Armed Forces: East of Suez
Lord Touhig Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Viscount Younger of Leckie
We believe that we are thinking in 21st-century terms. Let me say a little more about the build-up of our presence in the Gulf. It is very important to have a strong defence presence with the naval facility in Bahrain, HMS “Jufair” and the regional land training hub in Oman—and to have a stronger engagement with the creation of the British defence staff in Dubai. We are also building more short-term training teams to build our partners’ capacity. For example, in 2018 exercise Saif Sareea 3 will take place.
Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, in his Bahrain speech the Foreign Secretary said:
“Britain is back East of Suez”.
He also said:
“We are spending £3 billion on our military commitments in the Gulf over the next 10 years”.
Yet the SDSR barely mentions it, merely speaking of “setting our vision” in the “Gulf Strategy”. When will that strategy be published? The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay of St Johns, said in March last year—almost a year ago—that it would be published in due course. When have we heard those sorts of words before? Does the Minister agree with me that a major shift in our military profile in the Middle East should be put before Parliament first and not used as a headline-grabbing speech for the Foreign Secretary on a world tour?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
When we get to the point where we want to build up our presence in the region, it is absolutely right that it is announced. It was announced as part of a speech, which is perfectly normal. Over the next decade we will spend £3 billion on defence in the Gulf region. That will very much help us build up our maritime land and air bases in Oman and give us a persistent and increasingly permanent naval defence there. Therefore, what has happened is perfectly normal.
Armed Forces: Capability
Lord Touhig Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, like others, I must commend my noble friend Lord Robertson of Port Ellen for securing this debate and for the manner in which he introduced it.
The title of the debate is most apt and highly relevant in today’s world. Change is sweeping the globe. People’s long-held views are changing, populism is in the ascendency and many political predictions have turned out to be false. However, in defence terms, we have always to be ready for any eventuality. We may be drawn into a conflict tomorrow and need to question whether we are prepared. I would like to spend a few minutes painting a picture of our defence capability as I see it.
My noble friend Lord Reid pointed out that we now have an Army smaller than the one we put in the field against Napoleon. The Navy has just 19 escorts, six of which have propulsion problems. We have no aircraft carriers and will have none until early 2020s. There are currently only seven RAF fighter squadrons, but two of those exist only by extending the life of the Typhoon until 2040. More, in an Answer to a Question from my noble friend Lord Moonie, the Government revealed that a third of our Typhoon and Tornado aircraft are in long-term maintenance and unable to fly. We have no marine patrol aircraft while the Russians increase their submarine activity around our seas. There is an overdependence on recruiting reservists and, despite millions being spent on recruitment, targets for all three services have been missed. Morale is poor. Fifty-four per cent of service personnel are dissatisfied with service life. This is made worse for the Army. A report by the National Audit Office on accommodation stated that poor housing was affecting morale, recruitment and retention.
The failings that I have identified are not the responsibility of our Armed Forces but rather the consequences of the Government’s policy of cuts, mismanagement and poor forecasting. I am sure that the Minister will dispute this, but the concerns and criticisms expressed across the House cannot be ignored and will not go away.
One thing that we can all agree on in this House it is that the service men and women in our Armed Forces are committed professionals and the best in the world. They are the best trained, the most highly motivated and very effective at what they do. But we have to make sure they remain so. That means that we have to make sure that our Armed Forces are adequately funded.
Two challenges face us: more investment and better use of current resources. Without that investment, we will not meet the challenges posed to NATO, the challenges posed by Russia—which has invested millions in modernising her weaponry—and the challenges posed by the growing sea power of China, not to mention the terrorist threat.
NATO remains the bedrock of our defence and is essential for ensuring the security of Britain and our allies at a time of increased global instability. Notwithstanding spin doctors, that is the official policy of the Labour Party. So I welcome the Government’s commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defence. However, I have to stress that that is a minimum spend. During the 13 years of the previous Labour Government, we averaged a spend of 2.3% of GDP on defence.
The second challenge is better management of our resources. HMS “Ocean”, essential to providing amphibious capability, had a £65 million refit completed in 2014 only for the Government to announce one year later that she would be decommissioned in 2018. We will now spend £60 million adapting one of our new carriers to perform its tasks. RFA “Diligence” is our only at-sea repair ship. Between 2007 and 2015, the Government spent £44 million on refits only to put the vessel up for sale last year. This is an appalling waste of scarce defence resources. We have to find more money for our Armed Forces, but we certainly have to manage better the resources that we already have.
Since this Government took office in 2010, defence has faced severe cuts. On these Benches, we think that that is enough. From the Labour Party’s point of view, my colleague, the shadow Defence Secretary, Nia Griffith, has announced a major review of defence spending. My noble friend Lord Murphy spoke about the 2% spending on defence, referring to the comments recently made by Nia Griffith. I share her concern that the present spending of 2% includes £825 million of war pensions, £400 million on UN peacekeeping and an estimated £200 million on pensions paid to retired civil servants. She said:
“Pensions are very important but they in no way contribute to … defence capabilities”.
Faced with a potential aggressor, how will the Government use pensions to defend Britain? Perhaps, like some latter-day Ethelred the Unready, they could use the pensions to buy off the threat.
I conclude my remarks by raising one major concern, which others around the House have also raised: the threat posed by a resurgent Russia—a Russia skilled in the use of cyberwarfare, because warfare is what it is, and a Russia that has one big and possibly critical advantage, as pointed out in a Times article on 22 December, written by Edward Lucas, in its President, Vladimir Putin. He wrote:
“Putin is decisive; we are not. He is willing to accept economic pain; we are not. He is willing to break the rules; we are not. He is willing to use force; we are not”.
I share Lucas’s concern that we may not be able to rely on the United States to help defend us in the future. President-elect Trump unsettles many of us—as he reassures some who are not our friends—with his pronouncements about Russia, NATO and the defence of Europe. In the past few years we have seen the Russian willingness to create problems and conflicts even on its own borders. The Russians then suggest mediation to mitigate and divert attention from the cause of the problem—Russian aggression in the first place. When they propose mediation, we in the West get excited because Russia appears to be co-operating in providing a solution—a solution to a problem that it created. We cannot secure world peace and security by pretending that an aggressor is not an aggressor and hoping that sanctions alone will be enough to prevent further incursions.
