Childcare Bill [HL]

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister and I have something in common: we are both in celebration mode. I believe that it is his wife’s birthday. Unfortunately, business in this House prevents him from being with her this evening but I am sure that we would all want to send her many happy returns. For my part, I have to leave before the Committee finishes its business tonight. My youngest daughter is getting married in the morning and I have to catch a train to Wales this evening.

I turn to Amendment 2. My noble friend Lady Massey posed a key question when she spoke on Second Reading on 16 June. She asked:

“Who is the Bill for?”.—[Official Report, 16/06/15; col. 1115.]

The more I see and try to understand this measure, the more I begin to wonder that myself. The noble Baroness said that any Bill with “child” in the title must reflect—as set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child—that the rights of the child are paramount. I share her view. Good childcare should be child focused and offer learning and developmental opportunities. Otherwise, what is the point of it?

I share the fear expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock—a blunt-speaking Yorkshirewoman if ever there was one. On Second Reading, she said that the Bill’s focus was on providing means to encourage women into work. While that might be laudable, the primary focus must be on its impact on children’s lives and not just on the future of the labour market. If, in the end, all we get from this Bill is a very costly system of babysitting and nothing else, we will have failed every family who wants the opportunity of meaningful, progressive and fully rounded childcare in which the child’s development can be the central objective.

Amendment 2 gives us an opportunity to persuade the Government to refocus the Bill and put the child at the heart of this measure. It places a specific duty on the Secretary of State to promote childcare and underpins that by requiring the Secretary of State to,

“promote the progressive development of persons and institutions which provide childcare”.

Those objectives go hand in hand. The first without the second would be worthless.

That brings me to a key point highlighted in the report of the Select Committee on Affordable Childcare, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood. Paragraph 25 stated that the committee and its witnesses were concerned,

“about the lack of coherence in the Government’s stated objectives for childcare policy”.

Witnesses appearing before the committee had flagged up the trade-offs necessary to achieve the separate policy strands. These were highlighted as,

“improving child outcomes, narrowing the attainment gap, and facilitating parental employment”.

The committee concluded, after listening to witnesses, that there was no evidence,

“to suggest that the need for such trade-offs was … acknowledged by Government”.

It formally asked the Government to clarify,

“how competing aims between the policy strands are prioritised, and what mechanisms are in place between Government departments to address the necessary trade-offs”.

Could the matter have been resolved and perhaps a different paragraph 25 put in the report? If the then Exchequer Secretary and now Employment Minister, Priti Patel, had turned up to give evidence it might have been. However, like some latter-day Louis XIV, she wrote to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and said:

“I have concluded that it would not be appropriate for me to attend”.

I do not know the lady—I know nothing ill of her and I am sure she is a very good person. However, it is becoming typical of the attitude of this Government to refuse to submit Ministers to the scrutiny of Parliament. If we cannot hold the Executive to account, who will? That is why we come here every day. Ministers and the Government must understand the need to co-operate with the House, with noble Lords, and not to resist our legitimate scrutiny role. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, spoke for all when he wrote back to the Minister expressing his disappointment that the Minister refused to attend. He went on to say that what is best for child development may not be best for enabling parents, and especially mothers, to maintain their attachment to the labour market.

I have been greatly encouraged by the response that the Minister gave at the start of this debate. He is clearly wanting and willing to engage with the House and with noble Lords on all sides to make this a better Bill. I invite him to assuage the fears expressed by my noble friend Lady Massey and other noble Lords and state without equivocation that this Bill is about childcare—a childcare service that is centred and focused on the child. The benefit of helping parents into work is a bonus, but it should not be the main objective of the Bill.