Childcare Bill [Lords]
Debate between Pat Glass and Sam Gyimah(8 years, 11 months ago)
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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.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
When the Minister and I met after the Committee stage, we talked a great deal about how we would implement the entitlement and make it work for the parents of disabled children. The Minister referred to the early implementers, and we talked about how he would measure their success. Has any progress been made? We discussed talking to parents’ groups, for instance, to ensure that they could contribute to the early implementation process.
Mr Gyimah
It was a pleasure to meet the hon. Lady in the Department, along with some of my officials, to discuss how we could test the early implementers for children with special educational needs and disabilities. I assure her that that will be at the heart of the process. We will conduct specific research with parents’ groups to establish how they access childcare and what challenges they experience during the early implementer phase.
More broadly, the Department and HMRC recently commissioned a feasibility study to consider how best to evaluate the labour and childcare market impacts of both tax-free childcare and the free early education entitlement, both of which policies are aimed at working parents. The study is due to be published in February, and will inform the development of an evaluation framework for both the 30 hours and tax-free childcare.
Childcare Bill [ Lords ] (Fourth sitting)
Debate between Pat Glass and Sam Gyimah(9 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)
I beg to move amendment 5, in clause 5, page 5, line 30, leave out subsection (4) and insert—
“(4) A statutory instrument containing (whether alone or with other provision) regulations mentioned in subsection (5) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.
(5) The regulations referred to in subsection (4) are—
(a) the first regulations made under section 2;
(b) the first regulations made under section 3(1);
(c) any regulations under section 3(7);
(d) any other regulations that amend or repeal provision made by an Act.
(6) Any other statutory instrument containing regulations is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”
This amendment removes the provision which subjects all regulations made under clauses 2 and 3 of the Bill to the affirmative procedure on every occasion they are made. Regulations made under clauses 2 and 3(1) would instead be subject to the affirmative procedure the first time they are made, and the negative procedure thereafter
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Hanson. As currently drafted, clause 5 provides for all the regulations under clauses 2 and 3 of the Bill to be subject to the affirmative procedure every time the regulation-making power is exercised. That is as a result of an amendment made in the other place, and it provides a level of parliamentary scrutiny beyond the original intention behind the Bill.
We are in complete agreement with the intention behind the amendment made in the other place, and the Government welcome the opportunity for both Houses to have proper prior scrutiny before the regulations can be approved and added to the statute book. However, we do not believe it necessary or reasonable to make the regulations affirmative every time. That is why amendment 5 will allow the regulations to be debated the first time the powers are exercised, while subsequent changes will be subject to the negative resolution procedure.
The exception to that will be any instances where regulations seek to amend or repeal primary legislation, or in the case of regulations seeking to update the maximum level of any financial penalty set out on the face of the Bill. Any regulation made for those reasons will continue to be subject to the affirmative procedure and must be approved by Parliament each time the powers are exercised.
I will set out why we do not believe it necessary for the regulations to be subject to the affirmative procedure each time they are made. First, since we introduced the Bill over the summer, we have provided much more detail about how the Government intend to deliver their manifesto pledge and who will be eligible. That includes a recent policy statement and further details about eligibility as a result of the spending review announcement on 25 November. That additional information provides further clarity about what will be included in the regulations and addresses many of the concerns raised previously.
Secondly, we are committed to undertaking a formal public consultation on the draft regulations in 2016. Feedback from parents and providers will be taken into consideration as we develop the regulations, which will be revised as necessary in response to the consultation before they are laid before Parliament.
Thirdly, our proposal to make the regulations subject to the negative procedure reflects the precedent of parliamentary scrutiny adopted for comparable childcare and education legislation. We believe it is important to maintain the arrangements for approval used for the existing entitlement, which has been subject to the negative procedure since it was introduced in 2008.
The affirmative approval process requires the full involvement of both Houses and for time to be found for debates in both Houses, no matter how small the change. The Government being required to timetable a debate in both Houses when details need to be amended in regulations is likely to have a detrimental impact on the successful delivery of the new entitlement. We want the Secretary of State to be able to respond efficiently and effectively where it may be necessary to support local authorities, providers, parents and their children without seeking and receiving the approval of Parliament to do so.
Once the fundamental principles have been agreed, we do not believe it would be a good use of the parliamentary timetable to make changes that would ordinarily be dealt with under the negative resolution procedure. For example, consequential changes were made to the current entitlement to reflect the introduction of the education, health and social care plans and the replacement of residence orders with child arrangement orders. Those types of changes, which are straightforward and not controversial, can be made under the negative resolution procedure.
If the regulations under the Bill were to be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, which would be the case without my amendment, the types of consequential changes that I am talking about could not be made unless time was found for a debate in both Houses. We do not believe that that would be an appropriate use of the parliamentary timetable. I hope that I can reassure the Committee further by confirming that the Department will continue to consult on any material changes to the regulations under the negative resolution procedure, as it has done with the current entitlement. By the time they are laid, the regulations will have undergone a vast amount of scrutiny. We are confident that we will deliver a set of regulations that fairly delivers on the Government’s manifesto pledge to support hard-working families.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
Their lordships included this clause because they were concerned about the lack of detail in the Bill in relation to funding, workforce capacity, physical capacity, eligibility, accessibility and other areas. They were concerned that there would not be full and frank debate in relation to all those areas and that the regulations would simply be laid before Parliament—slipped out under the cover of darkness, as I think they said. However, the Minister has given assurances on that on Tuesday and today. He is an honourable man. I do not intend to detain the Committee on this matter. The Minister has given assurances for the first time that the regulations will get full debate in both Houses, and the negative procedure is normal practice in other areas, so I am happy with that.
Amendment 5 agreed to.
Clause 5, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 6 and 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 8
Commencement
Amendment made: 6, in clause 8, page 6, line 8, leave out from beginning to “come” in line 10 and insert—
“(1) The following provisions come into force on the day on which this Act is passed—
(a) section 2(4A);
(b) section 7;
(c) this section;
(d) section 9.
(2) The remaining provisions of this Act”.—(Mr Gyimah.)
This is consequential on amendment 3. HMRC’s power to carry out functions in connection with the making of determinations as to a child’s eligibility will come into force on Royal Assent.
Clause 8, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 9
Short title
Mr Gyimah
I beg to move amendment 7, in clause 9, page 6, line 19, leave out subsection (2).
This removes the provision which was inserted to avoid infringing the financial privileges of the Commons. Now that the money resolution has been passed this amendment can be removed.
This will be a very short speech. This technical amendment removes the privilege amendment made in the other place. As the Committee will be aware, this standard formula is incorporated in the Bill before it leaves the other place to avoid infringement of Commons financial privileges. A money resolution has now been passed conferring parliamentary approval of financial expenditure incurred as a result of the Bill, and the removal of the privilege amendment is a mere formality. I therefore hope that the Committee will accept the amendment.
Amendment 7 agreed to.
Clause 9, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
New Clause 2
Early years SEND co-ordinators
“(1) Relevant childcare providers of a size prescribed by Regulations must designate a member of staff at the setting (to be known as the “Early years SEND co-ordinator”) as having responsibility for co-ordinating the provision of childcare for children with special educational needs and/or a disability.
(2) Regulations may require relevant childcare settings to ensure that Early Years SEND co-ordinators have prescribed qualifications or prescribed experience or both.
(3) For the purpose of this section, relevant childcare providers are those funded to deliver early education or childcare provision free of charge under section 7(1) of the Childcare Act 2006 or section 2(1) of this Act.” —(Pat Glass.)
This amendment would require all early years providers of a certain size providing childcare under this Act to designate a member of staff to be the early years SEND co-ordinator, and to ensure that they are suitably experienced and/or qualified.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Pat Glass
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley is right. We have all recognised here that there is a problem. We are not going to change things unless we do something to change them. At the moment, the system simply is not working for parents. The Minister and I agree that the role of SENCOs is crucial. The SENCO in the school and the area SENCO have crucial roles. They are almost the translator between the child and their difficulties and the rest of the provision. They work in relation to access and admission, to the training of staff and getting access to trained staff, to inclusive practices and, more importantly, to provisions to the curriculum in schools and in childcare. The SENCO is the translator of the curriculum for those children who have difficulties.