We in Britain, NATO and the West have to make it clear that the cost of aggression is a price too much to bear because, like it or not, in order to deter we have to be able to threaten. We are an island people with a proud history of defending freedoms. We are an international trading nation relying on keeping open the shipping lanes of the world to our commerce. We are on the verge of a major shift in our relations with our nearest neighbours in Europe. We face major threats from terrorists who will commit acts of war against our own people here in Britain. And we face state-sponsored cyberattacks. The phrase “We face an uncertain future” may be overused but, my God, it is most relevant today.
I readily confess to making some party political points in today’s debate because that is the right thing to do when we have such clear differences between the Government and Opposition, but I passionately believe that there is one issue that unites us all in this House: we want to continue to enjoy our freedoms and our British way of life. But to do that we have to be prepared to invest more in our defence.
Education and Adoption Bill
Lord Touhig Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, we have had a first-class debate with many excellent contributions from those who strongly support the Bill and from those who have grave doubts and do not support it. In particular, I compliment my noble fiend Lord Blunkett on a classic maiden speech delivered with style and humour. He served with great distinction in the other place and brought his very considerable talent to bear as a Cabinet Minister. We are indeed fortunate that he has come to this House, and I am sure I am not alone in looking forward to hearing him speak in future, bringing to our deliberations that special and rare insight for which he is well known.
The Bill enables the Secretary of State to intervene in so-called coasting schools, yet when it started its Committee stage in the other place the Government were so unprepared that they had to deal with the adoption part first because they had not worked out the meaning of the term “coasting”. Those of us who have just completed the Committee and Report stages of the Childcare Bill should perhaps not be surprised, as we know full well how the Government will steam ahead with a policy, even though, as in the case of that Bill, they have not yet worked out how they are going to fund it.
As I said, at the start of this Bill’s passage through Parliament the term “coasting” was not defined, but now we have it—or do we? The Minister said in his opening remarks that the whole notion of the term is now to go out to consultation. What we do have is a narrow and short-sighted definition that is exclusively data driven and takes no account of the individual circumstances of a school. However, despite the definition being so narrow, it will have great consequences for pupils, teachers and parents. This definition of coasting is likely to exclude many schools that require intervention and include some that do not. Given that the Secretary of State has tied her hands by forcing herself to intervene in coasting schools, surely we need a stronger definition that takes into account all relevant factors and not just numbers and figures. That definition should be arrived at through proper research and consultation, not through a lottery.
When my party first developed the policy of helping underperforming schools, it specifically required local authorities to consider a full range of evidence about a school in order to make a balanced and fair judgment as to whether it was underperforming. The Bill completely removes this ability to consider both performance and context, which will inevitably mean that the term is used inappropriately—whatever the term is following the consultation.
Further to giving the Secretary of State no discretion in how a coasting school is identified, the Bill also allows no discretion in the making of academy orders. This means that a school in special measures must become a sponsored academy whether or not an adequate sponsor can actually be found.
The research group Education Datalab estimates that 1,179 schools would be classed as coasting if the previous three years of data are used, including four Ofsted-rated “outstanding” schools—two primary and two secondary. However, the data also show that schools serving more affluent areas will escape the “coasting” judgment. We know that schools serving more affluent communities make better progress on average than those in more deprived communities. Progress measures are still clearly affected by socioeconomic factors and that is why, before a school is labelled as coasting, it would be unfair not to consider contextual factors. Of course, the Bill does not allow for this and we can already see how the Government’s ill-thought-out definition of coasting would lead to wrongly labelling some schools as coasting while others were left unjudged.
Unlike the requirement for the Secretary of State to take action in a failing local authority school, there is no requirement whatever for her to act similarly in a failing academy. What is more, there is a lack of evidence to support the idea that academy status will lead to school improvement—not all academies are the success stories that the Minister indicated in his opening remarks. A number of academy chains have been criticised by Ofsted, the Sutton Trust and the Minister’s own department, because it has been shown that they are performing poorly compared with local authority maintained schools. Earlier this year, 146 academies were in special measures and 619 required improvement, but the Bill does nothing to deal with this. It simply creates a two-tier system with different standards for local authority and academy-sponsored schools. The Minister painted quite a rosy picture of the success of academies. I hope he might be prompted to provide us with a little more detail—he might write to me, if he can, and put the letter in the Library.
This Bill puts enormous further power in the hands of the Secretary of State. The noble Lord, Lord True, was a bit concerned about centralisation, but, whether it has a red or a blue tinge, centralisation is, nevertheless, centralisation. The Bill allows the Secretary of State to make decisions about academy sponsors behind closed doors and removes the right of local stakeholders—and, importantly, that of parents—to consult on the future of their school. But much more than that, the whole trend of encouraging more parents to take a stakeholder interest in their children’s education is being brought to an end by this one measure. For more than three decades, in my experience, there has been cross-party agreement on the need for greater parental involvement in schools—ranging from the appointment and election of parent governors, to parents having the right to meet school governors and being encouraged to set up before and after-school clubs. Why have the Government introduced legislation to specifically take away the right of parents to say what kind of school they want to send their children to every day? To me, this seems entirely wrong and at odds with the gains we have made over the last few decades in getting parents involved. Parents are not simply being sidelined; they are being deliberately excluded by an Act of Parliament. My Lords, this is Britain—some of us still like to call it Great Britain. It is not North Korea. It is important that we allow parents to have a full and proper say in changes to their children’s education.
I now turn briefly to the provisions on adoption. The legislation supports local authorities in combining into regional adoption agencies. Although we support this aim and that of speeding up adoption rates, we need provisions in place to ensure that super-regional consortia do not squeeze out smaller and more specialised voluntary adoption agencies.
It is also important that we improve the support given to people post-adoption, particularly mental health support. I hope that there will be an opportunity in Committee to look at the actual experiences many people have faced post-adoption. In my view, society’s involvement in adoption should not come to an end at the point the adoption takes place. I know from cases that I came across when I served in the other place, and from experiences made known to me by family and friends, that there are many lessons we could usefully learn.
