Oral Answers to Questions

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

I associate myself with the Secretary of State’s comments, and send my thoughts and best wishes to all those in the school community of Ammanford at this very difficult time.

“The extension does not achieve its primary aim or demonstrate value for money”.

That is a damning line from the National Audit Office’s report into the Government’s childcare expansion. For months, the Secretary of State has told parents and providers that they were wrong to be concerned, yet now we learn that even her own Department considers delivery to be “problematic”—her own failure exposed. Why has she not listened and got a serious plan in place, or is she simply waiting for Labour to publish ours so that she can steal it? [Laughter.]

[Gillian Keegan]

I do not think anyone in the country is waiting for Labour to publish its plan. This is serious, because of course we are ambitious; delivering the largest expansion of childcare in our country’s history is not an easy task, but that is the job of Government, and that is what we are doing. Thanks to the expansion, over 200,000 more children are getting childcare support. We are already delivering, and have put that deliverability into three phases to make sure we continue to deliver.

We know what we need—we need places, we need workforce, and we need the children—but Labour has absolutely no plan. First Labour Members criticised our childcare model, then they said they would scrap it, and now they are saying that it is not their job to have a plan. It is time for Labour to stop talking down our childcare sector and commit to supporting our plan, which is clearly working.

[Bridget Phillipson]

Nonsense, Mr Speaker. What people right across this country want is a general election, and it cannot come soon enough.

It is not only on childcare that the Secretary of State is in a total mess; school leaders, teachers and staff have been dismayed by her failure to reform Ofsted. She simply refuses to listen to staff, to the Education Committee, or indeed to parents. I am clear that under Labour, the days of one-word judgments will come to an end, so when can we expect the Secretary of State to follow Labour’s lead and commit to ending Ofsted’s headline grades?

[Gillian Keegan]

We will not follow Labour’s lead, because in 2010 only 68% of schools were rated “good” or “outstanding”; now, thanks to our reforms and hard work, that figure is up to 90%. We have already delivered a number of changes to improve the way Ofsted carries out its inspections, but the answer to these challenges is not to water down standards by abolishing Ofsted, as Labour has twice proposed to do. That accountability is one reason why 90% of our schools are “good” or “outstanding”—up from just 68% under Labour. In the past year alone, over 200,000 more children are attending “good” or “outstanding” schools because of the work that we do to improve standards, and Ofsted is an important part of that.