Child Care (London)

Heidi Alexander Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity for this debate. I should say at the outset that I feel somewhat unqualified to lead a debate on child care. I am not a mum and, on the rare occasions that I am entrusted with the care of my niece, my brother often wonders whether she will come back in one piece. I am delighted that the very prospect of the debate led to a flurry of Government announcements on child care in the past few days. Clearly the power of Westminster Hall debates should never be underestimated, especially when they coincide with Budget day.

I called for this debate because the simple truth is that the cost and availability of high-quality child care in the capital is a real problem for hundreds of thousands of families. The lack of affordable nursery places, after-school clubs and childminders puts a huge financial strain on parents. It stops many women who want to go back to work from doing so, and in some cases means that children miss out on the start in life that they deserve. I welcome the signs that, after four years, the Government may be slowly waking up to the scale of the problem. They are, however, still spending less on child care than the previous Government, and there are questions about who benefits most from their over-hyped voucher scheme.

Help for families who struggle with child care costs cannot come soon enough, but the Government will not be thanked if their schemes hike up already high prices even further. I also cannot help but think that assisting families who earn up to £300,000 with the cost of their nanny, for example, is a step too far. Support is undoubtedly required across the spectrum of low and moderate-income families, but the idea that the Prime Minister struggles with his child care costs will strike most people as somewhat bizarre.

In past few days, Ministers have taken to the airwaves to talk about child care, but the problems experienced by parents have not come about overnight. Although the debate focuses on the problems in London, such problems are, of course, not confined to the capital. Rocketing fees in London in recent years, the comparatively longer journey times to work, and a growing and relatively young population, mean that the child care crunch is more severe in the capital than elsewhere. That proportionately fewer people in London than in other regions have grandparents close at hand and that many people do not work nine-to-five adds a further layer of complexity. In the past year alone, child care costs in London have increased by 19%, which is five times faster than average earnings. Nationally, since the election child care costs have increased by 30%. Add to that spiralling energy bills, sky-high rents and the increasing cost of the weekly shop, it is no wonder that Londoners feel that they are experiencing a crisis in their cost of living.

London is by far the most expensive part of the country for child care. Childminders for over-fives, for example, cost 44% more than the British average, and nursery costs for under-twos are 28% more than average— 25 hours a week of nursery care now comes in at more than £140. That sounds bad, but it gets worse. The 2014 child care costs survey, carried out by the Family and Childcare Trust, found that the most expensive nursery in London costs £494 a week for 25 hours. Over a year, a full-time place, which equates to 50 hours, would cost £25,700. Given that the average salary in London is not a great deal more than that, it does not take a genius to see the problem.

When I found out last week that I had secured this debate, I took to Twitter and e-mail to ask people for their experiences and views on child care in London. Suffice to say, I got interesting responses immediately. Barbara Mercer on Twitter simply said,

“need to do something—it’s hitting our pockets really hard.”

Bex Tweets told me:

“I just gave up my job because, had I gone back, I would have been out of pocket by £200 a week.”

Julia, a civil servant, decided in effect to work for less than nothing because of her desire to get back to her job. Her short e-mail is worth sharing with hon. Members, as it sums up the problem for many. She said:

“I have two small children—aged two and one. I work part time and take home £1,100 a month after tax and pay £1,950 to my local nursery. Obviously this is ridiculous but luckily my husband and I can just about scrape by and it is worth losing money to go to work because being at home full time with the babies drove me crazy! I earn a decent salary and can’t find cheaper child care in Surbiton where I live so you can see there is a problem. I am very lucky my husband can subsidise me working—many of my friends simply can’t afford to work so are losing their career.”

[Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

On that final point about women losing their careers, is that not one reason why they are held back in promotions and cannot get to the top? If they have very large gaps in their working life, the rest of their working life is affected. Women who want to take up the option of going back into work but not full time should be able to do that, but child care prevents that.

[Heidi Alexander]

I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend. It affects not only their working life, but their home life. If parents are happy and fulfilled in their work life, hopefully their home life will be happy and more fulfilled, too.

I was talking about Julia’s child care experience in Surbiton, which is typical of many women, and indeed men, throughout London. Three quarters of parents in the capital say that child care costs affect how many hours they work. A quarter say that they are unable to work simply because of that cost. Despite being the UK’s richest city, London has the lowest maternal employment rate in the country. The economy loses out because of that: employers lose the benefit of skilled staff and the Government pay benefits when they could be collecting taxes.