The Bill fails us as much in what it does not address as in what it does. My noble friend Lord Watson said that the Bill does not address teacher recruitment and retention, or the provision of adequate pupil places. The Government seem much more concerned with restructuring our education system than with tackling the real problems we face in encouraging more teachers into our schools. This will become particularly difficult under the new system proposed in the Bill: teachers are unlikely to want to join schools that may be one inspection away from academisation. I hope that, during consideration of the Bill in your Lordships’ House, we may be able to make the Government see the problems it will create. I hope there will be opportunities in Committee for us to improve it, and that the Government will take note of the common sense they hear from all sides of the House.
Childcare Bill [HL]
Lord Touhig Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Touhig
Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 2 continues the debate we have just had over the funding review and what it means for the delivery of the additional entitlement. It seeks to end the ambiguity in the Bill as to whether responsibility for delivering the additional 15-hour entitlement will be the duty of the Secretary of State—as currently worded in the Bill—or of local authorities. We were unable to secure a firm answer at Committee; in fact, the Minister stated:
“The Government think that it is right for the primary legislation to put the duty to secure the extra 15 hours on the Secretary of State in the first instance, to demonstrate to parents the importance we attach to providing free childcare provision and to give them confidence that the Government will deliver on their manifesto commitment”.—[Official Report, 1/7/15; col. 2114.]
We tabled Amendment 2 to gain further clarity. However, the Government have since tabled Amendment 18, which confirms that the duty falls on local authorities. If this is the case, local councils must be given the appropriate level of support to fulfil their duty. The Government have said:
“We will … look at how we can support local authorities in drawing up agreements between themselves and childcare providers (perhaps by publishing a national model agreement). In addition, we are considering what can be done to smooth out issues around payment arrangements between local authorities and providers.
A full economic impact assessment and new burdens assessment will be carried out in due course”.
The Local Government Association has said that the duty will create further cost pressures on local government and will involve the risks associated with placing additional costs on an already underfunded system. Will the Minister provide an update on what is being done to ensure that local councils will not be out of pocket as a result of being responsible for delivering the entire 30-hour package of free childcare? Again, without seeing the detail of the funding review it is impossible to see how councils fit into the delivery model. I noted from the summary of evidence submitted to the funding review that only 3% of local authorities responded. The Government have committed to an uplift in the average rate that providers receive for the entitlement. The current proposal is for this to be delivered by councils through the dedicated schools grant. The Department for Education has confirmed that decisions about the size of this rate uplift and the consequent additional funding will be made at the forthcoming spending review, which the Minister referred to in the earlier debate.
On 15 June the Government announced that they are conducting a review of the cost of providing childcare. This follows warnings from providers across the spectrum that the current system is underfunded. I know that the Minister does not agree with that, but it is what the sector tells us. It is vital the Government ensure that the funding rate covers the cost of delivering 30 hours of free childcare to a standard likely to improve children’s outcomes and deliver broader policy objectives on employment progression and social mobility—a point well made in the earlier debate.
An initial look at the government amendments in the group might suggest a concession, as expressed in Amendment 12, but, having removed subsections (4) to (7) with Amendment 12, in Amendment 18 the Government seek to recover ground by giving the Secretary of State a power, as opposed to a duty, to make regulations on how local authorities should discharge their duties. The Government could have made Amendment 18 more palatable if they had used “must” rather than “may”. The “may” in line 2 gives the Secretary of State discretion as to whether to make regulations, although it is difficult to see how the scheme can operate without the use of regulation-making powers.
So it goes on. I am sure many noble Lords will have seen the eighth report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee published yesterday, already referred to by my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch. It says,
“we are surprised and disappointed that many of our recommendations have not been acted upon. It appears to us that the amendments add very little of substance to the face of the Bill: for the most part they adjust the existing delegated powers by removing some, varying others and adding more, while re-parading many in a new clause”.
It sounds a bit like moving the deckchairs on the “Titanic”. The report also says:
“Although the changes to some delegated powers may give the House a clearer idea of how the powers could be exercised, it remains unclear how they will be exercised”.
What an indictment of a very important Bill which is welcomed all around the House.
Amendments 14 and 16 remove from the Bill the ability of the Secretary of State to criminalise parents. In new subsection (2)(h) proposed in Amendment 18, the Government use their proposed new clause to replace the power in what was Clause 1(5)(k) to create criminal offences. I agree with the eighth report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee that this is welcome and that the new power is focused only on unauthorised disclosure of official information. But the committee points out that the power is not insignificant,
“as it would enable the creation of an offence sufficiently serious to be punishable by imprisonment for up to two years”.
On Monday, the Times revealed that Facebook, a company worth billions, paid just £4,000 in taxes to the British Crown last year—around £1,000 less than the average British worker pays in taxes and national insurance. It is tax avoiders such as this that should be criminalised, not working parents, who might get a criminal record and face a jail sentence, perhaps for completing a form incorrectly when seeking free childcare.
We will come to the issue of affirmative versus negative procedures for the making of regulations later in the debate, but I believe that this is a matter that we will have to look at in much more detail. In fact, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee said yesterday in paragraph 10 of its report:
“We draw subsection (2)(h) to the attention of the House, so that it may consider whether the requirement for affirmative procedure only on first exercise of the power affords an adequate level of Parliamentary scrutiny for regulations which create, or alter the statutory ingredients of, criminal offences”.
I hope that the Minister will note those wise words.
Also in this group is Amendment 20A, which will be spoken to by the Liberal Democrats. We strongly support it because we believe that parents on low levels of income and those with multiple jobs need the kind of flexibility that it will engender. I do not wish in any way to take away from the comments that representatives of the Liberal Democrats will make, but I want to make clear that that amendment certainly has the strong support of this side of the House. With those few words, I beg to move.
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, for greater clarity in the debate we withdrew our Amendment 15 and retabled it as an amendment to the new clause in government Amendment 18. Our amendment relates particularly to subsection (2)(b) of the new clause, which is about making,
“provision about how much childcare is to be so made available for each child, and about the times at which, and periods over which, that childcare is to be made available”.
