Free Childcare

Helen Jones Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 132140 relating to free childcare.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies.

The petition has so far garnered more than 132,000 signatures, but the amount of public engagement generated through the Petitions Committee has been quite astonishing. We have had 33,000 posts on our Facebook page, which has been viewed by more than 492,000 people. I did a webchat, which, for someone so useless with technology, is a step forward in itself. A number of people also emailed me personally and some of the stories they told were quite heart-breaking.

The difficulties that many parents have to go through simply to go out to work ought to give us all in the House pause for thought. Because of the difficulties they face, some of those parents, understandably, are quite angry, and sometimes their anger—not in the majority of cases—turns against the wrong target, which is those getting free childcare for two-year-olds. I want to set out the position as it is because there is a misunderstanding. Many people think that free childcare for two-year-olds is only available to parents who are unemployed, but that is not the case.

As we all know, all three and four-year-olds are currently entitled to 15 hours of free childcare for 38 weeks of the year. The provision was brought in by the Labour Government for four-year-olds for 33 weeks of the year, and it was gradually extended. It is a universal provision and most families take up their entitlement. That Government also sought to start to extend free childcare to the most disadvantaged two-year-olds, and the coalition Government broadened that further. It is available not only to those on income support or income-based jobseeker’s allowance, but to children in the poorest working families: those in receipt of tax credits and—the last time I looked—with an income of less than just over £16,000. Crucially, the provision is also available to looked-after children, to children with disabilities and to children with special educational needs. I say that it is available to the children, rather than the parents, because that particular policy is aimed at tackling disadvantage in the early years so that children are ready to start school and benefit properly from their education.

The Government have taken a different course, and seek to extend free childcare for three and four-year-olds to 30 hours a week. Crucially, that is not a universal provision. It is for working parents only, and will be subject to minimum and maximum income limits. It is currently in the pilot stage, and I have reservations, which I will come to later, about how it will be paid for. There is no doubt that the situation is very confusing for parents, and it is understandable that many of them are very angry at the problems they face because the cost of childcare has risen alarmingly in the past few years. It rose by 30% on average between 2010 and 2015, which is five times higher than the rise in wages. The parents who have contacted me have told me about the problems they face not just with childcare during the day, but in getting after-school childcare and holiday care.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady is making an important point about the need for flexibility in the timing of childcare. I am particularly encouraged that the Scottish Government, after a major consultation, have launched a series of trials to ensure that, in Scotland, we can offer places where and when families need them. Does she agree that those steps are significant in making the provisions work for everyone?

[Helen Jones]

I agree with the hon. Lady that we need flexible provision of childcare because what we have does not always fit with parents’ working hours. I will come to that later, but first I will give a few examples of the cost to parents.

Of course, costs vary throughout the country, but so do wages. One lady who contacted me from the north-west said that her family pay £840 a month for three days of childcare a week. Now, they are not highly paid and, to put it into context, that is exactly the same amount as their mortgage payment. Another parent from Surrey, at the other end of the country, got in touch with me. She and her husband have a reasonable joint income of £69,000, but they have twins. They have found that the cheapest way to provide childcare for their twins is to hire a nanny, but the cost of hiring a nanny is about £25,000 a year, which is more than a third of their joint income—an astronomical sum. These parents feel caught in a trap that is not of their own making. They want to work and, in many cases, they need to work just to keep their heads above water, yet a huge chunk of their earnings is being taken by childcare.

I was also contacted by a nurse who wants to go back to work in the NHS, and the country certainly needs nurses to go back to work. She found that, for a 12.5 hour day shift, she would be just £25 better off after paying for childcare. Her solution is to work night shifts, which, for various medical reasons, are not good for her. That is an example of the barriers people face just in doing their job.

The other issue that many parents raised with me was one of access, and that seems to be particularly true when one partner is in the armed forces. One family contacted me—again, not pleading poverty. They said, “We have a good income”, but they found that every time they moved, the decent nurseries, at a reasonable cost, were full, and they charge—certainly in the south of England—between £50 and £100 per child just to be put on the waiting list. Frankly, that is a rip-off that the Government could and should end very quickly.

