Free Childcare

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Thursday 12th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

I will definitely take only four minutes, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) on obtaining what is a key debate. I do not doubt that she has had feedback; I have had similar feedback in South Suffolk, where we have excellent provision. It is difficult for me to avoid receiving representations, particularly from Yorley Barn, a beautifully located nursery in my constituency, in a village called Little Cornard. The proprietor, Donna Row, recently came up and made representations while I was dropping my three-year-old twins off at the nursery. She made the key point that she feels funding is going down while, as has been said, core costs are rising.

I want briefly to focus on Suffolk, because while I accept that many broader political and national arguments are made, there is a national funding formula by which our county seems to have been particularly disadvantaged. The sense of unfairness in Suffolk is compounded by what has happened with the schools formula over the years.

I want to quote from a couple of my providers. A particular issue in Suffolk has been the drive for graduates in early years. This is from Springfields pre-school. Amy Jacobs emailed me to say:

“All research has pointed towards the positive outcome for children who attend an early years setting that is led by an early years graduate. Suffolk…were therefore extremely proactive in encouraging settings to employ graduates to run their settings. This was supported in the early years funding and we were paid £4.24 per child per hour in order that we could pay our staff”

at that rate. She goes on to say that they now receive only £3.87 per child per hour.

I should add that this is something that all Suffolk Members have been working on, and I am grateful to the Minister, who has taken the time to meet us and go through our concerns with his officials in great detail. We also held a meeting at County Hall, for which unfortunately I was ill and unable to attend. However, again, the core point is that funding seems to be lower at a time when costs are rising, so we as MPs have been trying to understand exactly why that is happening and whether it is driven by factors at a county level or because of the national formula.

I will quote from one other provider. Cheryl Leeks, who runs Woodland Corner, said:

“As you are aware, Suffolk County Council reduced our funding for 3 and 4-year-old children by 11% on 1 April with only 7 week’s notice. Historically the rate received from SCC has been higher than the rate we charge for non-funded children—or additional hours. We were always keen to have funded children as we used to receive £4.24 and a block funding allowance of £550 per term.”

She goes on to say that only £3.87 per child per hour will now be provided.

There are complexities—that is showing one side of the picture—but the key point for us in Suffolk at county level is that we feel that, in comparison to other counties, and particularly neighbouring counties, we seem to be doing particularly badly. Like all Suffolk MPs, I received a note from Gordon Jones, the cabinet member for children’s services at Suffolk County Council, with a table of all our neighbours who get a better allocation than we have received through the early years national funding formula.

This issue is obviously important to me personally because I have children in early years, but in Suffolk we have had a huge amount of feedback from very worried providers. I support in principle the drive for 30 hours—it is really important for our economy to achieve the dynamism we want and flexibility in our labour market that we have this greater provision—but there are clearly issues to address. I believe the Minister is aware of that. I do not want to go on too much longer, because we are in the middle of a discussion about it with him. I simply say that we would like him to recognise that there are these pressures not just of the money going down but of costs going up.

[Andrew Rosindell (in the Chair)]

Order.