Pat Glass
The Minister misunderstands what I am saying. I am saying that the system is not working for disabled children if they are not getting access. I am not criticising the role of SENCOs or area SENCOs. The confidence I have is because I have seen that the role is crucial and huge, not only in translating the curriculum and so on, but in supporting parents. SENCOs have a strong role in supporting parents.
The Minister said that 78% of local authorities have a plan. That means that 22%—that is more than a fifth—do not. I worry about the children living in those local authorities that do not have a plan. I take on board his point on perverse incentives. I would hate to see a situation in which childcare providers, particularly those that are good or outstanding, suddenly decided not to take more children because of a cut-off point. I understand that concern, but I am not sure that that is sufficient reason not to have a requirement in the Bill to ensure that there is at least someone who is suitably trained in a provision or someone who knows where to go to get help.
I have been at it quite a long time, and I remember taking over SEN in an authority where SEN was failing badly. I had absolutely no experience in that. I had worked in school improvement and other areas of education, and I was suddenly asked to take over SEN. SEN has always been and remains something of a secret garden in local authorities. It is the province of all those professionals, such as educational psychologists and clinical psychologists, and is not for people like me.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady is making an eloquent case, as she has done throughout our scrutiny of the Bill and this issue. While we both agree on the problem we are trying to solve, if she thinks that an Act that came into force a year ago is not sufficient, why would another Act address the problem?
Pat Glass
If I can finish the point I was making, I took over SEN. I feel ashamed that I sat in meetings at that time—it was quite a long time ago—and said to parents things like, “Do you know what? Your child will be better in this special school”, when they were fighting to have their child in mainstream education. I went along to a conference somewhere—I cannot remember what conference it was—and there was a disability discrimination officer who had severe cerebral palsy. He got up on the stage, and it was almost a road to Damascus moment. He said something like, “People like you made me special by making me different”, and I can remember thinking, “Oh my God.”
I set off from there to find out about inclusion. We were right at the beginning of things. If a child fell off a step, they were placed in a special school. It was that bad in those days. No one was being included. I learned an awful lot of things along the way, such as that pushing children through the door and having them there is not the same as having them included. There is a great difference between having them there and having them welcomed and wanted. That is what inclusivity is. The point that, in a very long-winded way, I am trying to make to the Minister is that we have to start somewhere, and forcing something is the first step towards making the system much more inclusive.
Mr Gyimah
Once again, the hon. Lady makes a very strong point. Is she aware that, in addition to the requirement to publish a local offer for children with SEND, in the case of a provider that “requires improvement” or is “inadequate” the local authority must provide information and advice training specifically on meeting the needs of children with SEND? Given that that measure is in place, should we not make sure it works rather than putting more stuff into legislation?
Pat Glass
I take the Minister’s point, and I appreciate that his colleague introduced major reforms in this area a year ago. We want them to work, because they are long overdue. We want to move away from a system in which statements took forever to one in which there is much more co-ordination between health, education and social care. We want that to happen. I worry about the cuts to local authorities’ budgets, because they must be able to deliver this. I am aware of the local offer, but in too many local authorities it is not a proper offer to parents, but a list of what is available if they bother to ring around, so we are some way from what the Government want to realise.
Mr Gyimah
I would just like to draw the hon. Lady’s attention to the section in the EYFS that states:
“Each child must be assigned a key person…The key person must seek to engage and support parents and/or carers in guiding their child’s development at home. They should also help families engage with more specialist support if appropriate.”
Once again, does the hon. Lady think that what she is proposing will lead only to more law? There is enough law already to make what she wants happen.
Pat Glass
I am aware of that, but if the key person measures were working, children with disabilities would not be being refused admission to childcare providers. We know that the SENCO role works incredibly well, and I just want to build on what works. I understand that we need to embed the things that are in the SEN legislation. We want them to work. I am happy not to press the new clauses if the Minister agrees to monitor this area and revisit it if it does not improve.
Mr Gyimah
By way of reply to the hon. Lady’s concluding remarks, I assure her and the Committee that this will be a priority in the early implementers. We will also put in place an evaluation system to ensure we are learning the right lessons, not only from that but afterwards, to improve the system. I think the hon. Lady agrees that this is a practical, rather than a legal, problem. We have got to work with local authorities to ensure this works for parents, and I assure her that that is our priority.
Pat Glass
The Minister is absolutely right. The amendments that I tabled about disabled children do not require a legal response; they require funding to be put in to ensure that this is monitored and policed. Something must be done to make the changes that will have to happen, because the current situation is unacceptable. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the Chair do report the Bill, as amended, to the House.
Mr Gyimah
Thank you for your expert and expeditious chairmanship of our proceedings, Mr Hanson. I thank the officials, who are seen but not heard, and who have worked incredibly hard since the start of this Parliament to turn our manifesto pledge into a Bill and into reality for working parents. I thank my colleagues, who have been very supportive, and the Opposition for ensuring that we focused not on the party-political knockabout but on what we can do to help children and families.
A lot of points have been made. As the hon. Member for North West Durham said, not all of them require a legal response, but a lot of them require a practical response. I thank hon. Members for raising those issues, and I look forward to working with them over the next weeks and months to make this Bill work for parents.
Pat Glass
I, too, thank both Chairmen for their excellent chairmanship. I thank the Clerks and officials for supporting us. They supported me, in particular—I struggled a little, because this is my first Bill Committee. I thank my colleagues on both sides of the Committee. There was very little to disagree with in this Bill. It is a good Bill and we want to make it work for parents. I think I have made my point about disabled children.
Childcare Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting)
Debate between Pat Glass and Sam Gyimah(9 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)
The hon. Lady makes the excellent point that early years provision is absolutely vital to give children the best start in life and to narrow the gap. Does she agree that introducing 15 hours of free early education for disadvantaged two-year-olds is a big step in that direction?
Pat Glass
I absolutely agree, but it is equally important that the children who need access to the best teachers are not pushed out of the system, or not pushed into provision that is not good or requires improvement. I do not know whether the Minister has had a chance to look at the Ofsted report, but the chief inspector of schools clearly says that far too many of our disadvantaged children are not getting access to the best provision and too many end up in childcare settings and schools that require improvement.
If we want to narrow the gap—clearly, we all do—it is not enough for the Government to simply will this. They have to will the means as well as the ends. Admissions is a key factor in making that happen. As somebody who has managed admissions over the years, I know they are tricky, but they came under one of the areas that I managed and quite liked. I understood why parents got really angry if they could not get their child into the school that they wanted. I had a huge amount of sympathy for them. When I managed admissions, I always tried to get a balance between having not too many surplus places but enough to give parents the access that they needed to the schools that they wanted. So I understand how tricky admissions can be.
Parental choice is a myth that continues to be talked about a lot. It is really parental preference, but in far too many cases it is not parental preference that presides, but school choice. Schools make choices about children.
Pat Glass
I would not disagree with the hon. Lady. She needs to make a speech, because she makes some good points. I am not for one moment underestimating the difficulties of doing this, and I will address the issue of admissions in early years. Such admissions are not statutory, which makes it even trickier. However, just because it is tricky, it does not mean to say that we should not at least try to address it.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady has referred to Ofsted’s latest annual report a number of times, and I draw the Committee’s attention to what it says:
“Children in England now start their lives with a high chance of spending all of their early educational experiences up to the age of 11 in a good or outstanding early years provider and primary school.”
The report also says:
“Early education has never been stronger”.
Pat Glass
I am sure the report does say that, and I am sure I could go through the report, which is very thick, and pick out all kinds of things that support my argument. If the Minister goes straight to the main recommendations at the front, he will see that the chief inspector’s No. 1 recommendation—I have not had to scour the report to support my argument—is about disadvantaged two-year-olds getting access to the best provision. That is so much of an issue that the inspector has put it right there on the front page.
Pat Glass
I accept that. The issue of admissions is tricky, but that is not a reason to ignore it. I entirely accept that it becomes more complicated in the early years, pre-school and childcare sectors because there is no statutory requirement. Where there is a shortage of provision, such as in areas with just one provider, effective provisions choose children, and provision operates on a first come, first served basis everywhere else.
The most able, advantaged and well organised usually get their children’s names down first for outstanding provision, and it is equally true that the disadvantaged and less well organised tend to lose out. That is borne out by the Ofsted report. Children who would be assessed as disadvantaged do get access to provision that is good and outstanding—we are not saying that they do not—but far too many children from such disadvantaged homes end up in provision that is judged to be requiring improvement or failing, and the cycle of disadvantage and failure begins all over again. We accept the difficulties, but we have to intervene somewhere. We have to look at the best triggers for intervention to stop that cycle.
