Childcare

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson). I followed her in a debate in Westminster Hall, last week, and today I do the same, again on a subject that we agree on. I thank the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for setting the scene, and for giving us a chance to participate.

Childcare and its affordability are of great interest to every Member in this House. I am sure that not one of us has not sat with a young family to tell them that they are above the threshold and cannot get help. That is, unfortunately, something that I have had to address in my own office recently as the extra £50 per month that they get prevents them from accessing four times that in childcare help—and I want to put on record my thanks to all who provide childcare in my constituency of Strangford, who have helped so many people through the pandemic with what they do. These are everyday problems in my constituency. The options for those families are to live with it, or go to their bosses, cap in hand, and ask for a reduction in hours that will be just enough to put them under that threshold. Many will not do this, as it is not as easy a fix for their boss as it may seem at first glance.

A couple contacted me last week; the lady, in particular, is very unwell. She is on employment and support allowance and personal independence payment. Unfortunately, if she was to transfer to universal credit to access working tax credits and child tax credits, she would automatically find that the childcare that she would qualify for would make her financially worse off. There are many complex issues.

For many, grandparents, whether they are fit or not, are left to fill the breach. There are approximately 14 million grandparents in the UK; one in every three people over the age of 50 is a grandparent. In the past two generations, the number of children being cared for by their grandparents has increased substantially— from 33% to 82%. That is massive. Grandparents are the childminders of today. Almost two thirds of all grandparents regularly look after their grandchildren, saving working parents approximately £6.8 billion nationally in childcare costs, but what is the cost to their quality of life?

We have upped the pension age—we all know about the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign, and how those women are unable to leave work at 60. Many women drop their hours at that time of their life to take care of their grandchildren, so they are not able to answer the call of their body and simply slow down. There must be something better for grandparents—more than just a national insurance stamp for minding their grandchildren. Many parents in the middle income bracket simply cannot afford to pay for childcare themselves.

My parliamentary aide is the youngest of five siblings. Her sister was 20 when she had her first child, in the middle of her nursing degree, and my aide was 32 when she had her first. Their mother, Roberta Armstrong, has been providing childcare for almost 50 years: initially caring for her own children and, for the last 27 years, constantly caring for her working children’s children. She has grandchildren in the workforce, grandchildren in medical college, and grandchildren at the start of their education in P2. Roberta Armstrong had her first child at 18. She is not the same as she was at 39, when her first grandchild was born, and yet the demands are the same. Caring for her children and grandchildren has been her way of life, but she has to do what a childminder could never do, and which the parents cannot afford to pay for.

What respite is available for the grandparent, and for my parliamentary aide? She works flexitime to allow her more time off in the holidays; this works well for me, and ultimately it means she can take time off during recess, but jobs like that are not readily available. My wife, Sandra, and I are grandparents as well. She looks after the grandchildren—there are five at different ages. She says the wee boys are the hardest—I would not know, because we only ever had boys—and the wee girls are not too bad. How do we breach the gap for families like those, who are asking too much of their elderly parents because they have no other option?

Many parents are caught in a Catch-22 situation. They earn too much to get help or subsidised childcare, and yet they do not earn enough to pay someone to do everything that needs to be done. This leads to examples such as the 67-year-old grandmother with a heart condition lifting and laying a five-year-old with a broken leg.

Do we consider longer school days? Would that eat into their childhood? Do we ask employers to do more, when the pressure of paid holidays and sick days is already too much for many to bear? Do we provide additional paid clubs that work like wraparound childcare? Something needs to be done. I ask the Government to decide today to help those who work hard and simply want a little help to enjoy their children, instead of waiting until their children have children to take care of their grandchildren. I believe that now is the time. Let us break the cycle and strengthen the family.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I would like to thank all my colleagues across the House who took the time to speak in today’s important debate. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), and little Pip, I want to begin by paying tribute to Joeli Brearley and everyone at Pregnant Then Screwed for starting this important petition and for the inspiring work that they have done to support women and parents in this country and to fight against gender inequalities.

On no issue is it more important to have dedicated campaigners like Joeli than on childcare, which is all too often ignored by politicians, despite it being a fundamental building block of our economy and our children’s development, as has been repeated several times in the debate. Its importance is highlighted by the fact that well over 100,000 people signed the petition, including 400 of my constituents in Hampstead and Kilburn.

In the Chamber last week I raised the Government’s own statistics, which show a loss of over 3,000 childcare providers in England in the first half of this year alone. This comes on top of a net loss of over 100,000 providers since 2015. I was very surprised that the Minister responded by claiming that there were no problems with sufficiency in the early years sector, given that a third of English councils do not have enough childcare places for parents working full time. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow raised this in her speech. I was surprised by the Minister’s remarks on childminders, which have now drawn much criticism, including from the chief executive of the Early Years Alliance, who commented:

“To hear the Children and Families Minister so casually dismiss the closure of thousands of childminders—and falsely imply that what they provide is just care, rather than education—is both insulting and infuriating.”

