Cost of Child Care

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, for whom I have a lot of respect. She takes a keen interest in these matters and wants to make sure that families have real choice among the options available when finding child care places for their children. I will make the very point put to her during yesterday’s debate: we need to make sure that child minders are of the right quality and can provide the best possible care for children. Unfortunately, some child minders, who are no longer registered, were not able to make that leap forward in providing the best possible high-quality care that we all want for the youngest children in our society.

The early-years entitlement was pioneered for four-year-olds in 1998 and it was extended to three-year-olds in 2004. Labour introduced the extended schools programme to help meet the needs of children, families and the wider community. Labour created Sure Start children’s centres and established more than 3,500 of them across the country.

Before the last general election, I was, like many others, relieved to hear the current Prime Minister acknowledge that Labour was right to prioritise child care support for families and pledge to protect Sure Start. However, like so many people, I have been bitterly disappointed that more than 500 Sure Start centres have closed since 2010 and that more than half of those still open are no longer providing on-site child care. All we heard today from the Prime Minister was a confirmation of that.

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

Is the hon. Lady familiar with the situation in Norfolk—a fine county that is home to my constituency and that of the Minister? Its current Labour administration refuses to give any protection to libraries in carrying out the cuts that it now has to make. Does she share my concern that libraries are also used by many families with young children, who need those services? The Conservatives did protect those libraries when they were in a position to do so.

[Bridget Phillipson]

Perhaps the hon. Lady could have a chat with a colleague at the Department for Communities and Local Government about the disproportionate cuts passed on to local councils. My local council is facing some of the biggest cuts in the country, having been given a disproportionate and unfair burden. Councils are being forced to take really difficult decisions about the kinds of services that they can provide.

I value the important role that libraries play in our community, just as I value Sure Start children’s centres. However, councils face impossible demands and are really struggling to balance the books. I suggest that the hon. Lady continues to lobby for her constituents, but it is her Government who are passing on those significant cuts—

--- Later in debate ---

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), whose surname I have just acquired, with an extra z, from his fellow Scot, my husband.

Parents in Norwich North are taxpayers, too, and in this debate we must think about what they are paying. I am delighted that the Government I support have taken many of the lowest-earning parents out of income tax altogether, which is a good thing, but we ought to approach the debate honestly. Those young parents, who, as the right hon. Gentleman rightly said, are very busy, do not necessarily have time in between looking after their youngsters to take an extremely close interest in the goings on of this Chamber, but they should not be paid the disrespect of our talking dishonestly about the size of the pot and who pays for it.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), I am grateful to the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) for calling this debate, which gives us an opportunity to talk about these important issues. The hon. Lady might not be surprised if I begin by saying that, if she knew how hard it was going to be to reduce the deficit, she might have thought twice about her support for her party’s running up of the deficit in the first place. I know of no woman or man, no mother or father—indeed, no rational person—who would desire to leave debt to their children without having had the courage to address it themselves. It ought to be commonplace in this debate to say that addressing the deficit now ensures that future generations are not burdened with unsustainable debt, higher taxes or diminished public services. Of course, I will address the public service aspect today.

Among the many claims and counterclaims that have been made in recent weeks, the salient point, with respect to the taxpayers who have to trust us to do such things for them, is that the Leader of the Opposition has pledged to extend free child care for three and four-year-olds, but he is trying to pay for it using a concept of money that he has already used more than 10 times. It is just not good enough to face young parents with such false accounting, and I am confident that the Minister agrees. It is not good enough to say, “Yes, we’ll borrow more to fund it,” because that borrowing only comes back on the children who we might otherwise be trying to help.

I am pleased that the introduction of tax-free child care that the Minister has so passionately advocated will mean that parents get £1,200 towards each child’s child care costs in addition to both our extension of the hours of free child care and our cutting red tape for schools, so that they can offer more affordable care after school and in the holidays. Those are practical and affordable actions, and we must have this debate in that context. We have to take decisive action for the reasons that we have all tried to set out, but we have to do that by addressing the cost and quality of child care and by having respect for those who entrust us with the job of honest politics.

It is essential that the Government maximise the contribution that women can make to the economy, not because of political correctness but because it is an economic reality. Growth will get this country back to where it ought to be after Labour left it lying in a ditch. Such growth will come about only if we have women in the workplace doing their best for themselves and their family and gaining satisfaction from the careers that we would all like to see. We must remove barriers to the workplace, which is why I am here today to add my voice to the support for what the Government are doing to promote child care policies that help women get back into the workplace.

That leads me to yet another of the numbers that we might want to focus on in the debate. Yesterday, in the main Chamber, a couple of points were made about the number of women in work and the way we might look at the statistics. One statistic, which is important to use in today’s debate, is that almost 200,000 women in coupled families with dependent children have re-entered the workplace since 2011, compared with 185,000 between 1996 and 2011. Earlier, my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal had to deal with the notion that a few years of achievement now are worth more than 13 years of non-achievement in the past, and that point stands on the same side of the argument.

[Catherine McKinnell]

Does the hon. Lady acknowledge that many of the women who are entering the work force are doing so in part-time jobs, although they probably need more hours to pay their bills, and on zero-hours contracts and poor wages, terms and conditions? Seven out of 10 women say they cannot go back to work, because the child care costs are so high that they deter them from doing so, while those who do go back are simply not earning enough to pay their bills.

[Chloe Smith]

I think that the hon. Lady knows all too well that we will deal with the point inside the policy only by tackling the cost of child care, and my hon. Friend the Minister has set out plans to do that. I think that the hon. Lady also knows all too well that we will tackle the far bigger point that sits outside this issue only by securing an economic recovery, and that is what I want to point my comments at on behalf of the taxpayers and families in my constituency.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I am interested to hear the hon. Lady’s economic arguments, but I must correct her on one thing. She suggested that the Labour party left the economy in the doldrums in 2010. In fact, the economy was growing in 2010, but we have had complete economic stagnation since. It would be more honest if she acknowledged that point before continuing.

[Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)]

Order. I am sure the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) will want to get back to the subject of the debate, which is child care.

[Chloe Smith]

Mr Hood, I will be only too delighted to get back to the subject of child care.

The point on which I want to finish is about having honesty in politics for the families who we might wish to help. It is not honest to ignore the fact that Labour doubled the national debt or to try to spend the same amount 10 times.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Chloe Smith]

I am terribly sorry, but I need to finish my comments, so that other Members can speak.

I want to finish on the point that false claims, scaremongering and, worst of all, false accounting do young families absolutely no good. Younger people—various polls and statistics show that this is demonstrably true—are turning away from traditional party politics. Some will become parents and seek to take care of their children, and it will do none of them any good whatever to hear the false numbers that are being put about in this debate. It will not help a single child, parent or citizen to regain faith in what politics is for if we cannot have a slightly more honest debate today.