Childcare Entitlements
Claire Hanna Excerpts(3 months ago)
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David Johnston
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the things that might happen with this expansion is that parents will for the first time have childcare for their two-year-olds. The other thing is that, because they can claim 15 hours, they might increase the hours they were already paying for, to relieve the pressure on their finances. So she is absolutely right about the labour market impact. The Office for Budget Responsibility said that it expected 60,000 people to enter the workforce and 1.5 million to increase their hours as a result of being able to access this childcare, which will be a huge benefit to the economy.
Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)
Childcare in Northern Ireland is in a critical condition, and we are not even receiving these new changes, flawed as they may be. On Saturday, I joined thousands of parents on a march in Belfast demanding immediate intervention, because £10,000 a child per year is far from unusual. The Northern Ireland Executive promised that that would be a day one priority, but they have not delivered more than warm words. One interim solution could be raising the £2,000 tax-free limit—even just in line with inflationary pressures, as applies to other benefits—certainly for Northern Ireland parents who miss out on what the Minister has just outlined. Will he commit to exploring that with the Treasury in order to, in his words, “empower” parents?
David Johnston
The precise parameters for that are set by the Treasury, but we would like more people to claim that tax-free childcare, because many people could claim it but do not do so at that level—and, of course, it is doubled for children with SEND. People can have that with the existing entitlements in England, which can further boost their finances. We are keen to encourage people to do that.
Early Years Childcare
Claire Hanna Excerpts(9 months, 1 week ago)
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Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) on securing the debate, and the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather) on an excellent maiden speech. It reminded me that my maiden speech as a Member of the Legislative Assembly some years ago was on childcare. I hope that he is slightly more successful than me in achieving his political aims.
Members across the Chamber have made excellent points about the chronic failure to think big on the issue of childcare, and about the series of minor interventions to tinker with a sector that is struggling under the weight of complex funding streams. Such interventions have increased demand on the sector, as various promises of free hours are made without any meaningful work on the supply side and so do not add up to any sort of solution. As we have heard, the UK has the highest childcare costs in the OECD. Northern Ireland is falling even further behind because, as my colleague the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry) said, successive Executives have failed to take sufficient interest in the issue.
The crisis is not new. As I said, I addressed it as an MLA back in 2016, and I subsequently established an all-party group, which has driven quite substantial policy change and ideas. However, when government is down more than it is up, implementing those things is difficult. There has been quite a bit of progress in people’s understanding of the issue, and I credit Northern Ireland groups such as Employers For Childcare and Melted Parents NI, as well as the Federation of Small Businesses, with correctly framing the issue as one of gender equality in the workplace, of outcomes for children and, fundamentally, of economics. The issue is crucial in tackling Northern Ireland’s chronically low productivity and high levels of economic inactivity.
In January, my Social Democratic and Labour Party colleagues in the Assembly set out a plan for a two-stage rescue plan to address the acute cost of living pressures that families face, including gargantuan—and growing—childcare bills, which, as Members have said, dwarf housing and other costs; and to address the recruitment and retention crisis that the sector faces. We also had a longer-term strategy that would borrow from successful—and usually social democratic—economies around the world. We noted at that time the inverted pyramid of funding that means that 10 times more is spent on post-primary education than on early years education, despite all that we know about the impact of a child’s first 1,000 days.
Nobody is pretending that this is a simple issue, but the necessary fixes for childcare start from the principle that it is a common good. Yes, having children may be meaningful in our lives—I think back to being asked by an indignant morning radio presenter whether this was not just chronic self-interest on my part because I had big childcare bills—but fixing childcare starts with an acceptance that, as well as being a meaningful experience, parenting is necessary for the replenishment of the human race and the workforce of the future, so providing for childcare is a matter for us all. It starts from the knowledge that more equal societies do better. That means affording everyone an equal opportunity to thrive in the workplace, and understanding that giving children a better and more equal start in life is good for the public purse and for society throughout their lifetime.
Childcare Reform Package
Claire Hanna Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Claire Coutinho
I thank my right hon. Friend—I have just had a bit of a flashback to my days as a Treasury Parliamentary Private Secretary. He is absolutely right that the supply of childcare will be a really important part of growth, as has been reiterated by the IMF and others.
Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)
Progress in this area is very welcome and necessary, but parts of the statement will be dispiriting for families in Northern Ireland, as we fall even further behind. Can the Minister confirm that Northern Ireland will receive commensurate funding through the Barnett formula, and have she and her officials given any thought to how the new regulations and resources might be applied in Northern Ireland? Furthermore, given the extremely austere budget settlement in Northern Ireland, does she acknowledge that even where there are improvements in childcare, many children will be going on to increasingly degraded and under-resourced primary schools?
Claire Coutinho
The money will be passed on in the normal way across the education budget. We regularly meet Education Ministers from the devolved Administrations, and the Secretary of State held such a meeting, I think from memory, in early June.