Pat Glass
I am using exactly the same definition of “disadvantage” as the Department does when it looks at disadvantaged two-year-olds. The amendment would require childcare providers to give priority for admission to children who have been assessed as disadvantaged in the allocation of childcare provision. We know who those children are. Health visitors and social workers are already identifying and assessing disadvantaged two-year-olds, so it is simply about taking that forward. Extending it to childcare provision for four and five-year-olds would require little effort. If the Government are serious about narrowing the gap, if they want to get the acceleration in narrowing that gap going again—the acceleration is slowing—if they are serious about making the step change that is needed to raise the achievement of all children and if they want more and more children to be educated in outstanding childcare provision, hopefully the Minister will support this amendment.
Mr Gyimah
I will come to the practicalities and issues of the amendment, which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire pointed to so deftly in her comments. The hon. Gentleman asked what we are doing to help to narrow the attainment gap. That is the reason we extended the pupil premium into the early years with the introduction of the early years pupil premium this year, providing £50 million of additional funding to support the early education of disadvantaged three and four-year-olds. The extra funding, worth 53p an hour—about £300 a year—goes directly to providers to help them to increase the quality of their setting. I am pleased that the feedback from local authorities is that providers are using the additional funding to achieve exactly that.
Pat Glass
I thank the Minister; that was exactly what I was going to ask about. There is a lot of evidence currently emerging that shows that, when the pupil premium is being used and targeted at specific children and specific programmes, it is making a difference. When it is simply backfilling funding, as it appears the Minister is doing with this, it is not making any difference at all. Why is he so convinced that it will make a difference in the early years?
Mr Gyimah
The pupil premium is not backfilling funding. To re-hash the funding debate, the £300 million uplift that was provided by the Chancellor in his spending review excludes the pupil premium. The pupil premium is not being used to backfill core funding. It is a new initiative—I think it started earlier this year. I will be the first to admit that there is some way to go to ensure providers are using it for the right interventions. Regarding the amendment specifically, however, what the pupil premium does is to put a higher price on the heads of disadvantaged children. If someone is a provider and they take on disadvantaged children, they get more money as a result, so there is already an incentive built into the system for good and outstanding providers to take on more disadvantaged children. There are more funds attached to those children.
Pat Glass
I do not want to burst the Minister’s bubble at all, but the additional pupil premium is not convincing schools to take on more children in receipt of free school meals, so what makes him think it will convince providers of early years? If it is not working with schools, do we not need something else to ensure good providers take on disadvantaged children?
Mr Gyimah
On good providers taking on disadvantaged children, specifically in the early years, we must acknowledge that the early years setting is very different. Schools are in the maintained sector, but here we have private providers. There are parents who have different ideas of where they want their children to take their early education. Some parents prefer childminders because they want their children to have their early education in a domestic setting; some would prefer a private nursery; and some would prefer a nursery in a school. In practice, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire mentioned, making this proposal work would be tremendously difficult, because we would have to compel a private provider to take a specific type of child rather than operating on a “first come, first served” basis, which is how the system currently works.
The important news is that there are many good examples of how the pupil premium is working.
Pat Glass
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I will touch on the situation of single-parent families in a moment. Even in the most flexible and helpful of employment situations, parents tell me that if they each take two weeks’ leave, that still leaves them with two weeks in the summer to cover, and they have to prevail on wider family or friends or other solutions for those remaining two weeks. Parents tell me that they dread that time, and that should not be the case. The six-week summer holiday should be a time when parents and children can be together, and it should be a good time, not something that parents dread. I have even been told by some parents that after struggling to put childcare solutions together—prevailing upon their friends, family and acquaintances to the point where those people avoid them—they have still had to take unpaid leave, or in some extreme cases give up their job to cope with the summer holidays.
While for many couples it is a case of misery being better shared, single parents do not even have that, as my hon. Friend said. There is no one to share the childcare management with and no one to share the worry and the stress. The last Labour Government introduced a childcare vouchers scheme that was based on employment. Parents and employers could buy into the scheme, but I understand that the Government are phasing out the scheme and not allowing new applicants, and that is a shame. Those who used the scheme have told me that what they liked best about it was its flexibility.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to say that the childcare vouchers scheme is being phased out, to be replaced with tax-free childcare. There were deficiencies in the childcare vouchers scheme. People had to have an employer that was willing to do the vouchers, which meant it was often only large employers. Self-employed people did not qualify, nor did people on the minimum wage. However, people who earned £1 million a year could still get the vouchers. Tax-free childcare strikes the right balance in focusing things on the parents who need it, while also having the same level of flexibility in the providers that parents can use and allowing different professions to use it. That means it applies to the self-employed and those on the national minimum wage.
The Chair
Order. Could we please keep the interventions a bit shorter, or we will never get to the end?
Mr Gyimah
As the hon. Gentleman knows, local authorities have a sufficiency duty. I hope that what we will do to encourage providers on the early years register that currently do not offer the free entitlement—such as childminders, who he pointed to—will work. We will also use £50 million of capital investment to target areas where there is a need for more places. Finally, local authorities can fund providers in a way that incentivises flexible provision, so a number of levers can be used to deliver flexible provision for parents.
Pat Glass
I am willing to listen to many of the arguments that the Minister makes, but he has singularly failed to convince me on this one. He gave us lots of examples of local authorities operating flexible systems, but this is not about the best authorities; it is about the worst. The amendment would go some way towards addressing the authorities that need incentivising.
I accept the Minister’s point about the wording of the amendment. It is not possible to require every local authority to provide every kind of flexibility for every child, but education legislation is littered with the word “reasonable”, and to ask local authorities to make reasonably flexible provision is not beyond the wit of the Minister.
I find myself in an unusual situation: I stand here as the person saying there are opportunities here for the market. We need to allow new entrants into the marketplace, and in my view, the best way to do that is to put some control in the hands of parents, who can then choose the best providers for their children. At the moment, we have an incredibly inflexible system that we need to move away from in order to help parents with things such as summer holidays.
Although it does not exactly fall within the scope of the amendment, I welcome what the Minister said about wraparound childcare and getting schools to open their incredibly expensive capital buildings, which often stand empty from 3 o’clock in the afternoon, all weekend and during summer holidays. It is amazing that someone has not done that long before now. Clearly, we will have to see the details, but it is a really good idea to open those buildings up to the marketplace. I understand the Minister’s concern about creating chaos in the market, but providers are making exactly the same arguments to him that providers made to previous Governments about things such as respite care and social care. We were told that putting the control in the hands of parents, disabled people or elderly people would create chaos in the market, and local authorities said the same, but there was not chaos, and it is a better system as a result.
Pat Glass
I am not saying that we should do that, but if we say that local authorities must provide “reasonable flexibility”, that forces those who are not doing anything about that now to start to do something. Unless the Minister tells me that he is prepared to look at that flexibility in regulations, we may need to make an issue of this.
Pat Glass
I suggest that the hon. Gentleman looks at the Education Act 2005, which has “reasonable” in every third sentence. It is not superfluous. It makes the point that this measure is not about giving everyone what they want or what they think they need; it is about giving something that is reasonable to the taxpayer and to the parent or child.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady asked for assurance on what the Government will do in respect of flexibility. As I mentioned earlier, statutory guidance already enables providers to stretch hours across the full year and deliver provision from 7 am to 7 pm. We will work with the Local Government Association and local authorities to revise the statutory guidance to remove any perceived or actual barriers to flexible provision.
Pat Glass
I am not creating criminal penalties. What I am describing is illegal now, yet it continues. All I want to do is to send out a very strong message in whatever way we can. At the moment, we have is a Bill—if I could find any other way of helping the situation, I would. It is illegal at the moment, and I am not seeking to create anything new.
Pat Glass
Thank you, Ms Dorries. I think I have made my intentions perfectly clear.
Parents who have a disabled child do not magically acquire special skills and knowledge. The NHS does not give them special training before they leave hospital with their baby, when they are often in shock and grieving for the child they were expecting but did not get.
We need to ensure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North said, that childcare providers can access the training that will give them the confidence they need. However that is done, the Government need to put down a huge marker that the current situation cannot continue.
