Childcare Bill [Lords]

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Maria Miller

Wednesday 25th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

Childcare is not a political football, and I really hope that the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) is not choosing to make it one. On behalf of my constituents and, indeed, those of Members across the House, we want to make sure that a consistent approach is taken to childcare in the future. That also applies to the children of those constituents and to the providers of childcare as well.

It is important to recognise that there are important differences between Members on the two Front Benches. The Conservative Government are showing a real understanding of the role of childcare, and their proposed measures are vital for working parents. A quiet revolution has been happening in the workplace since the country’s recovery from the recession, with more women in work than ever before, including, to be frank, in this place. It is important to recognise our different approach, particularly the fact that, over the past five years, the Prime Minister has made it central to his work in Government to make sure that shared parental leave and flexible working are in place for all parents and, indeed, in the case of flexible working, for all of us. The Labour party did not deliver those ambitions during its time in office.

There are still many women who are not in work but who would like to be. I am participating in this debate because it is important to support the Bill, which will double free childcare alongside other measures mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary, including, for the first time ever, tax-free childcare. As she has said, it will offer more support to working parents than any previous Government have ever offered. May I gently suggest to her that as well as talking about our being the party of working people, she should talk about our being the party of working women? In essence, that is what this Government are delivering through the childcare priorities that she has set out.

It is vital to understand the pressures faced by working parents, particularly those with small children. In the past, women who wanted to return to work found it almost impossible to do so because of the financial pressures on them. It would be entirely wrong for the other place to seek to delay this important manifesto commitment by forcing yet further research and funding reviews, which are clearly not required for this measure to work. I underline the words “manifesto commitment” to make sure that those in the other place listening to this debate do not seek to block an important measure supported by Members on both sides of this House.

Childcare costs continue to be a real pressure, which is why the Bill is really important. I pay tribute to the work of organisations such as 4Children which have provided us all with excellent briefings in advance of this debate. In its briefing, 4Children points out from its research that one in five parents have considered reducing their working hours because of the cost of childcare. That is why this Government measure is so important. We have gone a long way to make childcare affordable, but there is still more to do, and the Bill will help to do that for parents. I hope that the hon. Member for Manchester Central, who is listening to the debate on the Opposition Front Bench, really registers that point and accepts that it is the will of parents.

I welcome the Bill, as well as the Government’s commitment to increase average childcare funding rates paid to providers. I also welcome the preliminary measures that the Secretary of State has outlined to ensure a fair distribution of funding across the country.

In most of the families in my constituency—one-parent and two-parent households—all the parents are working. Indeed, 16,000 families in Hampshire could benefit from the Bill. This measure will be a seismic change for those families, and it is important to put it in place. In Hampshire, we are well placed to take advantage of the new measures, because 90% of our providers are good or outstanding, according to Ofsted. We have more than 1,400 early years providers in the county, doing a fantastic job providing private and independently owned places to deliver this key public service.

We are, however, still recovering from past measures that were put in place with good intentions but that unintentionally did some damage. In the past, thousands of childminders left the sector because of the pressure they felt from the administrative burdens on them. That was a great shame, because those childminders provided excellent or good childcare for many working parents, particularly those looking for after-school care. Undeniably, Government funding for free places was top-sliced, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) mentioned in his intervention, because of a lack of focus on the detail of how that could be prevented.

Indeed, parents have in the past been overwhelmed by the complexity of what was on offer. Initiatives were so complex, badly communicated or overlapping that many of our constituents found it difficult to understand how they could access them, and they also provided additional complexities for employers. I therefore welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to making the system simpler, which is an admirable place to start.

For a Second Reading debate, the hon. Member for Manchester Central rather over-focused on the financial details. They are important, but so are other things. I will draw the attention of the Secretary of State and her Ministers to a few of them. The first is the importance of making sure that we have stability for parents in terms of their access to childcare. If working parents do not have long-term, permanent contracts, they may have breaks in employment or variable hours during the working week. We need to make sure that there is stability in the childcare on offer to the children involved. Perhaps the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend Member for East Surrey, will touch on how he will ensure that there are grace periods, so that parents with an underlying eligibility who have short breaks in their employment can still access childcare if at all possible.

My second point is on flexibility, building on some of the points made by the hon. Member for Manchester Central. Some 45% of women with children do not work full-time. Many work atypical hours, but many work less than a full working week. Flexibility should take account of both types of work pattern so that the cost of childcare is not higher than it should be, relative to the hours those women work. This should be at the heart of the proposals that Ministers are introducing, not left to the discretion of local authorities. I hope Ministers will consider this further, to make sure that a great policy works in practice for women and parents who need it so badly.

[Emily Thornberry]

From my study of the Blue Book, it seems that childcare will not be available to parents unless they have a weekly income level per parent equivalent to 16 hours a week worked at the national living wage. That seems to contradict the idea of people, particularly women, being able to work flexibly.

