Child Care

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The provisions offered by Sure Start centres were part of a socialisation process, including parenting and getting children school-ready, that was vital to those families’ prospects. We know that children who do well at school also have parents invested in them doing well at school, and the Sure Start provision was part of that.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have to be careful because many people in the press misinterpreted Baroness Morgan’s statement as meaning kids sitting in rows learning at two. It is early years stimulation we want, and we get that—it is affordable on the Danish model—if we employ people who are well trained to do it, like the social pedagogues in Denmark.

[Tristram Hunt]

As ever my hon. Friend makes the point for a broader understanding of education, for play, for creativity and, above all, a high quality of provision. That is about making sure that we have high-quality childminders, those involved in nurturing, education and play for young people.

Sadly, what we have had from the Government is a sustained assault on early years provision. The coalition’s child care crunch means that since the last election the cost of nursery places has risen by 30%. There are 578 fewer Sure Start centres, with three being lost on average every week. The cost of a nursery place is now the highest in history, at more than £100 a week to cover part-time hours, and parents working part time on average wages would need to work from Monday to Thursday before they paid off their weekly childcare costs.

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[Tristram Hunt]

We are delighted to work on a cross-party basis to make sure that we have as high-quality of child care provision as possible. All parties understand that those who look after toddlers and young people should have as much experience and training as possible, and we are always delighted to work with Ministers to see how we can go up the value chain.

[Mr Sheerman]

In the early days of being the Chair of the former Education Committee, I remember visiting settings just after the minimum wage was introduced. Many people were horrified, because up until then they had been paying £1 an hour. That was the desperate situation we were left with in 1997.

[Tristram Hunt]

What a valuable point, which reminds us that the Conservative party opposed the national minimum wage and proper payment for child care workers.

It is the Labour party that has a response to the cost of living crisis. In government, we will deal with the child care crunch by expanding free child care for three-year-olds and four-year-olds from 15 hours to 25 hours per week for working parents. The value of that child care is worth £1,500 per child per year. It would be paid for by increasing the bank levy, charged as a proportion of their liabilities, to raise an extra £800 million. In the past financial year, the banks paid a staggering £2.7 billion less in tax overall than they did in 2010. The Government have given the banks an extraordinary tax break and we would reintroduce some fairness into the system to support our child care plans. [Interruption.]

I hear laughter from the Government Benches about our plans for the financial services industry, so I will quote from this Saturday’s Financial Times:

“Good times return as City gets in Christmas spirit,”

reported the paper.

“After years of yuletide austerity following the financial crisis, party organisers and venue owners are seeing a resurgence in the market for festive frivolity.”

Well, good luck to them. We on the Labour Benches like to see the return of some animal spirits, but all we are saying is that some of that festive frivolity could be spent on securing affordable child care. That is called progressive politics, and the Government parties should try it.

To give parents of primary age children peace of mind, Labour will set down in law a guarantee that they can access child care through their local school if they want it. Parents of primary age children will benefit most from a new guarantee, as this is when families most require child care support. Of course, parents will have to pay for that, just as they do now, but this is an opportunity to deliver sport, music, healthy eating and after-school clubs alongside child care support.

The truth of the matter is this: high-quality child care and early years services are the foundation stone of a successful approach to tackling child poverty and improving social mobility. The Labour party has a costed and effective plan to deliver both. The coalition has broken promises, has poor priorities and has arrogantly refused to deal with the cost of living crisis. I commend this motion to the House.

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[Elizabeth Truss]

I think the hon. Lady is having a laugh about her child care guarantee. It would not mean that schools have to offer extended hours; they would need only link to a child care provider on a website. That is not what parents mean by extended hours.

I note that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central did not repeat his leader’s claim about the number of child care places. Could that be because his leader claimed there were only 1.3 million child care places in the country, when in fact there were more than 2 million, because they missed out the 800,000 places—30% of the market—available in schools? The number of settings is going up. It is strange, given that he has talked about his colleague Baroness Morgan advocating child care for two-year-olds in schools, that he does not know that schools provide child care and that his leader did not include those 800,000 places in his statistics. He also seems completely unaware that Building Schools for the Future was not for primary schools, but for secondary schools. Under his Government, funding for primary school places was cut by one quarter.

[Mr Sheerman]

Within the limits of this sort of debate, the hon. Lady is not making a bad speech, but many ordinary people and parents outside desperately want even better child care and are hanging on her words. What will the Government do to move to the next stage?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I will come to that point later, but first I need to correct some factual inaccuracies that the leader—sorry, I mean the shadow Education Secretary; I am promoting him already—made.

The Labour party claims it will fund extra child care places for three and four-year-olds through the bank levy. I think we have heard that somewhere before. To be precise, we have heard it 11 times before, because it is to be spent on: the youth jobs guarantee, which will cost £1.04 billion; reversing the VAT increase, £12.75 billion; more capital spending, £5.8 billion; reversing the child benefit savings, £3.1 billion; more regional growth fund spending, £200 million; reversing tax credit savings, £5.8 billion; cutting the deficit, no amount is specified; turning empty shops into community centres, £5 million; spending on public services, question mark; more housing, £1.2 billion; and now child care, £800 million.