Childcare Bill [HL]

Lord Sawyer Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sawyer (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord True, that this is a political Bill. It was in the election manifesto of the Conservative Party and therefore it is right and proper that it be acted on. I also agree with much of what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, with whom I had the pleasure to serve on the Select Committee.

When I wanted to know a little more about the Government’s intentions in relation to the Bill, which are not clear from the Bill itself, I looked at the letter that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, sent to all noble Lords a week or so ago. It said the Government were a one-nation government acting in the interests of all. Therefore, I take this to be a one-nation Bill for childcare and I welcome that. He also said it was essential for families, and for the economic development of the country, to improve children’s educational outcomes and to help narrow the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers and, of course, to help families and parents to work. All those aims are good and are what I will measure the Bill on as it works its way through the House.

I think they are the right aims. The Government now have to start fulfilling them and have first to be honest about the shortcomings of the previous Government’s policies and how they intend to deal with them and meet future commitments. We have to be honest with parents and say many of the things that have been said today, particularly that the present offer is far from perfect and where through underfunding the PVI sector cannot meet it, it is often subsidised by parents, both those who accept and enjoy the offer and others. We have to tell parents that the current offer is often low quality because it does not allow for qualified staff to be paid in some PVI settings. We need to deal with some of the shortcomings to give parents the belief that they will be addressed and, more importantly, to say what the current offer will mean for them.

I hope the new offer will do something about the scandal of low pay for nursery nurses in the PVI sector. It is a big issue but I do not think we can keep sweeping it under the carpet. In this week’s Nursery World there were nursery nurse jobs advertised at 30 hours a week for £9,000 a year, and 37 hours a week at £8 an hour or £15,000 a year—£8 an hour, of course, is £1 an hour under the national living wage. Try getting a plumber, roofer, gardener or anybody to come to your home for £8 an hour and you know what the answer will be. Yet this is what we are offering to pay nursery nurses in a brave new world. This morning I could engage a dog walker in Barnes for £15 an hour, which says it all. Will the Minister explain to the House how these rates of pay fit with the one-nation policies that he believes underpin the Bill?

The National Day Nurseries Association has just reported that 43% of nurseries are unable to find staff with the right levels of qualifications. The chief executive officer of the association said that,

“staff who picked childcare as their career choice are leaving because they can earn more”,

and work fewer hours in a supermarket. Again, I would like the Minister’s observations on that.

I hope the Minister will tell parents that the Government will not damage the maintained sector through their policy developments and that they will not try and move salaries down in it, thus endangering the long-term sustainability of the sector, which provides some of our best nurseries in some of the most deprived areas.

We are going forward to parents with an offer whose details we do not yet know. I accept that—I have to. We do not really know about the funding either, which I also accept. It could be £350 million or it could be £1.5 billion. I am not really bothered about that in a sense; what I would like is to see the offer being worked out comprehensively and the funding for the offer, which is the common-sense way of dealing with it.

I welcome the consultation, which is absolutely right. The consultation mentions providers, but little has been said about staff. The professional organisations, such as the trade unions, will need to be included in the consultation. I hope we will be able to do that, because it is the people on the ground who always have so much to offer and who know how it is. I hope the Minister will talk to the TUC and the CBI. They can help and have much to offer, and the Government need their experience in this consultation. They know, through their wide experience in all industries and sectors, how to get long-term sustainability. They could help with this sector, as well as with fair wages, with how to attract staff and with how to build sustainabilities. We should engage the TUC and the CBI in the discussions. I am confident they will want to help.

The Government should also engage the CBI and employers, probably even more than the TUC, as they are providers, which we tend to forget. A big change is taking place with employers and employees as to what parenting is about and how child development can fit in with being an employee and a parent. We are missing that, which maybe goes back to some of the contributions this afternoon asking whether it was all going to be about massive, monolithic state provision. I do not think it can be, and employers have a very important role to play and something to say. More and more employees and employers want to work this out together, and employers recognise the importance of highly skilled, highly trained and highly intelligent staff who say, “Actually, I want to spend some time looking after my children”. When I was young, I would have been told to go and jump in a lake if I had said that, but that is not so any more: employers are now much more receptive to this and much more prepared to work with employees on how to develop children. The Government should talk to the CBI and employers about this issue.

The Government have made this offer. It is the right offer and they need to fulfil it through this comprehensive debate that we are going to have. I welcome that and will be looking for the outcomes that will take everybody forward, particularly nursery nurses, who often get forgotten or not talked about properly, work for appalling wages and need some help. I am not saying the help will come overnight or that overnight they will go from £8 to £16 an hour, but we should have a long-term sustainable plan for raising the kind of salaries we can pay these people so that at least we can hold our heads high in some kind of respectable way, given that we have taken their contribution to our economy. I will be looking for outcomes that take staff forward, for sustainability and of course, most of all, for adequate funding.