Another member of the armed forces—a single parent who is not earning a high income—told me of the real difficulty she faced in finding childcare that would fit with her irregular working hours. Another family told me that when they move, they find that some local authorities provide free childcare for two-year-olds of military families, and that others do not, but those families have no control over where they are posted or, therefore, whether they can access that provision.

These are parents who are trying to do the right thing and set a good example to their children but, naturally enough, they want the best provision for their children, as we would all want for our children. That is why we should be talking about early years provision and early years education, rather than childcare. We want to provide the best we can for our very youngest children, but the problem is that for many years there has not been sufficient investment in the sector, and there are not sufficient qualified staff. I am convinced, as someone who began her career as a secondary teacher, that if we invested more in the early years, we would prevent many problems further along in the education system. Such a move would pay us because it is the right thing to do not only morally, but economically.

The last Labour Government recognised that problem and they particularly recognised the difficulty of ensuring that we had a sufficiently skilled workforce. Therefore, part of the job of Sure Start centres, which became children’s centres, was about providing day care, but it was also about giving advice to parents and, crucially, working with other providers and childminders to raise standards across the sector. It therefore seems a tragedy that the coalition Government decided to remove from centres in the most deprived areas not only the obligation to provide full day care but the need to employ a qualified teacher. There are some Ministers—I except the Minister present from this—who believe that anyone can teach, but I assure her that that is not the case. I suspect that many members of the Government would not last a day in early years provision. I know that I would not, and I am a qualified teacher. Early years provision is a highly skilled occupation if we are going to do it properly.

At the same time, the Government set up the early intervention grant and ended the ring-fencing of funding for children’s centres. They then reduced the grant year by year, meaning that not enough money was going into the system. The House of Commons Library estimates that the predecessor grants that were rolled up into the early years grants were worth £2.79 billion in 2010. Immediately on taking office, the coalition Government reduced the sum to £2.48 billion, and to £2.24 billion the year after—that is 10% lower than what they spent the previous year and 20% lower than planned. Two thirds of that money was spent on the under-fives, which gives an idea of the impact of the grants on the whole sector.

There was no extra money when the coalition Government expanded childcare for two-year-olds. They paid for it by moving some of the early intervention grant across to the dedicated schools grant, thus starving the rest of the sector of resources. The remains of the early intervention grant continue to go down. The grant was part of the start-up funding assessment when the Government changed to a business rate retention scheme for local government finance, and it was £1.71 billion in 2013, going down to £1.58 billion the following year. This year it is £1.32 billion and, if the indicative totals we have are right, by 2019-20 it will be just over £1 billion.

What is the point of this ramble through the byzantine pathways of local government finance? I must admit that I find it fascinating, but I have never found anyone else who does. The simple reason is that we can have good early years provision and we can have cheap early years provision, but we cannot have good, cheap early years provision. The real problem with what the Government are doing is that it pushes more of the cost on to parents because the free hours are underfunded, and it ensures that the expertise that was being built up in children’s centres is gradually disappearing as they close and as the services they offer are restricted.

There is doubt about whether the extended hours that the Government are offering will be properly funded. The National Audit Office published a report earlier this year in which it said that there was real difficulty because the Government’s implementation of the provision will mean the end of much cross-subsidisation. At the moment if a parent has, say, 40 hours’ childcare a week, 15 of those hours are paid for by the local authority but at a fairly low rate. The hours that the parent takes on are paid at a higher rate to cross-subsidise the other hours. If the Government do not properly fund the extra hours, several things could happen: the quality might reduce; many providers might not take part in the scheme at all; or there might be a further cost for parents because providers decide to charge more for other types of childcare, such as childcare for the under-twos, holiday provision and out-of-hours provision.