[Mrs Miller]

I thank the hon. Lady for bringing that up. I am not about to have a Committee debate on the Floor of the House. I hope she is on the Committee because she will bring undoubted expertise to it, to judge from her earlier comments. I am simply setting out the issues that I think should be debated in the course of the Bill’s passage through the House, and I leave the Ministers to answer the detail of the hon. Lady’s point.

On the business model of the providers, the hon. Member for Manchester Central, speaking for the Opposition, highlighted the need to make sure that the provisions work for the providers. Unlike many services that Governments deliver, childcare is delivered predominantly by private and independent providers. It is important that there is an understanding of the business model according to which providers work, and, as was touched on earlier, it is important to make sure that any funding regime takes into account the realities of business life for providers.

I applaud the announcement today of an increase in the average hourly rate that will go to providers, but this will work only if there is a guarantee that the money made available is not top-sliced by local authorities, which may seek to use it to prop up services that apparently support the childcare sector. Some of those services are important, but most important is that the money gets to the providers to provide the care for our children. Making sure that more of that money gets through will ensure the quality of that care.

Another aspect that I hope the Secretary of State will be able to consider as the Bill passes through the House is the knock-on opportunities for staff. Apprenticeships should be made available to those working in the sector in the quantity that will be needed to staff this new initiative.

I thank my right hon. Friend for her response to my intervention about special educational needs. That point was raised with me by Contact a Family, which has undertaken an excellent piece of research that shows that 40% of families with disabled children cannot take up the 15-hour childcare offer that is currently available. That is 10 times more than the families of non-disabled children. Parents of disabled children often feel that staff do not have sufficient training or that providers can refuse a place for a disabled child. Denying a child that opportunity to develop is unacceptable. Denying parents the opportunity to work is unacceptable. I am delighted to hear that there is a focus on ensuring that the support for children who are disabled to get such childcare is manifest. I applaud the work that has been done and hope that it continues.

In conclusion, I am hugely fortunate to come from an area, Basingstoke and north Hampshire, that has a strong childcare sector—strong because we have a strong local economy as a result of the measures that this Government have put in place. Our unemployment levels are at a record low, but this is not the case all over the country. We need to have a strong scheme to ensure that the childcare sector can flourish in every constituency up and down the country.

In my constituency, more than 40 group settings have said that they want to provide the 30-hour offer and 92 childminders have expressed interest in being part of the early implementation of this groundbreaking offer for parents. I believe that Hampshire County Council is registering its interest in being an early adopter of the policy. I hope that, with support from the Government, the council is able to do that, because we need to ensure that such excellent counties are in the vanguard of delivering this exciting new policy. I commend Ministers for the incredibly hard work they have put into this measure and for bringing it before the House today.

International Women’s Day

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Maria Miller

Thursday 5th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I know that we have crèche facilities, although I am not sure that my 12-year-old would be too excited about going there. The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, which is that at the beginning of the next Parliament, when we start to think about the working hours of this place—I know that there are many different competing demands, with people living in various parts of the country—we have to ask ourselves the questions. If, as the Conservatives will, we have many young women coming into Parliament who may have not yet started their families, and if we are to encourage them to stay here for as long as possible, we have to address the sort of issue he is talking about. I want to encourage more women who have families into Parliament. At the moment, 40% of women MPs do not have children and that is not representative of our population as a whole. In addition, women tend to have shorter parliamentary careers than their male counterparts and tend to have older children, too, so there are some forces at play that he is right to pick up on.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady is making an interesting speech. I wonder whether she shares my experience, which is that at surgeries or even when knocking on doors it tends to be the women who come forward to discuss things. I have had surgeries where the man has been brought along but does not open his mouth and the woman speaks on his behalf. I wonder whether it is a shared experience among women MPs that the level of engagement by women is very high indeed.

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Lady is making an important point. I wish to pay tribute to my local Basingstoke and Deane borough council, particularly its Conservative group, because more than a third of our councillors are women and that is well in excess of any other party. I think there is something else at play in what she says; perhaps as she and I are women MPs, women feel more empowered to take a more assertive position with us because they see women in their community taking a role that they can follow.

I believe that each party is doing good work to encourage more women to stand. I pay particular tribute to the work of Women2Win for my party, under the careful guidance of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the noble Baroness Jenkin in the other place, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton)—an extraordinarily dedicated group of colleagues, who have ensured that an extraordinary group of talented women are set to join us on these green Benches in May. More than a third of our candidates in winnable seats are women. I pay particular tribute to Suella Fernandes, who was selected for Fareham, in my home county of Hampshire, just a few weeks ago. With all her experience, I know that she will be an excellent addition to this place.

My right hon. and hon. Friends here today, many of whom have been MPs for longer than me, have noted many things about this place, but one thing that I was concerned about when I came here was the lack of visibility of the contribution made by the women who had already been in Parliament before me. Since that point, we have seen some progress, but we need to continue under your careful guidance, Mr Speaker, to make progress on that. We have seen the unveiling of the statue of Margaret Thatcher in Members’ Lobby and just this week we have seen an inspiring exhibition of photography and portraiture, which has really started to crystallise the contribution of the extraordinary women we have already seen in this place.