Over the course of the debate on this Bill—on Second Reading, in Committee and again today—we have consistently argued for greater flexibility in the periods of time over which the 15 hours’ additional free childcare can be offered. We have done so for a number of reasons.
Many parents, particularly women, take on two or three jobs in a week to try to make ends meet. In my role as a local councillor I had the difficult task of trying to find new accommodation for a grandmother so that she could move from her council housing to a flat nearer her daughter as the daughter got up at five o’clock in the morning to take on a cleaning job at six and at that time no other childcare was available. I know at first hand what it means for many mothers who are trying to do, for instance, a cleaning job before the school day, something for school-lunch duties in the middle of the day and then another cleaning job at the end of the day. With this Bill we have an enormous opportunity to support those mothers and help them continue in work. That is why I have made what I hope is a strong case for defining more explicitly the flexibility that we are asking for in the Bill, rather than leaving it to vague definitions.
Not only is there the difficulty in the working week for the parents I have described; for all parents school holidays can be a nightmare. This is not just because the children are at home but because these parents are trying to juggle finding childcare for their children at home in the holidays while continuing in their work. Many parents find relatives, but not all are able to find them. The definitions of flexibility that we are proposing to include in the Bill would enable that to happen and would be of great advantage to many parents. Questions from those in the sector have indicated that one facet of the Bill they would particularly like to see is what they call a stretch of the hours over a longer period, not only during a week but also over the school holidays. That would be a tremendous help to many working families. I hope that we will not lose that opportunity.
I shall listen carefully to what the Minister says when he responds to the proposals that we have made. I feel strongly, as do my colleagues, that the Bill should contain a clear definition. It currently does not. If it is not included in the Bill today, we will have to think again about how we can move forward to ensure that it does.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this very short debate. In response to Amendment 2, the Minister agreed that local authorities were best placed to deliver the additional childcare. It begs the question why the first four words in Clause 1(1) were ever in the Bill in the first place—but that is another matter. I received some reassurance on Amendments 14 and 16, although I am still not entirely convinced. However, we have done our very best to try to improve the Bill on these matters and it is time to cede responsibility for improving the Bill—certainly as far as Amendments 2,14 and 16 are concerned— to those who legislate in the other place. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 2.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 3 and 23. I find this debate a little frustrating. My noble friend Baroness Pinnock is right when she says that it is not just about care, but about educational experience: for instance, the importance of play. It is not about the type of provision or the amount of time we spend talking about costs. If the Government are going to invest—and are investing—huge amounts of money, it is important that we get the quality right. The best way of guaranteeing that quality is by the people delivering it.
I am sorry to disagree with the noble Baroness, but qualifications are not—and should not be—tick boxes. Qualifications are about a body of understanding and practice that one has to go through. It is hugely important that people working with young children know about child development. Notions that one is working with children but has no understanding of how children develop are anathema to me. Yes, it is hugely important that the assistant understands the importance of play and that the setting has an understanding of some of the special needs issues. It is not about ticking boxes but making sure that people have the qualifications.
The people who used to work in nurseries were of course called nursery nurses. They were highly regarded and highly trained, and resented it when, suddenly, nursery nurses were done away with and became level 3s —or perhaps level 4s. Level 3 is not a particularly onerous qualification to get; one can do it in 12 months or over two years. I hope that we stick our mast firmly to the top of our nurseries and say, yes, we want the people working there to have the right qualifications.
Of course, there are some wonderful people working in playgroups and helping out in nurseries who do not have these qualifications, but for goodness’ sake—we asked for a commission to look at this issue, and the Nutbrown commission spent a lot of time working on this. It said, “Yes, they should be at level 3”. Should we just ignore that and tear it up? No, we should not. We should make sure that quality is at the heart of the provision. Finally, we should also make sure that the leadership of those nurseries is of the highest calibre.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the very helpful meeting he held yesterday, when we had the opportunity to explore a number of issues that have exercised us throughout the passage of the Bill, in particular, the outline of the funding review.
Amendment 11 in this group was much in my thoughts after our meeting and the presentation. I fear that the funding review’s progress and the conclusions it will reach may well be a threat to the existing staff- child ratios, which would be a retrograde step were it to happen. Of course, because the Government, sadly, seem determined to put the cart before the horse—passing legislation through your Lordships’ House and telling us afterwards how it will be funded—I feel I have every reason to be concerned.
Amendment 11 goes to the very heart of the standard of education and childcare that parents can expect, especially those with special educational needs children. While I am the first to recognise that there are many good educators in the childcare education sector who themselves have no formal level 3 qualification—a point well made yesterday by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth of Breckland—that does not mean we should not seek to do something about that and ensure that everybody has the appropriate qualification. The simple fact is that no one leaving education today will have a job for life. Everyone will have to retrain and upskill in their working lives. If we do not recognise that by ensuring that the first learning and educational experience a child receives in its life is delivered by someone who themselves has been well trained, we start at a disadvantage.
We must be bold in our ambition for our children, and Amendment 11 is surely the foundation of that ambition. That is why we on this side strongly support it.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 3, 5, 11 and 23 regarding the quality of childcare to be delivered under the Bill, staff to child ratios, the workforce, and provision for children with special educational needs. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey, Lady Tyler and Lady Pinnock, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for highlighting the importance of high-quality childcare and, in particular, the skills and qualifications of the early years workforce, including for children with special educational needs and disabilities.
I reassure noble Lords that we all want childcare that meets the needs of working parents and their children, including those with special educational needs. I have listened carefully to the debate this evening and I completely agree with the points that have been made about the importance of the quality of childcare and its impact on child development. I reassure the House, and particularly all those who have contributed to this debate, that the quality of early education and childcare and the welfare of children remains paramount.
All childcare must be delivered in a safe, secure and welcoming way that contributes to a child’s welfare and their development. The Government believe that the extended entitlement needs to supplement and complement the current early education entitlement. It will need to provide positive and stimulating experiences for children, and staff will need to have the right skills and knowledge to deliver this care. There are a number of aspects to these amendments, each of which I will address in turn.