Several providers that have contacted me say that they are already struggling to keep going, even though low wages are endemic in the sector. Staff have contacted me about how little they earn, which makes it even more difficult to attract good, skilled staff. Those issues are important to parents because the Government estimate that the parents of some 390,000 children will want to take up the extra hours, which means an extra 45,000 places are needed. In fact, even more places are likely to be needed as the figure is likely to be an underestimate. If the policy is successful in getting more parents into work or in getting parents to work extra hours, even more childcare places will be needed. The Government’s response was to announce last year that they would increase the average national funding rate for early years to £4.88 an hour from £4.56 an hour for three and four-year-olds. That, of course, is an average. Many councils do not pay that amount because they are having such difficulty funding even statutory services that there is not enough money left to fund early years services.

It is fair to say that many providers found the Government’s response unconvincing. The Family and Childcare Trust told the Childcare Public Bill Committee that it was

“unlikely to be sufficient to address the strategic challenge the 30 hour offer presents”.

The National Day Nurseries Association found in a survey of its members that only 45% were likely or very likely to take part in the scheme. If so, the shortage of places that we already face will simply get worse. Already 45% of councils in England do not have enough places for families who work full time.

The second issue to which the Government must face up is where most three and four-year-olds access this provision. Some 58% of them are in the maintained sector, usually in nursery classes attached to a primary school. Many of those schools are on restricted sites and would not be able to expand even if capital funding were available, which at present seems fairly unlikely. There is also a bulge in the number of primary-aged children coming through the system. It does not take a genius to work out that if it is having to address a bulge in the number of primary schoolchildren as well as extra demand for nursery places, any school that can expand will expand to meet the primary provision because it has to—it is as simple as that.

At the same time, the Government risk hugely damaging the best provision in the childcare sector, which is in maintained nurseries. Some 60% of maintained nurseries are rated “outstanding” by Ofsted, and 39% are rated “good.” Nowhere else in the education system even gets near that level of supply. In their consultation on early years funding, the Government say that they want to fund all providers equally. Wherever they are, each child will receive the same amount of funding per hour. That sounds reasonable until we understand that nursery schools are required to employ qualified teachers and a qualified head, and many of the heads in this sector are very well qualified indeed. Nursery schools also provide training places for staff. They do outreach work not only with families but with other providers. The very good maintained nursery in my constituency, Sandy Lane, is based on the same site as a children’s centre and a private nursery precisely so that the three can work together, but they need the funding to do that.

We are in a position where we risk getting rid of the best provision, or hugely damaging it, where the Government are underfunding childcare and where the cost is being heaped on to parents for the extra hours they purchase. Frankly, it is a mess. It is a national disgrace that we treat our youngest children in that way. By trying to do it on the cheap, we are putting huge stress on working families. I would love to be able to say that we can deliver free childcare for all working families, but we cannot do so without more money in the system and without more training for staff.

That situation cannot be solved overnight—it cannot, I believe, even be solved in one Parliament—but we need a national strategy for early years. The Government should consider it seriously and set up an inquiry, perhaps a royal commission, staffed by experts. I know that some Government Members do not like experts, but we need them. They are experts because they know something about the subject. The inquiry should do several things. It should chart a path to, if not free, at least heavily subsidised early years provision, and it should lay out how we can grow the workforce that we need. At the moment, for instance, when we need nursery nurses the most, the number of applications for training is falling. The inquiry should also set out how we can raise the skill levels of people already working in the field.

At the moment, if we are honest, a lot of children are being cared for by unqualified teenagers, who might be nice people doing their level best but who do not have the skills necessary to develop the minds of young children, at an age at which they are developing more rapidly than at any other time in their lives and need constant care. We must amend that to give them the best. I hope that such an inquiry would have all-party support, so that we could take a consistent approach through several Parliaments.

