Childcare Bill [Lords]

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

The Government will be spending £6 billion a year from 2019-20 on early years and childcare. The suggestion that we will be doing that without measuring or evaluating it is simply not true. The question is where we carry out this evaluation and whether it needs to sit in primary legislation. Had the hon. Gentleman been listening, he would have heard me explain that we currently have a survey following 8,000 two-year-olds across England, so what he is asking for is already under way. We do not need primary legislation to evaluate the impact of the important investment to achieve very important goals in this sector.

The latest early years foundation stage profile data reveal that an increasing proportion of children are achieving a good level of development at age five—66% in 2015, compared with 52% in 2013. That is an impressive 14.6 percentage point increase over the past two years. I know that there is more we can do to understand the impact of this extended entitlement. However, as drafted, the proposed amendments are not workable. They call for an evaluation of the impact of discharging the Secretary of State’s new duty within 12 months of the Act coming into force, which is far too soon to make any judgment about impact. That would not be adequate time to collect the data, assess the impacts and produce a report.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

Many kinship carers of young children are pensioners, so they will not meet the work thresholds to access the 30 hours of free childcare, despite arguably being in greatest need of support and respite. Does the Minister plan to take any steps to address the needs of these unsung carers in our nation?

[Mr Gyimah]

Every three and four-year-old is entitled to 15 hours of free childcare. The question is who is entitled to the second 15 hours. [Interruption.] If Opposition Members will bear with me, I will answer the question. Lone parents are entitled to it, as are self-employed parents and parents looking after disabled children. I will seek inspiration from the officials’ box specifically on kinship carers. But the issue is that everybody gets the first 15 hours if they work, and the second 15 hours is a work incentive. If people are not working, they do not need that amount of childcare.

[Mr Gyimah]

Under the current regime, kinship carers will get three hours of respite care a day for five days of the week. Is the hon. Gentleman seriously arguing that he wants more than three hours of respite care a day? If so, why was that not in the Labour party’s manifesto?

[Melanie Onn]

I thank the Minister for being so generous in giving way. I want to echo the sentiment expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), and reinforce it by pointing out that many kinship carers are pensioners who cannot work and cannot meet their thresholds. When it comes to respite care, children often need additional educational or emotional support, which takes an incredible toll. Those carers are saving the state huge amounts of money, because they are not foster carers.

[Mr Gyimah]

Again, the hon. Lady has made a very good point. If the children of kinship carers need additional care, the early years pupil premium that was introduced by the Conservative-led Government will ensure, to the tune of £50 million, that any additional educational needs are funded. That is a completely different issue from that of how many hours of childcare are needed.

[Melanie Onn]

Does the Minister not think that it would be more appropriate for very young children to be in settings where there are mixed social and accessibility needs, so that if they have special educational needs, there is no division between them? Such children will not require access to the additional funding that the Minister has mentioned, but they will need socialisation in those early-years settings.

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Lady is now asking a very different question. If a disadvantaged child has additional educational needs in a mixed setting, there will be additional funding for that child. In response to the hon. Lady’s original question, I can say that a kinship carer who formally takes parental responsibility for a child will be able to access the 30 hours of free childcare.

New clause 1 concerns evaluation. While we are committed to monitoring and collecting data on the impact of the Act, assessing all the issues together would not be feasible, or the most effective way of evaluating the policy. As I have said, the Department has already begun to consider the feasibility of conducting an impact evaluation, and to consider what data would be necessary effectively to monitor the take-up and impact of the new entitlement. I assure Members that the implementation of the extended entitlement will be tested before roll-out. It will be introduced a year early in some areas, from September this year, which will provide an important opportunity to test it and to show that it can be rolled out in a way that meets the needs of working parents. I am pleased to say that local authorities and providers expressed a strong interest in taking part in the early implementation phase, and that the successful candidates will be announced shortly.