First, the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, seeks to extend the existing ratios for the current 15-hours early education entitlement to the 30-hours childcare entitlement and to set these out in primary legislation. All early years providers registered on the early years register must meet the early years foundation stage framework requirements for welfare and well-being, including ratio and qualification requirements.
The English childcare system has some of the tightest adult-child ratios in the world. For three and four year-olds in group provision there must be one adult for every eight children. Or, where a person with a suitable level 6 qualification is working with the children, a 1:13 ratio can be used. The existing ratios have been set out in the EYFS since 2008 and we are committed to keeping them. I would like to place on record that there are no plans to change the ratios to deliver the new entitlement. I am very clear about this. The Government consider the current approach of using secondary legislation to be the right one for ratios, as was discussed in Committee. Ratios for all providers are already set out in secondary legislation, and this allows for a quick response if changes are needed to keep children safe and well cared for. I hope I have reassured noble Lords on this point and urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Nash
My Lords, this group of amendments concerns the regulations made under the Bill, which will be key to setting out the detail of the new entitlement, including who will be eligible and how it will be delivered. Therefore, I understand noble Lords’ concerns about ensuring that they have a proper opportunity to scrutinise this detail.
There was much interest in the regulations in our earlier debates in this House and in the report by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. The committee concluded that the scope of the delegations and powers under Clause 1 as drafted were too wide. Given the importance of secondary legislation to the Bill, I am in complete agreement with noble Lords and with the committee’s report that it would be appropriate for regulations to be approved by a debate in both Houses. That is why I have brought forward these amendments, which would require regulations made under Clause 1 and extended entitlement regulations to be laid and approved by each House using the affirmative procedure. I hope this will reassure noble Lords that we have listened. I hope the Government’s amendments will be welcomed.
Amendment 27, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, would ensure that a statutory instrument containing regulations in exercise of any power in the Bill would not be made unless a draft of the instrument had been laid and approved by each House; in other words, it would subject regulations to the affirmative procedure each time the regulation-making power was exercised. We believe it is right that initially we should deal with the regulations under the affirmative procedure, rather than the negative procedure as originally planned. However, we do not believe it is necessary to make them affirmative each time.
We need to strike the right balance between the mechanics of the affirmative process—for example, the need to find time in the parliamentary timetable for debates in both Houses, no matter how small the change—and the ability of government to respond efficiently and effectively to support delivery of the new entitlement, should this be necessary. That is why the government amendments in this group envisage that regulations made under Clause 1 and regulations made for the purpose of discharging the Secretary of State’s duty will be subject to a debate the first time the powers are exercised but that subsequent regulations made under the Bill would be subject to the negative resolution procedure.
The exception to this would be in any instances where regulations seek to amend or repeal primary legislation, or in the case of regulations seeking to update the maximum level of any financial penalty set out in the Bill, which would be subject to the affirmative procedure. This follows the precedents of parliamentary scrutiny adopted in childcare legislation or comparable education legislation. The regulations that underpin the current Section 7 entitlement have been subject to the negative procedure since they were introduced in 2008. These have been amended only four times, and each time the changes were subject to a public consultation.
We believe that our approach is the right one. As noble Lords have already heard, we have made great progress since Committee to narrow the scope and clarify the detail of what we will include in the regulations. I also reassure noble Lords that feedback from parents, providers and employers will be taken into account in the development of the draft regulations, and we will wish to draw on the expertise of noble Lords. Furthermore, we have committed to providing a full impact assessment on the extent of the free entitlement, which will be published when we undertake a formal public consultation on the draft regulations in 2016. Following the consultation, we will lay the draft regulations before the House for a full debate before they can be approved and added to the statute book.
I hope noble Lords agree that by the time they are laid, these regulations will have undergone a significant amount of close scrutiny. Therefore, I am confident that we will be able to present a set of regulations to the House that are fair and workable and remain true to the spirit of the Government’s commitment to support and reward thousands of hard-working families. I beg to move.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, I regret very much having to put Amendment 27 before the House but, frankly, the Government leave us no choice. We have seen throughout the passage of the Bill the cavalier attitude the Government have taken—not by the Ministers who have represented the Government in this House, I hasten to add, but by the Government as a whole. In support of that assertion, I quote from the 2nd Report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, published on 26 June, which says at paragraph 10:
“We note that the Minister said that ‘the introduction of the Bill, with a strong duty on the Secretary of State, sends a clear message to parents and providers about the Government’s commitment’. That is not, in our judgment, a proper use of legislation: the purpose of an Act is to change the law, not to ‘send a message’”.
Earlier, in paragraph 8, the committee says:
“In our view, the Government’s stated approach to delegation is flawed. While the Bill may contain a legislative framework, it contains virtually nothing of substance beyond the vague ‘mission statement’”.
Finally, in paragraph 9 of the report, the committee states that:
“We do not accept the Government’s attempt to dignify their approach to delegation by referring to a need to consult. We of course acknowledge the need for consultation as a precursor to the formation of policy; but this should in our view have followed the well-established sequence of a Green Paper setting out proposals, followed by a White Paper containing the Government’s legislative intentions, and finally the presentation of a Bill”.
There we have it—that spells out quite clearly how the Government should be presenting legislation to Parliament.
Lord Touhig
“( ) A statutory instrument containing regulations under section 1 or section (Discharging the section 1(1) duty) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.”
The Deputy Speaker (Viscount Ullswater) (Con)
My Lords, I must inform the House that if this amendment is agreed to I will not be able to call Amendments 28 and 29.
Creative Sector: Educational Provision
Lord Touhig Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, if the Minister walks through the Members’ Cloakroom he will see a bag—I think it is on the peg of the noble Lord, Lord Colwyn—emblazoned with the words, “Music makes the world a better place”. The Secretary of State for Education seems to agree because in a recent speech she revealed that she used to sing with the City of London Choir. In the same speech she said that every young person should,
“have the opportunity to discover how the arts can enrich their lives”.
Given this enthusiasm for culture, why are the Government deliberately excluding study of the arts from the English baccalaureate?