I recognise that it will not be enough to alleviate the problems that parents face now. I urge the Government to consider seriously what they can do to support parents. The first thing that they should do is end a policy that threatens the best provision in the sector. The Government need to consider how to develop maintained nursery schools, how nursery classes attached to primary schools can expand and what capital provision can be given for that. They also need seriously to consider raising the hourly rate paid for the care of under-fives. If they do not, decent providers in the private sector will not be able to continue. Those who try to provide good, decent childcare cannot do it without proper funding. The Government should work much more with businesses to develop workplace nurseries—not simply providing vouchers, but talking to businesses and explaining why nurseries are vital to retaining a trained workforce and why they benefit businesses as well as children.

The Government should also consider giving parents decent help now with the costs of childcare, perhaps by extending child tax credit or by other methods. What is happening now is not helping families or children. We need to stop thinking of early years provision as an add-on that we think about after we have thought about the rest of the education system and realise that it is the way to tackle disadvantage and ensure more social mobility. If the Government concentrated on early years provision rather than grammar schools, they would do much better.

[Kirsten Oswald]

The point about disadvantage is key. Mark McDonald, the Scottish Government Minister for Childcare and Early Years, has identified that high-quality early learning and childcare plays a vital role in narrowing the attainment gap, which is why there is such a commitment to increasing early childcare and education provision.

[Helen Jones]

It is certainly true that it narrows the gap, but I want to make the point that it is good for all children. All children deserve the best provision that we can offer them, and we are not offering them that at the moment. We need to get a grip on the situation, for the sake of families in this country and of our children. If we do not, although we might not pay for early years provision immediately, we will pay the price further down the line in educational failure, social disadvantage and children not reaching their full potential. I urge the Minister, when she replies, to take the issue seriously so that we can at last move forward in this often-forgotten and certainly underfunded area of our education system.

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[Alison McGovern]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. Of course childcare is not just a women’s issue, but it is a fact that the labour market has changed because women have joined it in greater numbers, so we have to rethink how the Government support parents in work. As it happens, I am sure that in my constituency as many men as women care about the cost of childcare. As many granddads as nans are supporting their children to take care of their children. This issue affects the whole family, older and younger alike, for all the reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North has set out: costs are cantering away ahead of wages and successive Governments have been too slow to be radical on childcare.

Another reality that we have to face is that we have a productivity crisis in this country: we are still working longer to make less than our competitors, and I think childcare plays a hidden role in that. Over the summer I went back to work—I did days at work with different types of businesses throughout the north-west, including in retail, manufacturing and care. Managers often told me that they wanted to find people to promote from within their businesses, who could do more, earn more and drive the business forward, but that people were not able to take on that extra responsibility because of their responsibilities at home. They did not think that they necessarily had the back-up to step up and get that promotion. Businesses can get people in through the door to do the basic jobs, but helping them to move on brings the risk of their fragile family caring responsibilities being unpicked.

[Helen Jones]

Does my hon. Friend agree that working hours have changed across the whole range of businesses and jobs? When I worked at holiday jobs in retail, for instance, we finished at 5 o’clock—it was 9 to 5. That is no longer the case, and it places a huge burden on parents.

[Alison McGovern]

My hon. Friend is correct. These days, retail is 24 hours a day. She makes an excellent case for some sort of royal commission or cross-party inquiry into the matter, partly because we need to take a sectoral approach. The challenges in retail are immense, and so are the challenges in care. The NHS and the care sector need their own childcare strategy. We have a nursing recruitment crisis on our hands, and a lot of it has to do with care. When I was shadow childcare Minister in the last Parliament, I argued that the NHS needed its own childcare strategy, which the Department of Health should lead across Government. That has not happened yet, but it must. In the present situation, with the risk of Brexit and the possibility of an NHS hiring crisis, we must recognise that a lot of the problems are of our own making. Nurses, doctors and other health professionals—women and men—are really struggling to work the hours they need to and to stay in work as they wish to, when they simply do not have the appropriate back-up.

