Universal Infant Free School Meals

Debate between Munira Wilson and Steve Brine

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Steve Brine]

Yes, and I will come on to my asks. One that I was not going to cover, but will, is the discrepancy between the amount we pay for the universal infant entitlement and the amount we pay for those who are entitled to free school meals through circumstances. There is a curious difference. Why does the one meal rate one amount, and the other a different amount? I know that the chair of the APPG, the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West, certainly recognises that.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies recently published its report on the costings of free school meals. I am not sure if the Minister saw its work, but it found that if the price per meal had risen with inflation since 2014, it would be £2.87 today. That is a few pence lower than the figure mentioned by the chair of the APPG, but it is clearly still a big jump from the current £2.41.

The Local Authority Caterers Association has in its membership over 300 local authorities, as well as contract caterers, catering managers, and kitchen and school staff, which means that some 80% of school food is provided by its members. It told me that without change, the future of the sector is, in its word, “bleak”. In March, it published its “If not now, when?” mission, which calls on the Government to reform school meal funding, address inflationary pressures, and commit to ongoing reviews that make adjustment for inflation. I echo that as my first ask this morning, and this is why: one school in my constituency—I will not name any of them, to respect their wishes—receives £2.41 per child, yet as of October last year, it pays £2.80 per child, per school meal, to the main provider in Hampshire. It told me that it had to subsidise meals with around £4,700 from the school budget between November 2022 and the end of the financial year, which has just passed.

Another small rural school in my constituency reported a total shortfall this financial year of £3,150. These do not sound like big figures, but the metric goes up: the bigger the school, the bigger the numbers. When there are very tight budgets—which, of course, they have—they can be tipped into a deficit situation.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this really important debate. Many of the points he makes are exactly the points that primary schools in my constituency of Twickenham raise with me regularly. Although we and they welcome the Mayor of London’s announcement that he will roll out free school meals to all primary children next year for a year only, there are grave concerns that that will not be funded properly. Some primary schools told me that they could find themselves £30,000 to £40,000 out of pocket if the meals are not funded properly, and the capital cost of expanding kitchens and dining areas is not met. Does he agree that although the policy change is welcome, it needs to be funded properly?

[Steve Brine]

I do, and if I were a London MP, I would be very concerned about that. I can understand that the policy is electorally attractive on a leaflet, but unless it is funded, we could end up with the situation that I am describing, times some. As I said, the debate is not about widening entitlement to free school meals to all primary children, but the hon. Lady sets out a great danger.

Early Years Educators

Debate between Munira Wilson and Steve Brine

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Steve Brine]

It is funny how often, in my almost 12 years in this House, people say, “That is amazing; I was just about to come on to that in my speech”, and funnily enough, I was. The hon. Lady led on this subject when she led the all-party group, and she is absolutely right. Far too often we have seen early years practitioners presented as well-meaning amateurs who are good at changing and plasticine. They are good at those, but they are also educators, so she is absolutely right. Following on from what she said, I think a major contributing factor to the fact that we are losing people from the profession and not attracting them into it is that early years educators have been subject to so many misconceptions about their role that it has affected how their profession is viewed and then how it can attract people.

First and most commonly is the notion that early years educators somehow do not hold the same status as those who work in the subsequent parts of the education profession. That could not be further from the truth. The first few years of early education is the foundation on which lifelong learning, health and wellbeing are built. Handling this phase of a child’s life requires specialist knowledge and specialist approaches from trained, qualified practitioners. Early years educators are highly trained professionals and they hold specialist qualifications accordingly. Despite that, many settings are struggling to pay competitive salaries, and providers have therefore reported that staff are increasingly moving into sectors such as retail.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. I apologise because I cannot stay for the full debate, either. On the point about pay, is it not linked to the fact that so many providers simply cannot cover the cost of their staff and their settings with the amount that they get from the Government for the so-called free hours of childcare—the 15 hours that is universal for three and four-year-olds and the 15 hours additional? We could have a whole debate on whether somebody like me should be entitled to those hours, which is a separate point, but I speak from experience as the mother of a three-year-old who gets only 27 hours of childcare a week, yet I still pay half of what I paid before he turned three. The providers simply cannot make ends meet, and that is why they cannot pay the staff properly and cannot train them well enough.

[Steve Brine]

The hon. Lady is right. The early years settings that we hear from in the group report that funding for the hours offered under the flagship 30-hours entitlement, which of course I support, has not kept pace with the rise in minimum wage and all the other costs, so the gap between the cost of providing each hour versus what comes in has narrowed and narrowed, and the lines have crossed. That is why we are seeing a squeeze and settings closing. I thank her for that point.

Competitive pay is the least that any qualified professional should expect. I hope the funding announcement in the spending review, as I mentioned, will help to address that. However, the pandemic has added stress for everyone. It has added to the stress of skilled staff, including with the increased risk of exposure to infection that our early years professionals face. A loss of skilled staff means that the early years sector cannot deliver high-quality early education, which will especially affect the most deprived areas and the most disadvantaged children. I want to stress that point to the Minister; I know that he is acutely aware of it, and I hope he can address it in his closing remarks.