Mr Gyimah
The amendment would ensure that a disabled child is not refused a childcare place on the grounds of their disability. As I highlighted on Tuesday, I absolutely agree that children with special educational needs or a disability should not be put at a disadvantage and that they should have the same access to high-quality childcare as children without disabilities. The Government are committed to ensuring that all families have access to high-quality, flexible and affordable childcare, and I am delighted that the hon. Lady has agreed to meet with me and the Minister for Children and Families to look at how we can improve access to childcare for children with special educational needs and disabilities.
As I pointed out in my intervention, the amendment would create a criminal offence if a disabled child were unreasonably refused a childcare place. Although I agree with the principle behind the amendment, and agree that all children should be able to access childcare, I do not agree that would be the right approach. I have been clear in our debates so far that local authorities are already required by law to secure free entitlement places.
Mr Gyimah
We covered the issue of funding on Tuesday, when I made it quite clear that the £5 billion high needs funding block applies to ages nought to 25. Funding will also be available to parents who have access to tax-free childcare up to £4,000. They can access that for children from the ages of nought to 18.
Amendment 13 is about what providers do when confronted with a child with special educational needs or disabilities. It is important that we are clear that the Equality Act 2010 sets out the legal obligations that early years providers and local authorities have towards disabled children and young children in their care. Refusing to admit a disabled child may amount to unlawful discrimination, if that refusal is as a direct result of their disability or something arising in consequence of their disability. The Equality Act applies to all early years settings, whether or not they are in receipt of Government funding.
If a parent of a disabled child believes that their child has been discriminated against by a school setting, they can appeal to the first-tier tribunal or, in certain cases, to local admissions panels. Where the case involves a provider that is not a school, a discrimination claim is heard in the county court.
I take on board the comment made by the hon. Member for North West Durham that she does not intend to create a criminal offence through the amendment. I therefore suggest that when we look at the model agreement that local authorities have with providers delivering the free entitlement, we make the situation quite clear to them and draw their attention to the Equality Act requirement.
The hon. Lady raised a point about the confidence of the workforce to deal with the situation, which is not strictly a legal matter. We intend to look at that as part of the workforce strategy that I committed to on Tuesday. That will build on the requirement that already exists in the early years foundation stage. The significant funding that we give to voluntary and community service organisations can support providers in the workforce to develop confidence and skills.
On that basis, and given that the hon. Lady’s amendment would not really achieve what she wanted to achieve, I urge her to withdraw it.
Pat Glass
I am happy to do that. I have made my point. We are going to talk about this collectively, and we will find a way forward. I just want to point out very clearly that the unreasonable refusal of childcare places for children with disabilities is covered in the Equality Act 2010 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, yet it still happens. We would not accept that if the child were black, or for any other kind of child. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment made: 4, in clause 3, page 3, line 46, leave out subsection (3).—(Mr Gyimah.)
This amendment removes the provision which requires the Secretary of State to make provision, in regulations, to ensure that childcare is made available for parents who have alternative working patterns and during the school holidays.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Margot James.)
Childcare Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)
Debate between Pat Glass and Sam Gyimah(9 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)
The hon. Lady outlines precisely the idea underlying the early implementers, which we announced will happen in the second half of 2016 to test local demand, innovation and how parents respond to the offer. If she is saying that she wants to see that activity, I am certainly with her. If however she is suggesting that we should have further discussion about funding that was settled in explicit terms in the spending review, I am not with her.
Pat Glass
My understanding of the early implementers is that they are few: fewer than four children per authority if spread across the country. Therefore, unless the Minister can tell me otherwise, I cannot see how that is a major testing out of the policy. The review is about making sure that it is sustainable. We all want it to work; we just want it to work right.
Mr Gyimah
Five thousand children will benefit early from the policy as a result of the early implementers, but alongside that we will be testing a number of other things such as the eligibility checking system that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is working on, which will be joined with tax-free child care; policy and practice around special educational needs and disability; and innovation around flexibility. Therefore, in addition to the 5,000 children who will get in early, we will look at a whole number of other things during the early implementation stage.
Pat Glass
We are grateful for that, but, as I said, 5,000 children across the country is not a huge number on which to test out sustainability, and funding sustainability in particular.
The Minister has talked a lot about funding, but he has not convinced me that he has filled that massive funding gap. It is not just me, their lordships or the Institute for Public Policy Research who are saying that, but the sector as a whole. There seems to be an inability to accept the true cost of childcare.
The Minister talked a lot about his review of childcare costs. There were lots of things I could not find in it, but in particular I could not find any kind of building in of future costs. We know that the sector will face costs in future such as the apprenticeship levy. We all agree with the apprenticeship levy, which is a great idea, but the childcare sector has a high number of apprentices. Therefore, whether we agree with the apprenticeship levy or not, we must accept that it will be an additional cost on the sector.
The sector has talked to me a lot about the implementation of the living wage, which is not only about implementing a minimum wage for those at the bottom, as the Chancellor seems to think. There are differentials and they are very slim, so if we implement the living wage, which will now be the minimum wage for those at the bottom, on the least wages, we have to increase the wages of those who are level 3-qualified, of graduate leads and of managers—all slim differentials. The sector is telling me that that is not built into the review.
Mr Gyimah
On the subject of future costs, I want to put something on the record. We want providers to take steps to absorb some of the future cost pressures. As a result, we have front-loaded the uplift to help providers do so, and we have done that even though the cost of childcare review found that the average cost of delivering the three and four-year-old entitlement is £4.25, which is below our existing national average rate of £4.56. We want to work with providers to become more efficient—
Pat Glass
I thank the Minister. That is helpful, because there is a lot of confusion around the funding. I will come on to £4.56 average rate in a minute.
Other future costs appear not to have been taken into account in the review, such as rising business rates or top-slicing by local authorities. The hon. Member for Norwich North talked about local authorities top-slicing anywhere from about 2% to about 9%. The budget used to be ring-fenced—it was ring-fenced in 2010, but the current Government took away the ring fence and have allowed the top-slicing to go on. It would be easy to put the ring fence back.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady knows very well that the early years funding is part of the dedicated schools grant, so local authorities cannot dip into it to spend on, say, potholes. On the issue of top-slicing, we will set a firm expectation for local authorities of how much they may top-slice, alongside our review of the early years national funding formula, so that the majority of the funds goes directly to providers.
Pat Glass
Honestly, don’t get me started on the early years funding. As I understand it, it was ring-fenced and it was an early years grant, but in 2011 it was amalgamated with 14 other grants into the early intervention grant, which covered everything from special educational needs through early years funding to behaviour support. It was huge and now it has been rolled into something else, so it is difficult, even for local authorities that want to deliver the funding, to weave their way through to what is actually early years funding. I will come on to the funding review in a moment.
I have read the cost of childcare report; it contains massive assumptions and an awful lot of complacency. The assumptions include things such as switching; the report simply makes the assumption that because parents do not switch their provider often they are satisfied. Anyone who has talked to parents knows that there are costs to switching that are not taken into account. Most parents do not want to shift their child from one childcare provider to another when the child is settled and has built up relationships, even if they cannot afford that childcare any longer or even if they have found a cheaper provider. Parents will cut out all sorts of other things to ensure that they do not have to shift their children constantly from one provider to another. It is not the same as switching electricity supplier, and we know how difficult people find that.
Pat Glass
As we are talking about three and four-year-olds, I am not sure that is relevant, but I am happy to accept it.
The Minister talked about under-occupancy. He is right that there is 75% to 90% occupancy. However, occupancy is much higher on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday than it is on a Monday and Friday. I know that the Minister will say that we can extend the 30 hours, but many families choose or are able to find familial childcare for Monday and Friday, so I am not sure that will necessarily provide him with his extra hours.
We have talked about the risks. The Minister and the review do not seem to accept the cross-subsidisation that is going on between the 15 hours and the rest. Childcare providers tell me clearly that they are only able to provide the 15 hours of free childcare because they charge more for any additional hours that parents want, or they charge for meals or other things, so that they can deliver the 15 hours. There is a real danger if we extend this without the right kind of funding to support it that it will come out in other areas. The squeeze will be on in other areas, and the cost of childcare for babies, one-year-olds and two-year-olds will rise sharply.
Mr Gyimah
The childcare sector has a record amount of money going into it as a result of the spending review. The hon. Lady argues somehow, on whatever basis I do not know, that is not enough. Can she tell us what she considers is the right funding rate for three and four-year-olds?