The world has moved on, as my hon. Friend said. We want our businesses to be as productive as they can and our public services to be as efficient as they can. It is therefore incumbent on the Government to think strategically and to question the infrastructure support we offer so that our economy can work well. I know that the Government are committed to cutting corporation tax, but I really question whether that is the priority for business right now. When we talk to people in the business community, they are more interested in business rates than in corporation tax, and they are definitely interested in childcare. The childcare challenge that many employees face is a problem for small and big businesses alike. As the CBI has said, the Government could have a real impact on dealing with the infrastructure challenge that childcare represents.

I have two final points: the first is about children, who I feel always get left out of this conversation, and the second is about a possible way forward, adding to the very good suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North.

Disabled children, who face particular difficulties in accessing the right care and support, are often forgotten in all this. Their parents are entitled to the same childcare support as everyone else. Given the communication difficulties and medical needs that children with disabilities may have, their childcare provision is clearly incredibly important. We now know much more about how to help children with disabilities to progress, but the earlier that help comes in their life—the earlier they get that support—the better and more successful it is. I have seen that with families in my constituency who have children with disabilities. If the Minister takes up my hon. Friend’s sensible suggestion of an inquiry, I ask her to include those who have expertise in working with families who have a child with a disability. We can do more than ever before to give those children the best possible chance of a successful life, so let us do it from the very beginning.

The second group of children who are often forgotten about is those who live in rural areas. Towns and cities face many challenges in getting the right childcare provision, because geography can be a natural barrier to access. Those challenges can often be overlooked in our modern economy. I ask the Minister to think about that too.

Frankly, even for those who do not face those challenges, being a parent of a small child is terrifying. All of us who have ever experienced it know that. We need to move towards universal childcare for a very simple reason, in addition to all the reasons that I have set out about the benefits it would bring to businesses and our economy. Being a parent can be a huge challenge for anyone, and the one thing that gives a parent a little bit of confidence is meeting that key worker in the nursery or the childminder who has brilliant expertise, so that they have someone in their life to ask, “Am I doing this right?” I know that in the past parents coped without help and support, but these days our experience is that difficulties with parenting can strike anybody, whatever their income level or their confidence.

[Helen Jones]

Before my hon. Friend finishes her speech, may I point out that parents in the past had a lot of support? Extended families lived together or near one another, which is no longer the case. People did not look after a baby on their own; they had grannies, aunties and great-aunties all around them. As families become more mobile, that support network tends to disappear, which is a real problem for parents.

[Alison McGovern]

That is a very good point. In addition, bearing in mind what we know now about child development compared with what was known many years ago, I would argue that childcare is a real expertise. All parents welcome expertise on the best way to help their child to develop. All the evidence shows that the most important learning years of a person’s life are those when they are very small, but that is terrifying for the parent of a very small person. We know that what we do in those important years will echo down that child’s life and we desperately want the best for them, so it is really great to have a professional there who can help.

We should have a vision that runs from the midwife who cares for the child when they are first born, and for the parents before that, through the health visiting system to which the Government have said they are committed, to that family working with a key worker through nurseries and some universal childcare provision. That way, all through the child’s earliest years, professionals would consistently be around the family to help them, alongside their extended family, where possible.

How do we do that practically, though? I wish to add a final thought to the mix. We have heard from the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) about the work the Scottish Government are doing, which is to be commended, but some new devolved institutions are also coming to England. We should look at how childcare is provided through local authorities, because there is a possibility of doing more and improving expertise if local authorities are able to work together across boundaries to come up with a good universal childcare proposal for their area. We might then benefit from the efficiencies of local authorities working together, and it would also help them to think strategically about the educational challenges faced by their city or city region and then to put investment in the right place. Ministers cannot know that from Whitehall. With the greatest respect to the Minister, she is never going to have a fine detail of knowledge about the best childcare arrangements for Merseyside, but we could do that in Merseyside for ourselves. Will the Minister think about how resources could be devolved out of Whitehall and given to city regions or groups of local authorities working together?