The early years workforce needs a step change in wages. The Government have gone far, but they need to go further. The Minister has my full support to take up our cause inside Government; we will back him all the way. Being a former junior Minister in the Department of Health and Social Care, I know that Under-Secretaries of State do not always have the swing vote on decisions in Her Majesty’s Treasury, which is why the Minister will need all the ballast we can provide. I think that I speak for all of us present in saying that we are there to provide it.

Urgency in addressing this area is underlined by my next point. Most early years places are delivered through private, voluntary or independent childcare settings. Maintained nurseries, such as Lanterns Nursery School in my constituency, play a vital role as well, but PVI providers deliver more than 80% of childcare places. PVI providers have a consistently good reputation across the board; like their maintained counterparts, PVI settings are overseen by Ofsted, which is good. In 2020, Ofsted ranked 96% of PVI providers as good or outstanding—up from 72% in 2012.

Most PVI providers—about 57%—have only one site. Only 9% of PVI providers are what we would call a chain, with 20 or more sites. Most of those settings are hard-working small businesses that employ people exclusively from the local community. They invest any surplus they have into upgrading the nursery environment and, crucially, developing their most important asset—their staff. We are not talking about people lining their pockets with those ever-dwindling surpluses. They are simply seeking to make a fair living while pursuing the brilliant vocation of shaping young lives, which brings me to my next point.

Earlier, hon. Members heard the story of how one parent and their child benefited from the support and inspiration offered by their early years educator, which is a tale that is replicated time and again across the country; I suspect other hon. Members will refer to it. Early years educators provide support, advice and guidance to parents, caregivers and families, including on nutrition, play, schooling and health. They are educators in the widest possible sense of the word. They often form great teams with parents and provide families with valuable insights into their child’s development. We know children form multiple attachments at an early stage, and one of those can be with those working with them in a nursery setting.

Crucially, as policymakers, we all understand the importance of early intervention in making a difference to life chances. For every £1 invested in early education, about £7 would be required to have the same impact in adolescence. Every £1 spent in early years saves about £13 in later interventions.

One parent and NHS worker captured it best when they said that, while

“nurses, doctors and other healthcare staff got most of the accolades,”

and rightly so, early years settings and their workers

“selflessly continued to open to look after keyworker children such as ours, even though it potentially put them at risk so we could continue to work.”

At the end of last year, there were press reports of adjusting staffing ratios in early years settings as part of an aim to lower the cost for parents, which I would gently caution the Minister against. Safe, secure and necessary monitoring in early years settings requires a higher staffing ratio than in schools. Leading voices from across the early years sector, including the Early Years Alliance and the National Day Nurseries Association, have warned against it.

I believe that early years professionals deserve pension contributions and pay increases that can keep in line with increases in the cost of living—a very hot political subject at the moment—which must be delivered through more investment and better recognition of the work of the early years workforce. We are in a position where the Government require early years settings to be open in order to deliver the 30-hour funding entitlement, but, as I have said, there is a shortfall in funding, and that situation can only go on for so long. The result of that shortfall is that many early years settings run at a loss and even face closure, especially those in disadvantaged areas. As a Conservative, I of course want small businesses—I mentioned how many of these early years providers are small businesses—to thrive: indeed, I believe that all Members in the House, from all parties, would want that. As a parent, I want all children to have access to the very best early education, wherever they live.

In the case of PVI early years settings, those two things are not mutually exclusive. Those who pursue a career in early years education do so because, above all else, they believe passionately in making a difference in children’s lives, and that is because early years education is vital in tackling inequalities. We know that the first five years of a child’s life are the most formative. However, when providers in the most deprived areas report themselves as being twice as likely to close as those in more affluent areas, we must acknowledge that something is going seriously wrong in the sector.

The Early Years Alliance has said that poorer families are more likely to lose access to early years settings because of what I have described as a market failure. I am sure that colleagues will speak about other experiences from their own area, but it is important to set the context. If we are to deliver on our promises and level up all parts of the country that have been left behind, the early years workforce is a vital tool in that project.

So what can we do? We can begin squaring the circle here today by supporting the APPG and our call for the early years workforce to take their rightful place as educators. I encourage colleagues to take advantage of the relaxation of covid restrictions to meet local early education providers in their area; I am sure that everybody who is participating in this debate already does so. We can all show our support for the work of those providers by thanking them during this debate.

However, it is to the Minister I look. I have sat in his seat many times. He is most welcome to his post, which I know he is still relatively new in, and I hope that he can find time to come and speak to us on the APPG in short time. We know that there is a lot in his in-tray, but we also know that he is a parent and no doubt a lot of what I have said today will resonate with him.

Before coming to my conclusion, I just need to qualify one point that I made earlier when I said that this issue is not all about money. I meant that, but so many of the challenges facing early years educators can be addressed by more targeted investment. We must address the workforce challenge that our early years sector faces. In my opinion, that can only be done by paying our early years educators the same amount as those working with the reception year group. The present system is inequitable and unfair. That change would be transformative for our valued early years workers. It is the cornerstone of what the Government can do to deliver for our early years professionals and the families they support.

Extra cash will be meaningless, however, unless it is accompanied by the wider transformation that I have spoken about, regarding how we view the early years workforce. It is a problem best encapsulated by the fact that they are highly skilled but low-paid professionals. We trust them with our most precious resource—our children—in the very early years of their lives, when so much attachment is formed. It is only right that we view them for what they are, which is educators.