Pat Glass
The Minister makes it sound as though I am making this up. I reached this view by talking to the sector. I spoke to all the people who contributed to the costs of childcare report as recently as last night. They told me they do not know how it came up with the results it did, given the data they input and the discussions that they had. I am not making this up; that is what the sector tells me.
Mr Gyimah
Of course, that is what happens when the Government go out and say we will increase the rate, and we will undertake a review to find out what the new rate will be. Do not be surprised if lots of people say the rate is not enough. This is based on evidence that we were supplied with. We have compared the rates here with the rates in their own reports that they published, and the new rate is more than adequate. If the hon. Lady disagrees, can she tell us what she thinks is the right rate?
Pat Glass
That is absolutely right. The offer made in May this year was 30 hours a week of free childcare. It is not now 30 hours a week free childcare to parents who are working more than eight hours. The thresholds have increased and the numbers of people eligible have gone down. As I said on Second Reading, any parent who voted Conservative on the basis of that offer will be feeling seriously short-changed now.
Pat Glass
I absolutely agree, but I did not make an offer of 30 hours of free childcare in May 2015—the Government did.
I want to move on to amendment 10. I am happy to take up the Minister’s offer of working with him to look at how we can extend the take-up of childcare for disabled children. However, I am not sure how I feel about going back to the Department for Education, given that I worked there before 2010. Perhaps we can meet in a coffee shop or something, but I am very happy to work with him.
I agree with the Minister that the issues around children and access, as regards children being able to access education in schools or childcare for disabled children, are not always about money. Some are, but in my experience, an awful lot of this is about confidence. I have worked with schools on many occasions, although not with childcare providers because that was not necessarily my area of expertise, to try and get them to the point at which they can admit a child who has a disability—who has something they have not seen before, who has something really unusual.
I remember one child, a lovely little boy; I think he is probably about 16 now. He had very little movement—a little bit of head movement, but nothing much more. Those at the school were terrified. They were really worried—it was quite a long time ago, and I think it would be fairly routine now—but we worked with the school. At that time, another child at the school had a little bit of learning difficulty and a little bit of physical difficulty, but nothing huge across the piece, and every time I spoke to the headteacher, he would mention that little boy.
Once the child who had very little movement was admitted, when I saw the headteacher again I asked how Fred—I think that was the other boy’s name—was getting on. He said, “Oh, we’re not worried about that at all. Do you know what? He’s no bother.” As soon as the staff at the school had the confidence, training and support—the support was really important—and admitted children with quite significant difficulties, they were really proud of themselves and of how well they had done, and they were looking to admit the next child with another serious disability. I think much of it is about a little bit of training. Some of it is about money, but a lot is about confidence and giving those childcare providers the confidence that they are not on their own.
The Minister talked about Government reforms and I welcome their reforms on special educational needs and disability. They are a huge step in the right direction. We wish them well. The difficulty, as he would expect me to say, is that these are being implemented at a time when local authority budgets are being significantly cut. Therefore, there is sometimes a very difficult financial circle for local authorities to square.
The Minister talked about the funding already in the system to tackle the problems that disabled children have in not getting access to the 15 hours of childcare. He talked about the higher rate of funding block, but, as I pointed out in an intervention, my understanding is that local authorities are really struggling to provide the statutory provision that they need to support statements and the education, health and social care plans that fall within the statutory sector, and very few have leeway with funding to support the non-statutory bit, which is the childcare sector.
On the review of fair funding, the Minister and I entertained each other one Thursday evening on the graveyard shift a few weeks ago. I was amazed that something like 35 Government Members turned out. One of the things that was said, to which I did not respond at the time, was that the Labour Government did nothing about this. That is not true. I was working in the DFE at the time. I am probably the collective wisdom from the DFE now, because I am not sure that many people who were there are here.
I want to put a hypothetical case to the Minister. If he were to seek legal advice on this, I suspect it would tell him that there is a direct line between those authorities—largely but not all metropolitan—that have high council tax, and those that funded education above the standard spending assessments, because this is all historical. There is still what I think ought to be referred to as a golden thread between those authorities that pay high council tax and those whose schools are highly funded.
If the Minister were to seek legal advice, he would find that there is probably a remedy for those authorities that have low council tax and low funding for schools. They can have a referendum and raise council tax and pass it on to their schools. The Minister may therefore find that his legal advice would tell him that if he were simply to transfer funds across, his chances of winning a judicial review against the big beasts of Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and so on would not be bonny.
Pat Glass
No, I do not think that is right and I would not defend it at all. However, I think that if the Minister is simply going to redistribute existing funding—to level it down—he may find he has legal problems. If he tries to level it up, there will be no problems at all.
The highest rate of funding block is insufficient to address statutory needs. I listened to what the Minister said about tax-free childcare. As he quite rightly said, this is about the Government topping up a bank account, into which the parent will put £800 and the Government will top up to £1,000 for each child. However, that is not realistic for most parents of children with disabilities.
As I said earlier, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation evidence highlighted that disabled children are most likely to live in poverty, that it costs three times as much to raise a disabled child as it does to raise a child without a disability, that families of disabled children are two and a half times more likely to have no parent working for more than 16 hours a week in paid employment, that only 16% of mothers of disabled children work, compared with 61% of all mothers, and that 83% of parent carers say that lack of suitable childcare is the main barrier to work. Most parents of disabled children are not going to be sitting around with a spare £800 per child. Some families will be helped, but the funding will not help across the piece.
Pat Glass
That helps, but I do not think parents of disabled children have huge amounts of money lying around that they can use for this. However, it will help and we are grateful for that.
We remain concerned at the funding gap, despite what the Minister says. We believe that his policy is underfunded and we are concerned about the risks that could result—less provision, less choice for parents, diminishing quality and sharp rises in childcare for younger children. We remain convinced that an ongoing review would help to make the policy work and deliver what we all want, but we will not press clause stand part to a vote. On amendment 10, however, I believe that the Minister is well meaning, but nothing he has said today has convinced me that anything will change for families of disabled children, so we will seek to divide the Committee.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Pat Glass
I beg to move amendment 8, in clause 2, page 2, line 17, after ‘work’, insert
‘, voluntary work or full-time education course’.
This amendment would also allow those parents who undertake voluntary work or who are in full time education with the intention of retraining for the workforce to access 30 hours of free childcare.
Pat Glass
I welcome that intervention. We do not want people to get into the situation that we see frequently in our constituency surgeries, where parents turn up with huge bills for tax credits that they need to pay back. They did not intend to get into that situation, and it is not about fraud; it is about things being unclear.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady touches on an important issue, which is worth clarifying. The power to create an offence in the Bill relates only to information—that is, sensitive information about children or about parents’ income—being passed on without authorisation. The measure is designed to protect parents and their data, not to punish them. The financial penalties scheme is for false declaration or fraud, which is more proportionate.
Pat Glass
That is really helpful. Still, financial penalties will be imposed, and we see that happening all the time to parents who are on tax credits. It would be best to avoid that situation if we can by being as clear as possible. Given that many families have different and varied patterns of work, it would be helpful if the Minister could explain to us exactly what the eligibility criteria will be, and how far he is prepared to go on that question. For those on zero-hours contracts, those who do seasonal work and the self-employed, whose work and income are entirely variable and dependent on others, eligibility needs to be calculated over a period of time.
For many people, the self-employed included—we welcome the desire expressed by the Government to include them in eligibility for the scheme—it will not be possible for them or for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to confirm their income until 18 months after the end of a financial year. The Minister will get absolutely sick of me giving him the benefit of my experience, but when I worked in education and we had student grants— remember them?—self-employed parents were allowed to estimate their income, and their children’s grants were calculated on the basis of those estimates, with a full reconciliation 18 months later when HMRC issued confirmation of the parents’ income. I am sure that the same is true of student loans. Will similar estimations of income and hours of work be allowed in this case? Will they be calculated over a certain period? If so, what will that be?
Pat Glass
My understanding is that the 25 hours was universal, and when something is universal we do not need such untidiness. Now, however, we are talking about the Government’s 30 hours. For the benefit of us all, parents in particular, I simply want clarification of the issues. Will those income and hours be estimated over a period of time? What is that period? Will HMRC be confirming things?
