Childcare Bill [Lords]

Mike Kane Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Chapman]

No, they are very quiet now.

Willing the ends without the means will cause more resentment and division, rather than less. The new clause would force the Government to assess and report on the gap in development and attainment, which would ensure that progress was measured. Unless that happens, opportunities to intervene will be missed and inequality will be further entrenched.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. As the equality gap widens in Tory Britain in 2016, is not the most important decision for a young person to choose their parents in the womb if they want to get on in life?

[Jenny Chapman]

I dread to think what my kids would say to that.

New clause 2 is a modest request, given the scale of the challenge that we face. It is also something that the Government should be doing anyway. The strategy to narrow the gap with properly co-ordinated policies and regular reporting to Parliament is urgently needed. The measures in the Bill have the potential to diminish the supply and quality of childcare, and we want to know that that gap-widening risk will be closely tracked and acted on by the Government.

New clause 2 encourages the Government to do some of the strategic thinking that we need. If it is adopted, the Government would have carefully to track the take-up of the offer among, say, the 40% most disadvantaged, better to understand the reasons for low take-up, and then they can seek to address them. The key to improving the attainment of the poorest children—high quality early education as opposed simply to childcare—is at risk due to the question marks over funding, which is why I encourage the Government to support the new clause. We know that poorer areas have a higher proportion of providers than the maintained sector, mainly pre-schools and children’s centres. Those providers face particular capacity challenges, and the National Association of Head Teachers has warned that they are unlikely to be able to deliver the increased hours, as they tend to take just two groups of children—one in the morning and one in the afternoon—and physically do not have the space to double their numbers.

Schools have also tended to cross-subsidise the funding of their early years provision from elsewhere in their budgets to ensure quality. The Government have committed £50 million of new capital funding to help with that, thereby acknowledging that there is a problem, but the figure is unlikely to meet the need and may leave some areas without new provision. All this clause does is seek to ensure that this problem does not result in a widening of the attainment gap.