department a very serious and credible reply. The real risks are the risks to parents, who want and need to be able to count on this service, and to children, who need quality provision, which they are not likely to get unless investment is properly guaranteed and targeted.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I have to say that I did not agree with everything that the noble Baroness asserted. To start with the risk register, it is not glowing red, but it is of course a priority risk for the department. The noble Baroness understands this extremely well from her previous experience. We are doubling the commitment in this area financially: we will spend £8 billion a year once this rollout is complete, from £4 billion today. That is a massive increase, and it is a real challenge in a market with a number of small providers and with the way in which, rightly, we work through local authorities and providers. So it would be irresponsible—and I think that the noble Baroness would be criticising the Government—if it was not a significant risk for the department. But that means that it gets a great deal of focus, and there are very detailed plans to support it.

As for consulting the sector, I slightly take exception to what the noble Baroness said. The department works very closely with the sector, providers, parents and local authorities, and it is crucial that we do, because we are committed to getting this right.

As for the willingness of providers, and the point that the noble Baroness picked from the report about our understanding of willingness and capacity, as I pointed out earlier, capacity for all types of provider rose by over 20% last year. That is very significant, as I am sure that the noble Baroness agrees. On the point about willingness, almost 40% of group-based providers, 33% of school-based providers and 42% of child minders said that they would be more likely to offer places to children under three, given this expansion. About half of them—it is slightly different, but I shall not bore the House with all the numbers—said that those would be additional places, so they would not be substituting an older child with a younger child.

Where I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness is that this is a very serious report. We take it very seriously, and we will respond in full.