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady is being incredibly generous in giving way again, and I will address her points in my response. I hate to be the killjoy who reminds her, but the manifesto on which she stood for election promised 25 hours of free childcare for the working parents of three and four-year-olds. It was not a universal offer.
Pat Glass
It was universal for parents who are working. Getting back to the probing amendment, will an average of 16 hours a week over 52 weeks be possible for those on zero-hours contracts, in seasonal work and so on? What will happen if something goes wrong? What will happen if parents genuinely believe that they will work an average of 16 hours a week over 52 weeks, based on the average of the past three years, say, but something goes horribly wrong and they fail to reach the average hours or the average income?
Things do go wrong for families. Poor weather might lead to a rotten summer—it would never happen, because that is completely unknown in the UK, isn’t it? If a business depends on a good summer, people could find themselves falling foul of the income threshold. Flooding over Christmas, or even in November, might wipe out earnings in the peak season—again, not unknown in the UK. Recession might dry up people’s work and income—again, not unknown in the UK—or even an international banking crisis could force families into unemployment and poverty. It might be something else that is completely out of the control of the parents. What will happen then?
If the parents genuinely estimate their position based on the previous three years, backed up by all that historical stuff, and then something goes wrong, who will make decisions about that? What is likely to happen to parents? Will they have to pay back the cost? I was going to ask if they faced two years in prison, but we have already heard that they will not.
The Minister needs to make regulations and it would be helpful to know what is in his mind when he is thinking about them. We all welcome the Bill—so warmly that we want to get it right for parents. If the Minister can be absolutely clear about the issue of eligibility, we will be grateful.
Mr Gyimah
It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. A number of points that have been raised this afternoon have led me to think that Opposition Members want to turn an employment offer into a universal offer of 30 hours of childcare. To be clear, every three or four-year-old will get 15 hours of childcare. The entitlement to the second 15 hours is based on the parent’s employment. I will speak to amendments 8, 9 and 12, to clarify whether specific groups of parents from varying circumstances will be able to access the 30 hours—the extended entitlement—as per those probing amendments.
I am grateful to the hon. Members for North West Durham and for Birmingham, Yardley for the amendments, and I want to make it clear that the Government recognise that for many families, childcare is not an issue; it is the issue. That is why supporting working families with their childcare costs is at the heart of our policy. Amendment 8 concerns parents who work on a voluntary basis and full-time students. It would allow parents who are not in remunerated work, but who are contributing to society through voluntary work, to access the extended entitlement. It would also allow parents who are in full-time education and taking steps to retrain and prepare themselves for the labour market to access the extended entitlement.
Pat Glass
I want to make it clear that when we talk about full-time students in training, we are talking about students who are on a training course that will lead into an occupation. We are talking not about full-time study across the piece, but about people who are training to be nurses, doctors or teachers, or doing something that will lead directly into employment.
Mr Gyimah
I thank the hon. Lady for that clarification, and I will come back to that in detail. As I have said, all three and four-year-olds, and 40% of the most disadvantaged two-year-olds, are already entitled to 15 hours of free childcare a week. That provides substantial opportunity for their parents to take up voluntary work where they wish to do so, or indeed to study. The additional 15 hours of free childcare is intended to help parents who wish to take up paid employment to support their families.
The additional 15 hours will be available to families where each parent, or the sole parent in a lone parent family, earns an average weekly income equivalent to at least16 hours at the national minimum wage or the living wage, and less than £100,000 a year. Although the Government recognise the importance of volunteering, the purpose of the extended entitlement is to help working parents with the cost of childcare so that they can take up paid work if they want to, or work additional hours. The approach we are taking is consistent with other Government childcare schemes, including tax-free childcare and the childcare element of universal credit.
Mr Gyimah
That is a good question, and I am happy to provide clarification. The national living wage applies to people over the age of 25, so, in their case, the eligibility criterion would be set at that rate, which is £115.20 a week. Those who are under 25 will be on the national minimum wage, in which case the earnings criterion will be £107 a week. Even if someone is doing voluntary work, if they can combine their voluntary work with earning £107 or £115.20 a week, they will get the additional 15 hours of childcare.
Mr Gyimah
I thank the hon. Lady for her interest. Getting the technology platform right is absolutely crucial, and the cross-Government taskforce on childcare, which I co-chair, has considered it in detail. In addition, officials in the Department for Education are working closely with HMRC on the joint system, the development of which secured funding at the spending review, and we will provide the system to HMRC in due course. I thank the hon. Lady for her legitimate concern.
Pat Glass
I apologise if I missed this information. The Minister said that parents will be able to appeal to the first-tier tribunal. Will that be the employment tribunal, and will there be costs involved for parents, in the same way as there are for those appealing to that tribunal regarding unfair dismissal, for example?
Mr Gyimah
If the hon. Lady will bear with me, I will await inspiration from the usual channels. In the meantime, I will plough on with my speech.
In relation to the extended entitlement, we are clear that the powers we have taken are sufficient to enable us to cater for non-standard working patterns and families’ different circumstances. I can also reassure hon. Members that if a parent’s circumstances change, their child will remain eligible for the extended free entitlement for a short period—there will be no instantaneous change. We hope that within that period the parent will be able to regain employment and continue to declare that they expect to meet the eligibility criteria. If that is not the case, and the parent is clear that they no longer expect to be in paid employment after the grace period, they become ineligible.
Mr Gyimah
The short period is in line with the grace period, which is three months.
As hon. Members can see, we fully support the intention behind the amendments. However, we believe that putting too much detail in the Bill about the specific circumstances in which children could qualify risks inadvertently excluding some of those we want to include. Nevertheless, Members will have the opportunity to scrutinise the regulations before they are finalised.
As part of the development of the joint childcare application system, we will publish information for parents and their partners to make clear the eligibility rules for different groups of parents, so that they can be clear about whether they can access the extended entitlement. Online and telephone advice will also be available to assist parents. In addition, we will publish statutory guidance for local authorities next year, so that they can advise parents about their eligibility for the extended entitlement and discharge their responsibilities for delivering childcare places in keeping with the scheme’s rules.
In response to the question about the first-tier tribunal, the inspiration that I have received says that it will be specifically a social security tribunal and not an employment tribunal.
Mr Gyimah
I will get inspiration on that before the end of my speech.
I hope that hon. Members are reassured that the parents who are the subject of these amendments will be supported under the Bill, and I hope that the hon. Member for North West Durham feels reassured enough not to press the amendments.
I am waiting for inspiration and for someone to intervene on me.
Pat Glass
I am immensely grateful to the Minister for that. The word on the street was that the Government wanted to better Labour’s offer of 25 hours of free childcare but never really expected to have to deliver it—they thought they would be able to deal it away in some kind of coalition. Given that, I think the Minister has done incredibly well in getting to the detail; credit where it is due.
The Minister has been able to clarify for me, in a way that I did not understand before, the issue of eligibility and the 16-hour work threshold, the issue of those under and over 25, and the issue of the national living wage and the minimum wage. That is really helpful.
I am also immensely grateful to the Minister for clarifying that parents will not end up in prison. I had an awful feeling that parents could end up with two years in prison as a result of getting the system wrong. That is clearly not the case. I also now understand the eligibility criteria on the grounds of income.
I seek clarification on one point, and I am happy for the Minister to intervene on me. I was interested in what he had to say about people who are self-employed, which we welcome, but there is a danger. I hate to throw a spanner in the works, but if someone is eligible automatically in the year in which they set up a business, are the Government mindful of people who would want to abuse the system by folding their business at the end of the year and starting a new one?
I have concerns about only a couple of things now, and I think my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley raised one of them. In the spending review, the Chancellor changed the system of training for nurses, so that they no longer come under bursaries and now have to receive grants. That will automatically wipe out a huge number of nurses across the country from eligibility for childcare, and I ask the Minister to have another look at that issue. Those people are not on great wages, they are working hard, and they will contribute to our society in the future in a way that many other students on grants perhaps will not. It is unfortunate, to say the least, if they are simply taken out of the eligibility criteria.