Many parents decide that they do not wish to work after having children, or that they want to return on a part-time basis. I do not stand here today to tell mums and dads what they should or should not do. If families can get by and are happy on one parental income and the other parent wants to look after the child or children full time, all power to them, but I want families to be able to make a genuine choice about what is right for them and their children, and not to be boxed into a corner because of soaring child care costs.

For some parents, the double-edged luxury of having to make that sort of decision is taken away right at the start. In some parts of London, the supply—let alone cost—of suitable child care provision that matches families’ needs is a real problem. According to analysis done by the then Daycare Trust of the 2011 child care sufficiency assessments, 15 councils in London—nearly half of all London local authorities—did not have enough breakfast and after-school provision to meet demand. Another 16 councils did not have sufficient school holiday child care and 13 identified that they did not have enough suitable child care for disabled children.

For Londoners who work shifts or those on zero-hours contracts, it can be nigh on impossible to find appropriate, flexible child care. As many as 1.4 million jobs in London are in sectors in which employment regularly falls outside of normal office hours and, as mums and dads know, if a job’s working hours are outside of nine-to-five, they also fall outside normal nursery hours.

The lack of suitable provision may be one of the factors that explains why only 51% of parents in London whose two-year-olds are eligible for the Government’s free 15 hours of child care have actually made use of the scheme. That level of take-up is significantly lower than elsewhere in the country, and it does not really make sense in the context of the relative strength of the London economy. I suspect that there is a range of factors at play to explain why take-up is lower in London than elsewhere. However, I cannot help but think that the serious gaps in child care provision may be part of the problem.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

My hon. Friend is making a most excellent speech. Does she agree that the current shortage of primary school places is exacerbating the situation, with parents having to take their children much further than before to get to a local school, which again is because of Government policies that prevent councils from providing more primary school places?

[Heidi Alexander]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend, whose constituency neighbours mine in London. She will know the significant problems that exist for families, particularly for parents in work, when they have to take children to different locations, whether it is for primary school or child care. Despite having met the Minister for Schools at the Department for Education last year to discuss this issue, I am not convinced that enough funding is being made available to London to meet the rising demand for school places, not only at primary but at secondary level, where the demand for places will soon feed through.

In December, the Government announced extra money to help to stimulate the supply of flexible child care in London, but I am simply not convinced that that money will go far enough to deal with the problem. I am also not convinced that this week’s announcements make up for the reductions in support to parents that the Government pushed through earlier in their term of office. We know that in April 2011, changes to the child care element of working tax credit led to a reduction in the amount of help that parents get with child care costs. For example, in December 2013, average weekly payments for those benefiting from that element of working tax credit were around £11 less than they were in April 2011. The Government’s changes also led to a drop in the overall number of families receiving such support. In April 2011, 455,000 families were benefiting from that support, but that dropped by 71,000, and in December 2013 only 422,000 families were benefiting. Given those clear figures, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the Government are guilty of giving with one hand while taking away with the other.

Many of those who struggle most with the cost of child care in London are lone parents on low incomes. My constituency in Lewisham has approximately 9,000 single-parent families, and it is estimated that in London as a whole there are more than 325,000 single mums or dads. Contrary to media stereotypes, the single mums I meet are often desperate to find work, but they find it hard to organise their life in a way to make it possible for them to work. Child care is central to their difficulties.

The need to make work pay for those single mums and dads cannot be overstated. One of my big concerns, before yesterday’s announcement, was that the Government were set on a course with universal credit that would have made work not pay but hurt for some of the poorest single parents, who are struggling to get back into low-paid, part-time work. The Government’s U-turn on the amount of child care costs to be covered by universal credit is welcome, but it is fair to ask whether they instinctively understand the issue when their flagship welfare policy was initially designed with such flaws.

The truth of the matter is that the Government have been forced to promise action on child care costs because they know that Labour’s commitment to increase the amount of free child care available to the parents of three and four-year-olds makes complete sense to increasingly hard-pressed families.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Slough is very like London and our child care market is very similar to London’s. Recently, I have been out talking to mums about child care. The demand that I regularly hear from mothers who want to get back into work is that they need access to training and upskilling with child care. What if they cannot find that either at their original workplace or in a new job if they need to change their career, as was the case with a flight crew member I recently spoke to? Does my hon. Friend agree that we should be trying to ensure that training opportunities for those mums enable them to have their children looked after and to get qualifications and skills?

[Heidi Alexander]

My hon. Friend makes an important point and I agree with her remarks entirely.