Lord Nash
All the evidence from around the world is that pupils need a core suite of academic subjects to engage their intellect and curiosity, so that they will then want to study a broader and more cultural range of subjects. We are investing heavily in music hubs, and I go back to my point that the take-up in EBacc is driving a much richer and more cultural curriculum in schools.
Children’s Centres
Lord Touhig Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, every farmer in the House will know the phrase, “Do not eat the seed-corn”. If you do, you will survive this year, but next year you will starve, because nothing new has been planted. That is just what the Government are doing by cutting funding to children’s centres: they are eating the seed-corn. For short-term financial gain they are storing up problems for the future. The closure of children’s centres is a malign act and, frankly, very stupid. Therefore—patience, patience; the noble Lord’s time will come—can the Minister say whether the Government will accept that investing in our children’s future by funding children’s centres should be a national policy objective, not left to the whims and vagaries of local councils, many of which have huge financial budgetary problems?
Lord Nash
I accept the importance of the matter, and I was delighted to see the ECCE survey, which showed that 98% of parents were “happy” or “very happy” with the services provided by their children’s centre. I know that the Labour Party likes to hark back to a golden age of Sure Start, but in 2009 the National Audit Office reported that children’s centres then were failing to reduce inequality and many were unviable, and Ofsted reported at the same time that half were not reaching out to vulnerable families. It is essential that we reach out to vulnerable families and that the facilities are tailored in the most flexible way to reach the families who need them.
Childcare Bill [HL]
Lord Touhig Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, we are recommencing our discussions on this very important and much welcomed Bill to extend free childcare by 15 hours per week. The purpose of this amendment is to require more explicit flexibility in the provision as outlined. I welcome the Minister’s assurances that there will be flexibility within the provision, but, sadly, that is not entirely clear in the Bill.
What do we mean by flexibility and why is it so important that we have put down an amendment? The Bill would be much improved if it stated that the Government intend to provide 1,140 hours of free childcare per year rather than, as stated in the Bill, 15 hours for each of the 38 weeks of the school year. It would encourage providers to think about the needs of families and their young children. Many parents have non-standard hours of work, often in low-paid work such as cleaning, hotel work or caring for older people, and some parents work shifts, particularly in the nursing profession. All those people would benefit from greater flexibility in the provision. In our view, this will not happen unless there is encouragement and incentive from the Government to do so.
In addition to trying to meet the working hours of parents, there is the additional challenge of providing free childcare during the school holidays: the 14 weeks of the year in which schools are not working. That is a not insignificant problem for many families. In those 14 weeks, they have to try to juggle grandparents, neighbours and other people who willingly give up time to help them manage their working lives and the need to provide childcare—or they have to pay for additional childcare, often, as we discussed earlier in Committee, at a very much increased hourly rate, sometimes as much as twice the rate that is paid by the Government for the so-called free hours. That is a huge challenge for many families. Flexibility during holiday times and enabling families to get out to work in times other than the traditional nine to five, which is the basic provision in the Bill, would be greatly welcomed by many families, particularly those on low pay, on whom I hope this Bill is particularly focused. I beg to move.
Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 23 and 24. They would place in the Bill the current permitted staff to child ratios for childminders and nurseries. One of the central themes running through the Second Reading debate was concern about the capacity of the early years sector to provide the extra free hours. For example, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham spoke of the strains on providers not in purpose-built facilities who cannot extend their opening hours. My noble friend Lord Sawyer and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talked of low pay and staff shortages. Many noble Lords spoke of the underfunding crisis in the sector and the limitations of cross-subsidy options. As we know, this point will be part of the Government’s review of the finances of the extension.
The Minister and this side have a difference of view about the health of the sector and its capacity to expand and take on new duties. I sincerely hope that we are proved wrong, but in the mean time, there is concern that the Government will look again at increasing the staff to child ratio as a quick fix to deal with the capacity issues. We believe that these amendments are necessary because of this Government’s public statements and attempts in the past to increase the ratios.
This would be all too easy in the future as the current ratios are in regulations which can be changed by the Secretary of State. We are therefore keen to provide the necessary reassurance and guarantees to parents and professionals alike that the current ratios are safeguarded. Noble Lords will recall that there was a massive outcry across the sector when it was proposed to change the ratios. It was felt that this move would compromise quality and put children’s lives at risk and, as a result, the Government had second thoughts and backed down.
However, there is real concern that with the drive to increase the supply of early years places the Government might revisit the original plan. We believe that the current ratios have stood the test of time in balancing the quality of provision with the cost to providers and therefore parents. Professor Nutbrown, who has advised the Government on early years provision, has made it clear that she would oppose any change in the ratio. She quite rightly makes it clear that good-quality provision is directly related to the qualifications and training of the staff involved, as well as their capacity to relate to the children on an individual basis. This is crucial to the well-being and development of young children.
Our proposals would ensure that a single childminder can care for up to six children under the age of eight, including a maximum of one baby under 12 months and another two children under five. By anyone’s imagination it would be quite a workload and a challenge to provide appropriate care across the age group. I looked after one of my granddaughters, aged 22 months, for part of the weekend and can certainly testify that it was challenging indeed.
There must be one member of staff at a nursery for every four children aged two and three and one for every eight children over the age of three. We would also set out the minimum qualifications for these staff members in regulations. Again, the ratios as they stand sound fairly challenging. But they are necessary not just to support the crucial period of early years development but to provide safeguarding and protection for vulnerable children. Nursery staff already work under considerable pressure and we should not be tempted to add to it. So we believe that it is necessary to protect the current ratios and putting them in the Bill would guarantee that if any changes are proposed in the future they would have to come to Parliament and be subject to extensive parliamentary scrutiny and debate. We believe that that would be the right way forward.
Lord Northbourne (CB)
My Lords, might I ask in the context of this debate what the Government mean and we mean by quality in childcare? Is it the quality of childcare only or the quality of childcare and the relationship between the adult and the child? I respectfully submit that one of the most important factors in childcare is the relationship that develops between the child and the carer.