Also, I understand the reasons behind the grace period, but I worry a little bit about children falling out of childcare places every 13 weeks. If a parent regularly finds a job after four months, once their children have built relationships—for some families, that is the case—that could have a worrying impact on the children’s development. I do not know what the answer is—I am not pretending that I do—but it is something for the Government to consider.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady raises an important point about how the grace period works in practice, the eligibility checking and the actual childcare places on the ground. As I said, one of the principal things that we will be able to test during the early implementation phase is exactly when a local authority is informed, when the provider is informed, how long a place is kept open for and so on. We will have to iron out those details, which is why they belong in regulations rather than in the Bill.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady again makes a very good point, and I thank the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley for raising the issue. I am willing to offer to look into what exactly someone in such a situation will get, because there is a package of childcare measures, and they might be entitled to other measures. I am happy to write to the hon. Lady and meet her to look at what they could get and how it could be dealt with.
Mr Gyimah
I beg to move amendment 2, in clause 2, page 2, line 25, leave out from “about” to the end of line 26 and insert “—
(i) the form of a declaration and the manner in which it is to be made;
(ii) the conditions to be met by the person making a declaration;
(iii) the period for which a declaration has effect.”
This amendment enables the Secretary of State to set conditions to be met by a person making a declaration as to a child’s eligibility for the extended entitlement
Mr Gyimah
That is very much part of the thinking.
Amendment 2 will enable regulations to be made under the clause setting out the conditions to be met by a person making a declaration as to a child’s eligibility for the extend entitlement. For example, to be consistent with tax-free childcare, the person making the declaration will need to be the person responsible for the child. It is crucial that we are able to provide clarity for parents about the declaration they will have to make, and that we can ensure that HMRC will be provided with the information it needs to make decisions about whether a child is eligible for the extended entitlement.
The conditions that the person making the declaration will need to meet will be set out alongside the form and manner of the declaration. Regulations will say more about those matters in due course and will be subject to the highest degree of parliamentary scrutiny.
Amendment 3 will make it clear in the Bill that HMRC will be verifying, and making a determination about, a child’s eligibility for additional free childcare. The amendment will ensure that HMRC can work in a timely fashion to extend its online system, so that it can also check eligibility for the 30 hours of free childcare. That will enable HMRC to determine whether a child is eligible for the extended entitlement.
Amendment 6 deals with commencement, which is when the various provisions of the Bill will come into force. It is consequential on the new provision that gives HMRC the power to make a determination as to a child’s eligibility. We intend that provision to come into force on Royal Assent, so that HMRC can begin to build the technical aspects of the joint eligibility checking system.
Ensuring that the operational aspects of the extended entitlement are in place in good time will enable us to test that the eligibility checking system runs smoothly for parents.
Pat Glass
These are technical amendments, and we do not have a problem with them. The only thing we ask is that the Minister confirms that HMRC has the capacity and resources to deliver. Members from all parts of the House deal regularly with HMRC, which is one of the most difficult departments. I remember when a nurse who had just retired came to see me. She had been on PAYE throughout her career, and she suddenly got a bill for £42,000 back tax. After we explored the matter, it turned out that she did not owe anything. I always count such results as major successes, but such cases are happening in all our constituencies all the time. People tell me that they spend hours and hours trying to get through to HMRC, just to ask simple questions about their tax. We need to know that HMRC has the capacity and resources to deliver on this measure.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady asks a legitimate question. Although HMRC will be checking eligibility, the measure is not specifically to do with the tax system. Funding has been provided to offer parents telephone support where needed, and there is funding available for the IT system. That funding specifically relates to checking eligibility for the 30 hours of childcare, rather than being part of HMRC’s wider tax-related activities.
Amendment 2 agreed to.
Amendment made: 3, in clause 2, page 2, line 26, at end insert—
‘(4A) For the purposes of assisting the Secretary of State in the discharge of the duty imposed by subsection (1), the Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs may carry out functions in connection with the making of determinations as to whether a child is a qualifying child of working parents.’—(Mr Gyimah.)
This amendment confers on HMRC the power to make a determination as to a child’s eligibility for the extended entitlement and carry out associated functions.
Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
Mr Gyimah
The clause will place a duty on the Secretary of State to ensure that childcare is available free of charge for qualifying children of working parents for a period equivalent to 30 hours for 38 weeks in any year. The Government recognise that childcare is an issue for many families. The new extended entitlement, with an additional 15 hours, is intended to support working parents with the cost of childcare, enabling them to work additional hours if they wish to do so. That will be available to families where both parents are working or the sole parent is working in a lone-parent family. Self-employed parents will also be eligible, as we heard earlier, as would parents in receipt of tax credits, universal credit, tax and childcare vouchers through their employer or tax-free childcare.
The clause gives the Secretary of State the power to set out in regulations the description of a qualifying child. We intend that a child will qualify from the school term following their third birthday, in the same way as with the existing 15-hour early education entitlement. The clause will also enable the Secretary of State to set out in regulations the criteria that must be met by parents. The regulations would set out what is or is not to be regarded as paid work and how the extended entitlement would support temporary absences from the workplace. It is important that parents on maternity, paternity or adoption leave can maintain their existing childcare arrangements while they take time away from the workplace to adjust to the new arrival.
As the Secretary of State set out on Second Reading, each parent must on average be earning a weekly minimum equivalent to 16 hours at the national minimum wage or national living wage. From April 2016, the national living wage will come into force for workers aged 25 and over, alongside the national minimum wage for workers under 25. A working parent who is 25 will therefore need to earn a weekly minimum equivalent of £115.20 in order to be eligible, whereas a working parent who is 21 will need to earn a weekly minimum equivalent of around £107 at this year’s minimum wage rates. Parents on zero-hours contracts and the self-employed will be eligible in the same way as anyone else, provided they meet the earnings criteria across the coming quarter on average.
Parents with fluctuating incomes will be able to access the extended entitlement if they reasonably expect to earn the minimum on average. That income requirement will ensure we prioritise the extra 15 hours of childcare for working families that need the most help with their childcare costs. Together with the existing universal entitlement, those parents will be entitled to double the childcare support they would normally receive.
The Secretary of State outlined on Second Reading that there will be a £100,000 income limit on the extended entitlement per year for each parent. That means any family in which either parent earns more than £100,000 or any sole parent who earns more than £100,000 will not be able to claim the extended entitlement. I can confirm that the increase in the minimum income level to 16 hours per week and the annual income cap of £100,000 will also apply to tax-free childcare. I am sure Committee members will agree that it is right to align eligibility conditions for the two schemes and focus support where it is needed most. Parents will be able to apply for both schemes at the same time, using a simple online system, as I have outlined.
The duty that the clause will place on the Secretary of State demonstrates the Government’s commitment to supporting working families. It will enable the Government to deliver on their manifesto commitment and help to ensure that parents who wish to work or to work more hours are supported to do so through free childcare.
Pat Glass
We have had a detailed discussion, but there are a number of assurances I would like the Minister to give, if he can. He said that the House will have the opportunity to debate and scrutinise the regulations at the highest level, but I am aware that he is looking to remove the House of Lords amendment further on in the Bill that states all regulations should be subject to the affirmative, rather than the negative, procedure. Can he confirm there will be an opportunity for the House to debate the regulations? There will be an awful lot in the regulations. It is right that they are made, but it is also right that the House gets an opportunity to debate them when the time comes and that they are not simply laid before Parliament and slipped out under the cover of darkness.
The Minister said that HMRC will have the resources and capacity to deliver the measure. He talked about the new IT system, which I hope is not linked in any way to the IT system used for universal credit; we would be very worried if that were the case.
It is a shame that the eligibility criteria have increased. The initial offer was 30 hours of free childcare to parents working more than eight hours a week. That has increased to 16 hours, with an income threshold, taking some of our poorest and most disadvantaged working parents out of the system. I understand that it is squeezed at the top, but it is a shame those parents have been taken out of the system in order for the Government to balance the books.
I am grateful that the Minister will look at the issue of children whose parents are in women’s refuges. I hope he will look again at the issue of nurses in training who will simply be taken out of the system wholesale, but I am grateful for his clarification.
Mr Gyimah
I shall respond very briefly to the hon. Lady’s points. First, the Government will be proposing an affirmative debate on all the regulations on their first use. I am sure we will discuss that in due course.
Secondly, a bespoke IT system is being built. I have personally interrogated it. It is fantastic that, given the plethora of childcare offers out there, we are beginning to bring together the eligibility and application systems to make it easy for parents.
Thirdly, on the point about balancing the books, we have refined our eligibility criteria as we have gone through the process. Given that parents get 15 hours free, it is simply illogical to say that they have to work only an extra hour to get another 15 hours free. It is a question of not only balancing the books but refining the policy.