I am afraid I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North: in the end, I do not believe we have backed up our children with nearly enough finance. Nevertheless, if we are going to spend more on childcare, let us do it in an effective way that respects the different challenges faced by cities throughout the country and does not dictate from Whitehall how it should be provided. If we do that, people will get a real sense that the Government are prepared to back them up. Our economy will most certainly feel the benefit, but—much more importantly—so will every family in the country.

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[Caroline Dinenage]

Absolutely. The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. We have heard a lot today about maintained nursery schools, which do a fantastic job with children with special educational needs or disabilities. They need to be supported to carry on doing that work.

[Helen Jones]

Many maintained nurseries have special units for children with special needs. They take in disabled children. Does the Minister accept that that is another reason why maintained nurseries need to be fully supported in the extra responsibilities that they take on?

[Caroline Dinenage]

Absolutely. I am a great fan of maintained nursery schools. There is one in my own constituency, which has significant pockets of deprivation, that provides outstanding support for children. That is why the Government have committed, as part of the funding formula, to an extra £55 million a year for at least the next two years to support maintained nursery schools over and above the normal funding formula. Maintained nursery schools make up only 3% of childcare places. However, 98% of them are good or outstanding and 80% work in areas of disadvantage, which is why we want to consult them further about how we can support them in their very important work.

We know that good quality education at two can have a fantastic effect on a child’s development. We want children in care, children who have left care, adopted children and children with special educational needs and disabilities to benefit from that, as we have a duty to help them thrive and reach their potential. It is unacceptable that a child should have inferior life chances because of their background; this programme is key to tackling the problem. I am sure all hon. Members would agree that it is vital we help such children.

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[Caroline Dinenage]

It is not a consultancy. It provides courses and shares best practice. It is about being out there, on the ground, speaking one-to-one to administrators and deliverers. The hon. Lady really needs to look up the meaning of the word “consultancy”. It offers practical help on the ground to providers, and helps them to get the very best out of their business models.

The lessons learned from the combined delivery approach of the early implementers and innovators offer a unique opportunity to provide vital information to the local authorities getting ready to meet parental demand when national roll-out takes place. We are capturing learning throughout the year and sharing it with all local authorities to ensure that early implementation is a success—that is what the £3 million contract is about—and that full roll-out has the benefit of the learning that success generates. The more planning and testing we can do in the widest possible number of areas, the more likely we are to have a smooth launch of this key Government priority.

At the same time, the Government will introduce tax-free childcare from early 2017, which is intended to help parents with the cost of living by subsidising the cost of childcare. The tax-free childcare will be paid per child, rather than per parent, and childcare costs will be subsidised for children up to the age of 12, or 17 if they are disabled. The Government calculate that, once it is fully implemented, about 2 million working families across the UK will have access to the new scheme. It will give parents a 20% subsidy on their childcare costs, up to a maximum contribution of £2,000 per child per year, or £4,000 for disabled children. The scheme will effectively subsidise 20% of childcare costs—up to £10,000 per child.

In addition, the Government’s flagship welfare reform programme, universal credit, also offers help with the cost of childcare for parents on lower incomes, even if they work only a few hours a week. Working parents on universal credit can now claim up to 85% of their childcare costs. Together with the 30 hours and tax-free childcare, that amounts to an unprecedented level of support to working parents for their childcare costs.

The hon. Member for Warrington North talks as though the high cost of childcare—we all know it is high, and I have outlined the many things the Government are doing to tackle it—is a recent phenomenon. Many hon. Members who spoke today have the advantage of having youth on their side and of having young children— I am jealous of them—but I was a parent during the previous Labour Government, which the Opposition spokesman spoke about in such glowing terms. I put my children through early years childcare under a Government who presided over the most expensive childcare in Europe. I was working to pay for my childcare. The Government introduced the 15-hours offer, but not everybody offered it, and I had great difficulty accessing it. Childcare is one of the biggest obstacles to women getting back into work, which is why it is important that we have all the schemes I have talked about.