I do not want the outside world to think that that is how politicians in this place think when it comes to early education.

Every year, Coram Family and Childcare publishes a survey of childcare costs and availability, and every year it shows that there is a postcode lottery in childcare provision. All too often, the costs are soaring well above inflation. My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) outlined her own experience of living through this postcode lottery and how much misery it has caused so many people in her constituency. A survey published before the debate by Pregnant Then Screwed found that a staggering 19 out of 20 working parents said the Government are not helping enough with childcare, with a third paying more for it than their rent or mortgage—again, a point that has been made over and over in the debate. That is because a full-time childcare place in the UK costs £14,000 a year. As my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow and for Putney constantly said, ours is one of the most expensive childcare systems in the whole world. That should make our heads hang in shame.

The sad truth about the eye-watering costs of childcare in this country is that it was a predictable result of the decision that the Government took to underfund the free childcare policy by a third in the last financial year alone. We know that because the Department for Education itself predicted it. Secret Government documents from 2015, uncovered by the Early Years Alliance, warned over and over again that failing to fully fund this policy would drive up costs for parents. Ministers pushed ahead regardless, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) said, left the sector with a £662-million annual funding gap even before covid hit.

As if that was not bad enough, there was almost no targeted support either for early years or for wraparound childcare providers during a pandemic that has seen their attendance levels and income plummet to the ground. Then came what early years analyst Ceeda calculated as a quarter of a billion pounds’ funding cut this spring term, due to the premature withdrawal of pre-covid funding levels. It is no wonder that 85% of childcare businesses expect to make a loss or break even this year, as research by the National Day Nurseries Association shows.

It is not just about statistics. There is a very real impact on families, who are struggling to make ends meet. My hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) talked passionately about equal parenting, the pay penalty, proper flexible working, and how children are being priced out of education at the most important stage of their development. Not only are private fees for early years childcare well out of reach for many families, including those in Hampstead and Kilburn, but a recent Sutton Trust report confirmed that the eligibility for the 30 hours free childcare scheme excludes the poorest. Are these the policies we want to have in our country, where we exclude the poorest from accessing high quality childcare?

As my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) pointed out, parents are being forced to cut hours and quit jobs because they cannot find or afford childcare. Of course, this affects women disproportionately. Three quarters of working mums were forced to cut working hours in the first lockdown due to a lack of childcare. In 2018, there were over 800,000 mothers who wanted to work, but could not for financial reasons.

[Jim Shannon]

The shadow Minister is making some very important points. Does she agree that it is not fair for the burden of childcare to fall upon the shoulders of grandparents, who do not have the physical ability to look after children in the way they probably did at one time? I believe that the onus is on the Government and the Minister to come back with a response that helps people.

[Tulip Siddiq]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I was listening to his speech very closely, because I was reflecting that there is no way I could have got through six years of being an MP without relying on my mother—who, by the way, turns 65 today. She is someone who helped me with my childcare, because my father is in a wheelchair; she was responsible for looking after the children when I did not get proper maternity leave from this place. I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I hope that the Government will recognise the pressure that is put on grandparents. My mother is 65, but there are lots of grandparents who are a lot older and struggle physically to look after small children. I hope the Minister takes heed of what the hon. Gentleman has to say.

I also want to talk about childcare workers, 93% of whom are women, who are languishing on poverty pay after suffering years of real-terms pay cuts under Conservative Governments. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge pointed out, the average wage in the sector is £7.42 per hour, and shamefully, one in 10 staff earn less than £5 an hour. These talented and dedicated workers are unsurprisingly leaving the sector as quickly as they can. It is clear to anyone who has direct experience of the childcare system in this country that there is something seriously wrong with it, and it could get a lot worse if nursery and childcare closures continue as they are at the moment. This petition should be a wake-up call for Ministers and the Government to rethink their approach to child- care funding.

That is why my Labour colleagues and I have been banging on about the need for targeted support to halt the collapse of the childcare sector. We are not being dramatic, and we are not scaremongering: this is the reality of the situation. Our childcare recovery plan also proposes a real, substantial hike in the early years pupil premium, from £302 per person per year to £1,345, as part of a £15 billion package to give every child new opportunities to learn, play and develop. I believe it is time to give childcare the attention and the funding it deserves, so that we can be a country that values children, parents and family and so that childcare becomes a part of the country’s infrastructure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North so eloquently put it when she opened this important debate.