Children: Development of Essential Skills

Kirith Entwistle Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Kirith Entwistle (Bolton North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) for securing this debate. I feel it is my duty as someone sadly nearing the end of parenting a child in nursery to talk specifically about early years.

When we talk about children developing essential skills, we often start too late. Learning does not begin when a child starts reception; it begins the very moment they are born, if not sooner. The skills they develop during the first months and years provide the foundation that children need to thrive in school. Nurseries, pre-schools and childcare providers play a crucial role in helping children build those skills, day by day, through care, routine support and encouragement. That is why Government support to help parents secure high-quality early years provision is so important.

In Bolton North East, we are making progress on early years support. At the Valley community school, Government investment is helping refurbish old spaces, create a new play area and expand nursery provision. Our family hubs—Bright Meadows, Oxford Grove, Tonge and Oldhams—give families somewhere to get support without feeling judged.

That progress matters, but it is not enough on its own. Across Bolton, more than a third of children are starting school without the essential skills that they need, making it harder to learn, communicate and build relationships from day one. For parents wanting to do their best for their children, the core question is whether early years support is accessible, affordable and workable in real life. I say that not just as the MP for Bolton North East, but as a single mum with a young son growing up in Bolton. I have often wondered whose idea it was to have school hours set from 8 am to 3 pm, working hours set from 9 am to 5 pm, and vital services operating within those hours. How on earth are parents supposed to make that work?

One parent in my constituency told me that they had hoped the Government’s expansion of funded childcare from 15 to 30 hours would bring some relief—just that little bit of breathing space, enough to add one more nursery day so that grandparents did not have to keep filling the gap, or flexible working requests did not have to keep being made. But once the provider’s charges for meals and consumables were added in, and because of the way the hours are structured, their bill barely changed and that extra day remained out of reach. Government support is meant to help families, not be lost in extra charges and inflexible arrangements.

This is not about attacking providers. Many early years providers and staff in Bolton do extraordinary work every day, often under real pressure, but at the most crucial point in a child’s development, it is wrong that profit can be made from childcare while families are left fighting for consistent standards, transparency and fairness. As parents, we should not have to rely on guidance that, even when improved on paper, is still inconsistently applied and too weakly enforced. Nor should we have to choose between what we can afford and what our child deserves.

Children cannot build essential skills in a system that does not fit around the realities of family life. Too often, it is still mums who are expected to make it fit. Of course parents make sacrifices every day to help their children develop those essential skills, but our early years model still assumes that someone is at home, usually mum, to bridge the gap between nursery hours and working hours—someone who can do the 3 pm pick-up, cover sick days and leave work the moment nursery calls. In reality, that often means reducing her hours, turning down that promotion, losing income and then being told she is lucky to have flexibility, if she even gets it in the first place.

Too often, flexibility is just another word for women being expected to bend their lives further and further, being made to feel guilty every time they ask for an adjustment, or being told that they are putting their job at risk. It also completely disregards single parents. Parents who need flexible working are too often treated as a problem to be managed, rather than as people who hold families, workplaces and communities together—and then we wonder why birth rates are falling. We cannot keep making motherhood expensive, uncertain and career-damaging and then act surprised when more and more women feel the choice has already been made for them.

My asks of the Minister are simple: strengthen enforcement so funded hours are genuinely free, transparent and usable; review whether funding rates reflect the real costs of high-quality provision; and put the essential skills that children need and the flexibility that families need at the heart of early years reform.

Every child deserves the best start, and that has to be something families feel in the support they receive, in the childcare they can rely on and in the confidence their children carry through the school gate. Having children should not be an unmanageable financial burden. It should not be a choice with a cost attached to it. No one should have to give up their dream of having a family because society is not set up to support them or because it punishes them for doing so, and no parent should have to make the tough choice to say no to having more children simply because they cannot afford to.

Finally, single parents should not fear having to shoulder the responsibility alone. Every parent deserves to be supported by a society that benefits from all of us having children. [Interruption.]

SEND Provision: Local Authorities

Kirith Entwistle Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Georgia Gould]

I thank the hon. Member for inviting me to speak to families in her area.

The conversations that I have had have so often been about parents battling for years to get the support that they know their children need, as the hon. Member for Dorking and Horley said, and about the powerlessness they feel as they watch their children struggle and fall behind.

[Kirith Entwistle (Bolton North East) (Lab)]

At my online advice surgery yesterday, I met constituent Jenny Wilson, who has fought tirelessly for her son Maxwell to receive support from their local authority—he is without a formal diagnosis. Jenny and other parents in my constituency would like to know what more the Government are doing to help children who do not have a formal diagnosis and are still being denied EHCPs or any additional support.

[Georgia Gould]

I very often hear that exact story: too much support is locked behind a diagnosis that takes years, or behind a bureaucratic process. The reforms that we have set out move investment directly into schools and services that wrap around schools. We are introducing two new layers of support—targeted and targeted-plus—that will be available to children, without that battle for external validation. Teachers will be able to draw on that to support children in their classrooms. That is backed up by two new pieces of investment: £1.6 billion going directly into schools; and £1.8 billion into a new “experts at hand” service, to pay for speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, educational psychologists, specialist teachers and others who will support schools. Their support will be available for young people, including the one mentioned by my hon. Friend.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kirith Entwistle Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Ashley Dalton. Oh, you are not standing. This is not directed at you personally, but when you stand I think you are going to ask a question, and then when you sit down I am left high and dry.

[Kirith Entwistle (Bolton North East) (Lab)]

As a mother in the north-west, I thank the Secretary of State and welcome the Government’s £1.8 billion commitment to expanding publicly funded childcare. As we transition towards more publicly funded childcare, can she share any plans for interim support to keep childcare affordable for working families relying on private providers?

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend is right. As the roll-out continues, we will shortly reach a situation in which 80% of childcare is Government-backed. It is therefore right that in those circumstances we look closely at whether we are getting the best-quality provision for our children. As part of our early years strategy review, we will take account of all considerations. We are looking at a range of factors for the sector, including workforce recruitment, quality of provision and much more besides. I look forward to working with her on this.