Childcare

Lord Laming Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness is quite right to say that the recent report is concerning—and we are concerned. Local authorities of course must publish certain information, but only to a limited extent, so the new Bill will go further to ensure that we have better information. I can assure her that we are very focused on deprived areas, and indeed there has been a substantial increase in full daycare places in those areas over the past five years.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, following on from the question of the noble Baroness, does the Minister agree that this requires much more than putting a roof over the head of any child who has had a terrible start in life? It requires a robust and effective care plan to be devised for each child in order to help them overcome their difficulties. We have only a very few years in which to get that into operation.

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with the noble Lord, who is very experienced in this area. We all know that these are the most important years in a child’s life, but I am encouraged that of the providers who have been inspected under the early years inspection framework, which is a more rigorous one, we now have some 85% of them being found to be good or outstanding, up from 69% five years ago.