The Government have adopted the early years formula and put a lot of money into it. I think that they are absolutely right to do so, but I suggest that to some extent this Bill in mechanising, as it were, the management of the care of children runs the risk of losing the relationship by which a very young child learns to love, care and interrelate with other human beings. I wonder if the fact that so often we are losing that relationship in the early years is not the cause of some of our troubles in family life later on as the young people get older.
Lord True
My Lords, having just spoken from a point of view sympathetic to providers, I now come forward as a paid-up member of the trade union of local authority leaders. I suppose that that is a switch from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde, since local authorities have not always been the flavour of the month in my noble friend’s department. However, they do try honourably every day to assist in the provision of high-quality education, and I hope that that will be recognised as work on this legislation goes forward. Local authorities are not the enemy: they are often part of the solution.
This is a probing amendment—that is very clear. We are told that further regulations are to be produced requiring each English local authority to provide all sorts of as yet unspecified information. Governments have a terrible habit of requiring information from people, and I am afraid that local authorities sometimes do as well—I plead guilty to that, although I have tried to eradicate it. Every piece of information asked for that is not germane is a burden on business and a burden on the setting. It should be avoided unless it is of overwhelming social benefit. Filling in forms, answering emails and getting involved in chit-chat about whether information is expressed in the right way all take time away from administering, teaching and other important jobs. I hope that providing this unspecified information, whatever it is to be, will not add administrative burdens and costs to local authorities above the minimum level and certainly that it will not prove a burden on the providers and small settings.
The policy statement so helpfully circulated by my noble friend refers to the fact that, under existing legislation, local authorities currently provide a certain amount of useful information: the hours of the setting, where there is one; costs, if people wish to declare them; and other similar items. You can go on your local authority website and find out about nursery settings in your area. The policy statement goes on to say that although the new regulations will require more information, it will not be very different from what is already provided under the existing system. If that is the case, why have this regulatory power? How is it going to be used? Once we have given it away to the Government, or whoever, is there not a risk of regulatory creep as one Government succeed another? I do not think it is necessarily enough to pass a law that everything should stay the same. I ask for an assurance that over the course of the Bill we can have a dialogue about the burden that providing information imposes both on local authorities and on providers.
I conclude with one point that goes back to the position of the provider—particularly those providers that may be on the fringes of staying in the scheme. The more you press them for information, the more they become unwilling to give it, the more careless they get about filling in what they are doing and the more coercive systems can become. None of that is intended, but with accretive creep it could happen. If we are to have regulation then let us be absolutely clear about the boundaries, let us not take it too far and let us never consider that quality is necessarily assured by regulation. Regulation may be part of it, but quality is assured by good service and is tested and assessed in this sector by Ofsted. If this policy is as successful as my noble friend hopes, and anybody in this country is enabled to choose the care they want, then quality will also be provided—perish the thought—by the market, because no one will be constrained from making the childcare choices they want, and logically the good settings will succeed and the bad settings will not. So, please: let us have restraint on regulation. As we go forward I would be grateful for an assurance that my noble friend will talk to local authorities and providers about finding the right balance in the regulations required, lest we get into a merry-go-round of demand, counterdemand and otiose administration. I beg to move.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, in responding to the debate on the first group of amendments the noble Baroness asked whether I had recovered from my daughter’s wedding, which took place last Thursday. We ended it yesterday with a family lunch. As the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and I agreed last week, in Wales a wedding can last a number of days. In my daughter’s case that was certainly true.
My noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen cannot be with us this afternoon, so I shall speak to her Amendment 37. It is a straightforward amendment, which would place a duty on each local council to share information directly with partner agencies in the area, including children’s centres. In my experience, something as simple as this is all too often overlooked when we consider a measure such as the Bill. To digress for a moment, I know from personal experience of the National Health Service in the past couple of years that structures are often in place that actively work against information sharing, to the detriment of a patient.
With this amendment we have the chance to ensure that this does not happen with the Childcare Bill. Information about childcare services is crucial and can be complex. Sources of information vary from the formal, through local authority networks, to the informal, by word of mouth. We welcome the Government’s intention to ensure that parents can access information about childcare and other services through a range of sources in a local authority area. The amendment suggests that the requirement on local authorities to publish this information could go further to ensure that those who would benefit most from childcare support are made aware of good-quality care. Children’s centres can and do work hard to reach parents. Action for Children’s parent champions for childcare, based in children’s centres, can give personal support and advice, which is often much needed.
There is much merit in the amendment. I hope that the Minister, if she cannot accept it today, will at the very least reflect on it and come back to us on Report.
Childcare Bill [HL]
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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.
Childcare Bill [HL]
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Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, some Second Reading debates attract a very large number of speakers. We may not have had a very large number today but, my goodness, we have had contributions of the highest quality. The Minister should consider himself a lucky man to have such knowledge and experience from all sides of the House to help him make this somewhat thin Bill, lacking in detail, a better one.
Like my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch, I give the Bill a welcome—but, like her and many other noble Lords, I give it a very conditional welcome. The Bill stands before us in gargantuan splendour, all six clauses testimony to the titanic venture the Government intend to embark on. There is just so much room for comment—although, sadly for the Minister, this is by virtue not of the thorough and comprehensive nature of the Bill itself but of the conspicuous absence of much of what it purports to be. It is a missing Bill. Its objectives are worthy and noble, but in 20 years’ service in this House and the other place I have never seen a Bill so lacking in detail and so dependent on secondary legislation to give its ambitions practical meaning and outcome.
The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, has written in many academic accounts of this House that our essential function is to act as a scrutinising body for legislation that passes through the Houses of Parliament. But I ask the Minister: how can we carry out this crucial function if we are given very little to work with by the Government? With so much of the Bill covered by regulation that we have yet to see, we are completely in the dark as to how this measure will achieve its objective. So far as the regulations are concerned, despite many attempts to solicit information from the Government, answer came there none.
