Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 18th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, at this stage—the beginning of another day on Report—I remind the House of my relevant interests as a councillor in Kirklees and a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, who is standing in today for the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, to whom I wish godspeed and a full recovery.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, said, childcare is facing a crisis of unaffordable provision. Many families are simply unable to bear the cost of full-time care, thus restricting parents to reduce their working hours; that has a knock-on effect on their household budgets and puts pressure on the family finances. The Government are bringing these amendments forward rather late in the day—during Report on the Bill, which we started in January—especially given the crisis in not only affordability but provision; as she said, there have been a large number of closures among childminding providers. Given that, we on these Benches support the government amendments because extending childminding to non-domestic settings would be sensible.

However, I have a proviso here; I wonder whether the noble Baroness can respond to it. She has spoken about the regulations facing childminders being the same as those for nursery providers, but she has not spoken in full about the regulations affecting the building premises that may be used by childminders. Clearly, we want them to be appropriate to the age of the children using them. Children from the age of nine months to the toddler stage certainly need safe facilities and different ones from those for which a non-domestic setting might be built. I want to know from the noble Baroness that there will be clear, enforceable regulations around this.

The great majority of childcare is provided by the private sector. Amendment 276 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, would extend that to local authorities. We on these Benches support that extension as it will enable councils to fill the gaps in private provision, which are more likely to be in areas of higher deprivation and in the very communities that the Bill is ostensibly aimed at helping.

With those remarks, we support the Government’s amendments and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly, largely in relation to Labour’s amendment. As the noble Baroness may recall, some of us spoke about the provision of early years facilities in Committee. I want to return to that issue briefly to see whether we can tie up one or two loose ends.

I am most grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott and Lady Barran, for the correspondence and meetings that we have had between Committee and Report. The meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, had the largest number of advisers in the smallest room that I have ever been in; that would not have been possible under Covid. The new DfE advice to local authorities, Securing Developer Contributions for Education, is a great improvement on its predecessor. It is much clearer and on several occasions makes clear and specific mention of early years provision.

However, the response from the department of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, was slightly less clear. Given her background as an effective head of a local authority, I think she assumes that all local authorities are run as well and professionally as her one was. All I say is that the evidence from a range of local authorities is that their ability to provide early years facilities is not good.

An article last week indicated that local authorities are sitting on a grand total of £3 billion of unused Section 106 money, £420 million of which is for education. It is somewhat disappointing that the LGA spokesman’s response to that said just that doing this is “a complex process” that takes a lot of time. I thought that was local government’s job.

I have four specific questions for the Minister, of which I have given her advance warning. The first is: what we are going to do to monitor whether these funds are being used to expand childcare provision, because there is no central collection of data at the moment. Please can we do something about that?

Secondly, there is an expectation, which is clear in the advice, that existing or new spare primary school capacity will be repurposed for early years services. How will guidance be flexible to ensure that, if there are changes in the birth rate, we do not end up with nurseries closing and have the same problem?

Thirdly, how can we make sure that we are also looking at early years settings that are convenient for people’s work? It is one thing to have early years provision near where you live but, for many working women, it is far more useful and a more efficient use of their time to have early years provision near their place of work. Could the Government say whether they are aware of this potential issue and, if so, what they are doing to try to mitigate it?

Lastly, how will the Government make sure that all local authorities can use this funding on new stand-alone provision if they deem it appropriate, without being reliant on private providers, which may or may not want to operate in the area? This applies to the new infrastructure levy but also to existing sources of funding. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Russell, I should declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and of the NALC. With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, I point out that the impact of austerity and the slashing of central government funding to local government left departments utterly eviscerated and a lack of resources to take actions that may be desperate.

I have two reasons for rising. One is to express the strongest possible Green support for the amendment in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Twycross, to allow local authorities to provide their own childcare services. These are public services in the community; having them under democratic control is surely an extremely good way to proceed.

In noting that, I have a question to put to the Minister, which arises from issues that I have raised with her previously, on the involvement of private equity and the financial sector in childcare provision. It has been described as becoming a “playground for private equity”. In the last four years, investment funds have more than doubled their stake in Ofsted-registered nurseries. Now more than 1,000 are fully or partially owned by investment funds, which is 7.5% of all places—up from 4% in 2018. Those 81,500 places are being run for profit. We know from their involvement in the social care sector that those companies will have stripped out huge sums and introduced massive instability. We think of what happened with the collapse of Southern Cross and Four Seasons Health Care. Financial engineering is so often behind that.

With that in mind, regarding government Amendment 259 on services in wholly non-domestic premises, the Minister talked about local community centres and village halls. Picking up the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, provided that they have the right facilities, I do not believe that anyone would have any objection to those kinds of premises. However, following the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Russell, about places near where people work, I think it is possible to imagine that we might see private equity invest in building or repurposing a facility, so that it is designed for a lot of small groups of childminders to come together, with private equity and the financial sector sucking huge amounts of money out of that. Could the Minister, either now or perhaps in writing later, tell me what the provisions for non-domestic premises actually mean? If someone set up a for-profit setting, what kind of controls will there be to make that that is not exploitative of the childminders or the children and their parents?