Childcare Vouchers

Martin Whitfield Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey, and it is a particular pleasure in respect of this debate, which was brought to the Chamber through the Petitions Committee. I thank everyone who signed the petition—267 of my constituents, including Christopher Thomson, Steve Gibson, and Karen and Allen Kelly, who not only signed it but took the opportunity to write to me about how the changes will affect them as individuals and as families.

We have heard a lot about the problems, potential problems and inequity of the system that is coming down the line, so I will not rehearse those arguments, except to say that I support them. A particular inequity is that the lowest earners will be the ones who are hit hardest by the changes.

My constituents have asked me to raise a number of matters, and I am more than pleased to do so. First, I sincerely hope that we all agree that quality childcare is hugely important to this nation. There can be a 14-month difference between some children before they start school, because of their experiences and the income of the families they are growing up in. Both Governments, north and south of the border, have strongly advocated support for additional hours of childcare, which is hugely important to the future of the country. More free childcare is an easy and attractive promise to families who are struggling, but it is wrong to make that promise unless it has behind it the necessary investment. That goes for Governments both north and south of the border, as I say. It is important to this country, to families and, most of all, to children who are growing up that they have good-quality, safe childcare.

The second matter is the affordability and flexibility of the childcare needed today. As the hon. Member for Belfast South (Emma Little Pengelly) highlighted, people’s work patterns are so different from those of two or even one generation ago, and therefore the childcare system needs to be massively flexible to answer the needs of all families across the nation. I also raise the issue of internet blackspots—for the third time, I confess, in this Chamber—and problems that occur with a wholehearted shift to using the internet when the structure people need to use is not only inadequate but, at times, as some of my constituents feel, incapable of remedy. On a cautionary note, I suggest that care should be taken before rushing down the path of having another internet-based platform.

Finally, I will make a point that has been made by a number of my constituents but not yet in this debate. Childcare vouchers allow the opportunity for a discussion to take place between the employer and the employee about the needs of that specific family. As one of my constituents said, without that discussion, they would not have found out how flexible their employer was prepared to be about childcare needs; and as the employer said, they would not have been aware of the individual’s childcare responsibilities. In this day and age, when less and less face-to-face discussion takes place, and more and more problems are raised, we lose that opportunity for discussion at our peril. It is important for employers to understand and appreciate the family position of those who work for them.

In areas where there are skills shortages and employers struggle to recruit, it is important for employers to make the widest choices available. If it is right that a country and an employer should have choices, is it not right that a family has choices about the childcare provision, or funding for such provision, available to them? In 2018, is it too much to ask that that choice be made available and, if at all possible, expanded?