Before I bring my remarks to a close, I shall press the Minister on two further policy areas. First, what specific plans do the Government have to ensure that there is greater flexibility in the provision of child care? Ministers have stated that they would like children’s centres and schools to be open for longer, but it is not clear what direct support those centres and schools would receive to help them to achieve that aim. Would the Government consider, for example, giving greater powers to local authorities to influence the decisions of individual schools with regard to extending opening hours? We know that academies and free schools fall outside the control of local authorities, and if we are to give parents the ability to work it seems to me that they need a guarantee of wraparound care, at least in primary schools. It is right that the Labour party has committed to legislate for that, but it is sad that the Government do not seem to see it as a priority.

Secondly, while there is an urgent need for more flexible child care, there is also a need for the Government to encourage employers to offer better paid and more flexible work opportunities. As someone who regularly fights to get a seat on a train into London Bridge in the morning, I know that a move to more flexible working hours could also benefit London’s creaking public transport system.

I acknowledge that some steps have been taken to encourage employers to offer more flexibility to staff who are parents, but as I understand it such flexibility is still heavily biased towards existing employees and comes with the caveat of a six-month waiting period after starting a job—parents must wait six months before they can make a request for flexible work. Does the Minister have any plans to extend rights for flexible working? I would be interested to hear about the discussions that she has had with her colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on that.

In conclusion, I simply say that London is the wealthiest city in the UK and yet 25% of its children live in poverty. Currently, parents in London face exorbitant child care costs, which drain household finances and leave some of them unable to work when they want to. This is clearly a cost of living problem, but it is also about people’s quality of life and opportunities for their children. Ultimately, what we should all be striving for are children who are well provided for and happy, and more productive parents who enjoy more freedom of choice. As I have said, I am not a parent myself, but it has always struck me that happy and fulfilled parents are more likely to have happy and fulfilled children. Tackling the cost and supply of child care in London is undoubtedly a big task, but it would have equally large rewards. I am not sure whether the recent spate of Government announcements provides the radical solution that they claim. What I do know is that Londoners are impatient for action, and that neither parents nor the Government can afford to allow the current situation to continue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick de Bois]

I will, as I said, come on to the issues that we are facing in my constituency. However, the work force, on the supply side, is equally as important as the facilities. If the numbers halve, the problem of servicing good quality child care provision will be increased.

I suspect that we would also agree that the quality of the work force is important. That is unquestionable. We do not want to create places just to dump a child in, so that people can go off and have some free hours; no one is into that. We need good quality care. I am sure that the Government’s aims and attentions in this regard would draw cross-party support, because Opposition Members would have said, and tried to do, the same.

We can do things to open up the supply side. I do not generally like to intervene in markets, but we should try to work up constructive ways for the Government to apply leverage to encourage schools to admit younger children. We have to deregulate the process of allowing schools to admit younger children. We made it easier for schools to teach children under three by removing requirements to register separately with Ofsted, a move that was well intentioned, but we do not want to make it difficult. So often, by liberating certain elements of the market, we can free it up and increase the supply side.

On helping schools to offer affordable after school and holiday care, I want primary schools to be open for more hours each day—so does the hon. Member for Lewisham East—and for more weeks a year, to better match the working family’s time table. That can be done locally and I am all for empowering people locally to take those decisions—and, boy, are they needed in my constituency.

We should also be helping good nurseries expand, not stopping them. I would be interested to know whether the Minister is working with councils to explore ways that we can expand the supply side in the boroughs, particularly those that are challenged.

[Heidi Alexander]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about the need to expand nurseries, some of which will, of course, be co-located with schools. Does he recognise that the crisis in primary school places in London, which we discussed earlier, means that the physical expansion of nurseries is even more difficult now than it may have been in the past, because sites are taken up with temporary classrooms and the space does not exist?

[Nick de Bois]

The hon. Lady takes me down a path that I am quite interested in, because we have faced an expansion in primary schools, which unfortunately was not planned in advance. I know that London has transition problems, so it is more difficult to plan in London than elsewhere, but some of the planning that we have done has been to meet an urgent, immediate need for the next year, and we could have used the space much better in some primary schools in my area. We need to free up the planning regulations to make sustainable expansion that much easier. We have seen that done actively in schools. The hon. Lady may have encountered the same problem that I have—that temporary expansion encourages complaints from residents—when we try to meet extra demand in our area.

I often feel that we have missed out on long-term planning. If we could free up planning regulations and look ahead, a strategic plan would allow us to expand provision for both the younger child and the schoolchild. I should add that the problem is not just with primary; we are now passing it on to secondary, and that will be the next challenge.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am about to come on to the issues that are specific to London, and will address that point then.