[Helen Jones]

I am sorry, but I cannot let the Minister get away with that. She is right that childcare has always been expensive, but the Labour Government expanded the number of childcare places in this country hugely and set up Sure Start and children’s centres for the first time. She cannot get away from the simple fact that the cost of childcare went up 30% under the coalition Government—five times the rate of wage growth. That is what has put so many families in such a difficult position.

[Caroline Dinenage]

As the hon. Member for Wirral South said, this is not a recent phenomenon; it has accumulated over a number of years. I can speak only from my personal experience—I know that the children of the hon. Member for Warrington North are a bit older. My children were accessing early years childcare during the years of the Labour Government, and I saw those prices go up exponentially. That is why we are dealing with this issue. In addition to various other policies that help many of the issues that have been described today, such as giving people access to flexible working and shared parental leave, which was never introduced under the previous Labour Government, more than £6 billion will be spent on childcare by 2019-20 in cash terms—[Interruption.] I know the hon. Lady is not listening, but that is more than any other Government have ever spent on this issue. It includes an extra £1 billion on the free early years entitlement.

[Caroline Dinenage]

I do not know, but I am keen to learn from best practice wherever I find it, so I will be hot-footing it back to my office directly after this debate to see what we can learn from what is happening in Scotland.

A large amount of the additional money that we are spending on childcare is going to increase the average funding rate. The Opposition spokesperson said it is going down, but it is actually going to go up for private and voluntary providers in 88% of local authorities, including that of the hon. Member for Warrington North, where the hourly rate will go up by 19%.

[Helen Jones]

The Minister is missing out the fact that going up from a low hourly rate to a slightly better one does not solve the problem. The Government’s problem when they introduce the 30-hour provision will be that, unless they fund those hours properly, they will simply raise costs elsewhere in the system, so parents will be unlikely to benefit. Once the cross-subsidisation is taken out, costs will go out somewhere else, whether for under-threes, out-of-hours childcare, or whatever. The low rate of funding throughout the system is what needs to be addressed—it leads to some providers struggling to maintain their provision and to endemic low wages in the sector, which work against recruiting skilled workers, and it does not provide the best quality of care.

[Caroline Dinenage]

I do not understand why the hon. Lady is saying that what we are doing is already leading to that, because we have not yet done it. The early years funding formula response has not even been published—it will be out soon. She is sniffing at a 19% rise in her area, according to the figures we saw in the summer, which seems a little unkind.

I was also a little disappointed with how the hon. Lady described early years professionals. She talked about them as unskilled teenagers, slightly undermining the quality—

[Helen Jones]

On a point of correction, I am sorry, but the Minister misquotes me. I said that children needed the best skilled and professional care but that some of them are being looked after by unqualified teenagers, who are not the professionals in this. The professionals are those who have the proper qualifications and experience. She really must not misquote me on that, because I was clear that the best outcomes for children are when they are looked after by skilled, experienced people.

[Caroline Dinenage]

I am grateful for the clarification, but the hon. Lady should be aware—I hope she already is and is just playing with me—that the quality of the workforce is already good and has been improving: 87% of staff in full-day care settings are now qualified to level 3, the proportion of such staff with at least that level having grown from 75% to 87% between 2008 and 2013, while the proportion of those with a degree or higher increased from 5% to 13%. We are not, however, resting on our laurels. We have a workforce strategy that will seek to support even further those excellent people who work in our childcare environment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Jones]

I only want to make a few remarks to wind up. I am grateful to the Members who have spoken, but I am disappointed that the Minister has still not responded to efforts to reach a long-term solution to the problem, and one that can command support over several Parliaments, if necessary. We do not yet have that, and we will not get it without proper inquiry into the way in which we do early years education in this country. We should not elide childcare with early years education, and early years education is what we really want for our children, by the best-qualified and most experienced staff. She needs to address both the shortage of early years teachers—I say “teachers”, not other staff—and, despite what she has said, the underfunding. We need to progress to a long-term solution to the problem, and I am sorry that she did not address it in her closing remarks.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 132140 relating to free childcare.