Covid-19: Early Years Sector

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, health visitors do essential work. The Government support the letter written by the chief nurse, which outlines that health visitors and other front-line health professionals should not be moved from those roles in this stage of the pandemic, to ensure that visits can be made to those vulnerable families. Since April 2020, it has been part of GPs’ contracts that they are to have an assessment with a mother six to eight weeks after the child is born.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, a survey carried out on behalf of the DfE last October into the effects of Covid-19 on childcare and early years providers showed that only 45% of private nurseries and 55% of childminders believed that they would be financially able to continue for another year. It simply cannot be right that the average gap between the hourly cost of delivering a funded two year-old’s place and the funding rate paid to settings for that place is £2 an hour—a 37% funding deficit. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Childcare and Early Education has called for the Government to commission an independent review of the costs of delivering childcare. Surely the Minister cannot deny that such a review is essential to safeguard the long-term viability of the sector.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, in the autumn and summer terms, the Government paid out the entitlements regardless of the number of children attending these settings. As attendance rose during the autumn, we gave notice to the sector that we were moving back to a per-child-attending basis of funding. Tomorrow is the census, when we will have an up-to-date picture of how many are in attendance in those settings. What is essential at the moment is that the department monitors the market and what is happening in this sector to be able to have the most up-to-date information on the sustainability of those settings, as the noble Lord quite rightly outlines.