Free Childcare

Debate between Mike Wood and Ruth George

Thursday 12th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Ruth George]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention.

A survey of local authorities by the Family and Childcare Trust in February 2017 found that only a third thought that there would be enough childcare for three and four-year-olds using the 30-hour offer, while a third did not know whether there would be a reduction in care quality as a result of the offer’s roll-out. Some 44% of those local authorities said that the 30-hour offer would reduce the financial sustainability of some settings, so some childcare providers would go out of business. The survey found that the extension of free hours could compromise things that parents thought were priorities for high-quality childcare. That is important, because only high-quality childcare helps to boost children’s attainment and close the gap between disadvantaged children and their wealthier peers.

It was good that the Government introduced pilot schemes in September 2016 to see what would happen. The Minister has claimed that those pilot schemes were a great success. In response to the urgent question on 6 September from my hon. Friend the shadow Minister, when we were finally given some figures on the number of children registered for places, the Minister said:

“If we look at the pilot areas that have been delivering for a year now…we can see that 100% of their providers are delivering and 100% of the parents who wanted a place found one, despite some reservations being put on the record…at the very beginning. The pilots have demonstrated that we can deliver and we are delivering.”—[Official Report, 6 September 2017; Vol. 628, c. 163.]

However, some nurseries that were involved in the pilot tell a very different tale. The owner of Polly Anna’s Nursery in York, the only area on the lowest level of local authority funding—£4.30 an hour, of which £4 went to providers—said that he wrote to the Minister to say that although he was in favour of any Government measure to reduce the cost to families of their child’s early education and care and of any improvement to quality and staff qualifications, £4 an hour would represent an increase of only 2% a year in the 10 years from 2010, at a time when costs will have increased disproportionately.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady recognise that an independent study put the cost of providing childcare for three and four-year-olds at about £3.72 per hour, whereas the average amount that goes to a council is £4.94—significantly more?

[Ruth George]

I accept that a study was done in 2015. That was before we knew the outcome of business rate increases and before we had seen the impact on the sector of the national living wage policy and of auto-enrolment. All those things significantly increased the cost of nursery provision and were not known at the time the study was done, so it is erroneous to use those figures for funding projections up to 2020.