I know that you are one of our great supporters, Mr Speaker, but let us make sure, perhaps as a testament to this international women’s day, not only that we have an exhibition of women’s portraiture and photography in Portcullis House, but that those images creep their way down the corridors to the Palace of Westminster itself and on to the walls of our Committee Rooms, so that the next time I sit on a Delegated Legislation Committee, I do not have to endure two or three hours of simply looking at previous male colleagues on our walls. I think that is perhaps what would be expected, all these years on from the first woman having sat in the House of Commons.

I will close there, because I know that many hon. and right hon. Friends want to contribute to this debate. I look forward to an excellent discussion of the issues that really matter to women in Britain today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emily Thornberry]

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. We have got ourselves into an odd place in which it is accepted that women have to limit the hours they work—that full time may mean just full time and not all the hours of overtime. In many workplaces, if a man wants to be able to get home at six o’clock to see the children there is in some ways more prejudice against him than there might be against a woman, as it would be accepted that she would need to get home. It would be to the benefit and liberation of us all if we looked again at our equal and shared responsibility for unpaid and paid work and allowed people to make choices that are appropriate for them and not based simply on gender. It happens too often and it continues to happen.

My stepmother was a great feminist in the 1970s who translated “The Little Red Schoolbook”, which was a great call to arms at that time. I remember her saying that she was doing that work not for herself—she did not expect it to work for her—but for me. I continue to work, not necessarily for me but for the girls at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and for my daughters. We go down the generations, but although things improve we still have such a long way to go. We must not be complacent.

There is an area in which there is an element of complacency, with the greatest respect to the right hon. Member for Basingstoke, and that is equal pay. Work still needs to be done. The Equal Pay Act 1970, passed some 45 years ago, has run into the sand and we have a number of difficulties with it. First, it was based on the idea of individual women taking out individual complaints about their individual circumstances. They cannot be representative of a class of women or of an entire employment establishment; they do it on their own behalf. They can of course be bought off and there can be a gagging clause in any agreement that is made instead of their going to court, so there is therefore no end to it.

Increasing numbers of cases have taken years and years. The idea of the Dagenham work force going along to a tribunal, representing themselves and it not taking very long is long gone. It can take five years for the preliminary issue in the case to be decided. This process has become counter-productive. As we have established our law on the basis of a form of contract law, the European Court of Justice has said that women should not just get two years’ compensation but six years’ compensation for not being paid equally with men. That has had a chilling effect on employers, who will fight every single case.

In increasing numbers of cases, trade unions and employers come to a negotiated deal on equal pay between men and women only for the trade unions to be sued. We are getting mired in difficulties, but the gender pay gap remains stubbornly at about 10% for women on full pay and at 17% for women who work part time. We should not turn our backs on that.

[Maria Miller]

I reassure the hon. Lady that in no way should she sense any complacency from me on that issue. I was simply pointing out that disaggregating the data uncovers a slightly different issue. I recognise the problems with equal pay and other pay complaints that she has cited, but if we disaggregate the data we can see that the challenge for women over 40 is not focused on enough.

[Emily Thornberry]

There are other problems with the Equal Pay Act. The fact that there are fees has put women off taking cases; there has been a decline of 70% or 80% in the number of women taking cases on equal pay.

I have talked about settlements and about the need for six years’ compensation and its chilling effect, but in addition the Equal Pay Act was based on another way of working in another world. It does not comprehend outsourcing, agency working, bogus self-employment and all the things that have, in my view, often been used to circumvent equal pay. We need a new pay Act that would ensure that such difficulties are directly addressed.

All sorts of increasingly bizarre loopholes have developed in the law. For example, if a woman is replaced by a man and the man gets paid more, it would seem that she is not allowed to compare him with herself and to compare his level of pay to show that she has been discriminated against. In my view, that is nonsense. If a man is paid more than a woman it is a defence for the employer to say that that is not discrimination because it is owing to some other material factor—historical or mistaken. Obviously, that is also nonsense. There is even an argument, which has been upheld in some court cases although not all, that if a woman compares herself with a man who is employed by the same employer but works in a different building, it is not a fair comparison. That is obviously another piece of nonsense that needs to be swept away in a new equal pay Act.

The fundamental problem with the Equal Pay Act is that it is based on individual women taking complaints about their individual circumstances. We should accept, in clause 1 of a new Bill, that it is the responsibility of all of us to ensure that there is equal pay between the genders, so we need to work together to do something about it. A new Act should have a code of practice with some legal standing attached to it so that employers know that they will not be sued so long as the agreements negotiated with the trade unions are made within the code. Employers could volunteer to have proper pay audits, job evaluations and skills audits. If they out sourced that to recognised experts and acted on the basis of their recommendations, that would be a complete defence against any equal pay claim.