We are absolutely passionate about quality and improving outcomes, which we know have previously been issues. There is an 18-month vocabulary gap between children from low-income and high-income backgrounds. That is a problem for all of us, because it means that children start school in different positions. We have improved the standards for early years teachers, so that they now have to meet the same standards as primary school teachers. We have seen a 25% increase in the number of early years teachers enrolling on courses in the past year. We are also raising the standards for early years educators. This week, we announced an early years pupil premium for three and four-year-olds, which means that there will be extra money for the most disadvantaged children aged three and four.

We have improved the Ofsted framework, so it now looks at the qualifications of staff in nurseries and is much more focused on outcomes. We have introduced Teach First for early years teaching, to make sure that we are getting the best and brightest graduates into that vital sector. Most importantly, we are working on a coherent framework for the teaching structure from the ages of two to 18, so that early years provision is not seen as an afterthought but as a core part of our education system.

I recognise that there is a greater challenge in London. That is why I launched an £8 million fund with the Mayor of London at the end of last year. That aims to unlock the £1 billion that the Department for Education spends on early years provision in London.

I very much agree with the comments on increasing flexibility. A lot of school nurseries offer parents three hours, five days a week. That does not fit with many people’s working patterns. It also does not use our school nursery resources very well. In London, 45% of early years places are in school nurseries, which are generally open only between 9 am and 3 pm. If those school nurseries were all open between 8 am and 6 pm, that would give 66% extra child care hours. It is not a question of building more facilities but of using our facilities better. Those nurseries could open for two five-hour sessions a day, offering multiple hours.

[Heidi Alexander]

Will the Minister give way?

[Elizabeth Truss]

Forgive me, but I have to keep an eye on the time to make sure that I cover all the points that hon. Members have raised. I wanted to say specifically to the hon. Lady that the figure is even higher in Lewisham—half of all early years places there are in school nurseries. In Enfield, the figure is 42%. Think of the extra places we could provide if all those school nurseries opened for the longer hours I mentioned. It is not that the children should have full-time places; it is a question of parents being able to access places flexibly. Nurseries are entirely able to charge for the extra hours parents take, so they can open to suit the timetables of working parents.

That is why we launched the scheme with the Mayor of London and are working with different London boroughs. I would welcome the support of local MPs. Our officials have been discussing the matter with officials from Enfield and Lewisham in particular, as well as with officials from the three boroughs concerned. I hope that those discussions will help to address some of the issues. At the moment, we have fantastic resources, particularly in London, but we are not using them to full effect. That is a microcosm of the overall problem in child care and early years education: are we getting the best out of the facilities that we have?

If we look at the proportion of places that are in school nurseries, which is up 50% in some boroughs, and the fact that children’s centres provide 4% of child care, there is a much bigger issue to explore with regard to how we best use our school nurseries. In the Children and Families Act 2014, we have legislated for school nurseries to be able to take two-year-olds without having to register separately.

[Heidi Alexander]

We probably share the same aspirations, but the Minister talks about enabling schools to do things, whereas I am interested in how she is going to make them happen. Some of the time, schools do not want to do those kinds of things, and neither the Government nor local authorities have the power to get us to the position that we all want to get to.

[Elizabeth Truss]

We are instituting a school-led system, and it is important that head teachers and other teachers buy into that. We are making things easier by removing a lot of bureaucratic hurdles for schools. It is in a school’s interest to have high-quality nursery education and child care in the school, to help children start school ready to learn, able to communicate and with the right vocabulary. We need to change the culture in education to embrace early years provision more, and move away from having rigid barriers.

We are looking at how admissions policy can affect these issues, particularly for the most deprived children, so that schools have an incentive to take children on. There is a massive opportunity in that area. Some school nurseries across the country have made those changes. They offer very affordable places for children and help their school to do better. That is why we are working with boroughs such as Lewisham and Enfield. We are producing case studies, getting the data together and encouraging schools. The right first step is to make things simpler and easier for schools. I welcome the support of hon. Members in championing this issue in various areas. We can get much better value for money from what we are doing.

I want the overall child care landscape to be understood, as there is a lot of confusion about exactly what proportion of children are in which type of place. In London, a high proportion of children are in school nurseries at age three and four. We are piloting more places for two-year-olds in schools. A high proportion of children are in private and voluntary sector nurseries. I am working with organisations such as the National Day Nurseries Association so that non-school nurseries can link better to schools, the private sector can learn from the public sector and vice versa, and there is less of a divide between them. That is how we will get positive professional practice in the early years sector—by encouraging more inter-working.

On the use of money and the example of Australia, the key point is that we need to make sure that we expand supply. I agree with the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) that if we do not, but simply push more cash in, there will be inflation. That is why the Government are making it easier to expand.