The Government must understand that if they want to get this flagship piece of legislation on to the statute book, we must see the regulations and have an opportunity to consider them in the context of the Bill. I am convinced that the Minister understands that, although after our very useful meeting yesterday with him and his colleague, the Minister for Childcare and Education in the other place—for which we thank him—it is clear to me that his colleague needs a crash course in understanding how this House works. An example is the funding review. It was only yesterday that the Government issued their call for evidence to be submitted to their review on the cost of providing childcare. Responses have to be submitted by 10 August. Perhaps the Minister can outline the timetable for digesting and publishing the findings. He has spoken of the autumn, but the autumn is a long period: when in the autumn? We had an assurance from the Minister yesterday that the findings will be made public.
We know that the Government want to take legislation through both Houses, gain Royal Assent and pilot the scheme next year, prior to its full launch in 2017. They have precious little time. Charities and sector bodies have stated that funding underpins the central needs of childcare provision, ensuring that it is both accessible and satisfactory. There has been no serious indication on the part of the Government that they acknowledge the necessary trade-offs between cost and quality in childcare. It would be a disappointing outcome if the Government were to continue on a path that would stretch limited resources and undermine conditions of good care in order to push more parents into the labour market.
This Second Reading debate has had one key characteristic: an almost endlessly repeated request for more information. The Minister and his staff will be working overtime to answer so many questions by the time we get to Committee. I have a few more for the Minister. There is already a lack of childcare for disabled children. How will the Bill help this? Together with the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, I was a member of the Parliamentary Inquiry into Childcare for Disabled Children, which found compelling evidence that policy developments to improve the affordability and quality of childcare provision have to date failed to take into account the reality of childcare for disabled children. The inquiry found that disabled children are being denied the opportunities for educational and social development that non-disabled children enjoy, and that parents are being denied the same opportunity to choose to return to work.
The case for a concerted government plan to tackle the inequality faced by this group is a strong one. The scarcity is caused by two major factors: a lack of consistent funding to meet the additional costs of providing childcare to disabled children; and a workforce that is poorly qualified to provide quality childcare. Without addressing these issues, it is likely that disabled children will continue to be disadvantaged by childcare provision that does not take account of their particular needs. This is a question of equality. If we are introducing a new entitlement, we must ensure that it is accessible to all children and that the settings are properly supported so that they can include disabled children with additional needs.
On other matters, how will the Bill ensure that more trained and qualified staff will be available? How will capacity through recruitment and retention be improved? Almost half of independent nurseries do not employ early years teachers. How will this help incentivise nurseries to employ them? How is the impact of childcare on child development being measured? The Bill’s clear objective is to enable parents of young children to find and remain in work—a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. There is nothing wrong in that, but an investment of tens of millions of pounds should do more than simply pay for childminding. Surely good childcare should be child-focused, offering learning and developmental opportunities.
We must make sure that standards will not be sacrificed for affordability, that the work interests of parents do not override the development needs of the child and that, ultimately, the poorest and neediest in our society will benefit most from these proposals. I am thinking here of those parents who need to work to provide for their families and those children, such as those with special needs, who will benefit from the proper attention and care.
The Bill will help only those parents in work with childcare. What measures are planned to help those looking for work? The consultation on funding has just been launched. Will it consider the actual cost of childcare? How many providers are already finding it difficult to stay in business? What modelling has been done to ensure that additional hours provided at a payment level which is at best marginal will not drive more providers out of business? The 30 hours a week will now surely cover lunchtime. Is the cost of the lunch to be included in the free 30 hours? Many providers will not have facilities to provide lunches; this could be a capital cost. Will there be help for this? The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, made this point.
The level of regulation-making powers that the Bill gives to the Secretary of State is unprecedented for a Bill of this size. Why is this, and when will the draft regulations be published? What plans are there to consult on the regulations and who will be consulted? How are the Henry VIII powers in Clause 2(2)(d) to be justified? Is the Bill being rushed through without sufficient time and preparation?
I will not comment on a lot of the remarks that noble Lords have made, but I will highlight one or two points. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham highlighted the problems of childcare during holidays. I was discussing with my eldest son this weekend the problems that he and his wife are going to have in the summer finding childcare provision and being able to afford it. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, welcomed the pilot projects that will be undertaken. They are worth while. When I sat in the other place, I was for a time on the Public Accounts Committee and time and again we saw government schemes go awry because they had not been piloted—so clearly piloting is a good idea. My noble friend Lady Andrews made an important point about the ability under the regulations for the Secretary of State to set up a quango. She is right that it should be in the Bill and not covered just by regulations.
The noble Lord, Lord True, has been a good friend of the Government. He talked about the Government’s manifesto commitment and aspiration but then warned about a rushed skeleton Bill—one that gives Ministers enormous regulatory powers, which he called draconian. Those were wise words and good advice from a government supporter, and I hope that the Minister and the rest of the Government will take heed.
Ultimately, we are being asked today to pass a hollow piece of legislation. We go into Committee in two weeks to consider—what? Without details of the regulations, the Bill is little short of a blank cheque. The Government are playing a dangerous game and if they are not careful, this cheque will bounce and their creditworthiness on the key issue of childcare will be wiped out. I am sure that that is not what the Minister or any Member of the House wants. It is certainly not what the Opposition are seeking. However, the Government have to wake up and listen.
Schools: Health and Well-being
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Lord Nash
The noble Baroness raises an excellent point, particularly in relation to schools for special educational needs. I know that caring for animals and growing plants can be very helpful. The School Food Plan refers to all schools being encouraged to have plant-growing programmes. I can assure her that across the country there are many other examples of what she has talked about.
Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, I am sure that the Minister will have heard the wake-up call from the head of NHS England, Simon Stevens, last week when he told us that one in 10 children are obese when they begin primary school, and that that rises to one in five when they leave. Currently we spend more on obesity-related healthcare than we do on the police, the Prison Service, the fire service and the criminal justice system. Does he agree that child obesity cannot be tackled in isolation? What do the Government propose to do across all departments so that we have a proper strategy to respond to what Mr Stevens now calls the new smoking?
Lord Nash
I agree entirely with the noble Lord about the seriousness of this issue. We are doing what we can in schools. As I said, this is a key focus for the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Health. Many of my department’s priorities are designed around the need to reduce childhood obesity. However, despite our programmes, it still seems to be an issue. We will be publishing our plan on this shortly.