Fourthly, I take on board the hon. Lady’s point about nurses and grants. As with women in refuge centres, I will look at that issue and write to her to set out what else they could qualify for, given the number of childcare offers that are available.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
Discharging the section 2(1) duty
Pat Glass
I beg to move amendment 11, in clause 3, page 3, line 14, at end insert—
“(ba) make provision about determining and auditing the appropriate qualifications to be held by staff providing childcare for the purposes of this Act, including in relation to staff providing childcare for qualifying children with disabilities.”
This amendment would require Government to set out the qualifications that staff would be required to have or acquire when providing childcare for disabled children for the purposes of this Act.
Pat Glass
This morning I spoke briefly about the shortage of qualified staff in the workforce—I think I was ruled out of order at least three times, but now is my time—and how that is a risk to the Government’s policy of expansion of free childcare. The House of Lords Affordable Childcare Committee demonstrated that the existing scheme of 15 free hours is being run at a loss in most private, voluntary and independent settings. It is cross-subsidised by the incredibly complicated system that currently exists.
I have previously discussed the future costs of childcare that were not considered in the Government’s childcare review, which begins by telling us that
“the market is healthy, and has grown in recent years.”
It goes on to tell us that
“there is currently sufficient supply available to the majority of parents”,
yet local authorities freely acknowledge that they have insufficient supply in their areas and the House of Commons Library tells us that we have 44,000 fewer childcare places today than we had in 2009.
Putting our disagreements over the funding gaps to one side for the moment, perhaps the biggest threats to expansion in the childcare sector are the issues around workforce capacity. Childcare providers report that they are already finding it incredibly difficult to recruit well-qualified and experienced staff to deliver the existing 15 hours. Parents of disabled children tell us that the cost of and access to childcare for their children is a big problem. Most providers do not have the trained staff that they need to ensure the future development and safety of children.
Part of the difficulty that providers have in recruiting suitably qualified staff—let alone those with the qualifications and skills to support disabled children’s learning—is competition with the maintained sector, which is able to offer higher rates of pay and term-time-only contracts. Given the fact that 61% of nurseries and childcare providers are in the private and voluntary sector, there is a serious danger of the majority of that provision becoming second-class, with children having less access to good-quality and experienced staff and a further gulf opening up between the children of those parents who can access 30 hours of quality childcare in the maintained sector and the rest.
This morning, I spoke briefly about the chief inspector’s report and the experience I have had and outcomes I have seen as a member of the Education Committee. There are clear links between the quality of the provision—the quality of the staff and their qualifications—and the outcomes from children. We accept that in the maintained sector, because there is a lot of access to qualified teachers, graduates and so on, and because almost all the staff will be at least level 3 qualified, it is a natural correlation that it will have better quality provision if things remain as they are and if something is not done about the lack of qualified staff in the PVI sector.
The Minister has acknowledged that the pattern of use of childcare provision is not flat across the week, while most provision runs at between 75% and 90% capacity. As we have heard, there is much less take-up on Mondays and Friday than on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. I am advised that most settings would struggle to increase their offer from 15 to 30 hours for children who are not disabled because they do not have the space, because they cannot recruit the qualified level 3 staff they need and because they do not have the provision to offer meals in the middle of the day. Many children coming for 15 hours go home at lunchtime, when another group of children come for their 15 hours. If those children stay for 30 hours a week, there will have to be provision for offering meals in the middle of the day, and many of these settings tell me that they cannot do that.
The voluntary sector is a major sector, and it is operating out of church halls. If provision is to be extended to 30 hours, we would have to take account of those who would be displaced. It is not just about meals in the middle of the day; it is about old people’s luncheon clubs, the Mothers Union and keep-fit classes that will be displaced if 30 hours of childcare is offered. The providers tell me that they cannot offer 30 hours because they can not offer meals in the middle of the day, but they also do not want to put out all the other users of the premises.
Outside of funding, the biggest concern is the lack of capacity in the workforce. I realise that this is one part of the Department for Education operating separately from another, which happened an awful lot even in my day, but the Government have required that an outcome of any level 3 training is that staff will have a GCSE in both English and maths at grade C or above. Although we all agree that it is a good thing for staff to be qualified, by clinging to their insistence on GCSE grade C for students who have already failed that qualification after two years of study at school, the Government are going against the recommendations of both the sector and the Education Committee. The Education Committee considered the matter carefully in relation to apprenticeships in general and found that a qualification of the same difficulty and quality, such as functional skills in numeracy and literacy, was a much better and more practical way of ensuring that people completing such qualifications are both literate and numerate without forcing apprentices down a route that they have already failed.
Mr Gyimah
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way in this important debate. I am glad that we are making progress. Having started the day by saying that the Government were dumbing down quality, she is now criticising us for setting the quality bar too high on GCSE literacy and numeracy.
Pat Glass
The Minister is being cynical. Does he really think that GCSE grade C in English and maths is setting the bar too high? It is not that. It is about being practical. I will explain the implications of the Government’s decision. These students are not 16 or 14, or whatever; they are apprentices working in the childcare sector, or hoping to work in the childcare sector. They have already failed, and all the evidence I saw on the Education Committee showed that functional skills in numeracy and literacy are not easier than GCSE; they are just different and more practical for the world of work.
By refusing to listen, the Government are adding to the crisis in the workforce. There has been an 80% reduction in recruitment for level 3 childcare courses and a 56% shortfall in new applicants since the new GCSE requirement was imposed—in a sector that is desperate for qualified staff. If the GCSE requirement is stopping students going into this sector, and if it is stopping them training when we already have a shortfall of qualified staff for 15 hours, how will the Government square the circle for 30 hours?
Mr Gyimah
I hope the hon. Lady is aware that one of the things I have done that was welcomed by the sector was to make the GCSE English and maths requirement one on exit, rather than on entry. The requirement is not stopping anyone getting on to a childcare course; they just need to satisfy the requirement by the time they finish the course. I believe that was welcomed by the sector.
Pat Glass
I understand that and welcome it, but equally, we cannot get away from the facts. Whether it is at the beginning or the end of the course, it is clearly putting off students. If there has been a 56% fall in new applicants since the introduction of the GCSE requirement to replace functional skills and there was no argument, as I understand, that students were coming out who were not literate or numerate, the Government must recognise that the requirement may well be part of the problem rather than of the solution.
The situation has not been helped by the Government’s lack of a workforce strategy, although I think that we may be inching towards one; I will wait to see what the Minister says. It was not helpful that the previous Minister tried to change ratios, and then changed her mind and forged ahead with the graduate early-years qualification, which did not have qualified teacher status. Those chop-and-change policies brought her into conflict with the sector and others, including the Education Committee. We have been proved right on that. I understand that to date, the course for early-years graduates, which offers 2,000 places, has recruited about 800, and that the numbers recruited have fallen year on year since it was implemented. I know that such things are not within the Minister’s gift, but in his discussions with the Secretary of State, he needs to point out that they are not helping in a sector that is already struggling to get qualified staff.
The amendment would require the Government to set out what qualifications staff are expected to have or require when providing childcare for disabled children for the purposes of the Bill. I remind the Committee of what I have already said: more than one third of parents, 38%, who were unable to access their entitlement of 15 hours of free childcare said that it was because they did not think that the childcare provider could provide for their children safely, and 30% did not think that the provider had adequately trained staff. One quarter said that the nursery or carer had refused a place exclusively on the grounds of their child’s disability.
I have talked to the Committee about my experience that it is not simply a question of training or even money. In many cases, it is about confidence. Once providers have had some training and support, they feel more confident opening up to more significant difficulties. I welcome the Minister’s offer to work with me to explore the issue, and I ask that the qualifications for providers form part of that offer.
Mr Gyimah
My hon. Friend makes an excellent, important point in two respects. First, the new funding route and the associated certainty should make it attractive for new providers to enter the market and deliver childcare for working parents. Secondly, when we look at careers and career progression, we should consider that someone might start at level 2 or level 3 but then eventually start their own nursery or childcare business in another part of the country and deliver for parents. With that in mind, we need to make sure, as we look at the workforce strategy, that the opportunities are there for people to progress, fulfil their potential and realise their aspirations.
The strategy will not only look at apprenticeship qualifications at levels 2 and 3 but consider how we can attract even more graduates into early years. As part of the strategy, I would like to consider how the workforce can access training and support that enables them to offer early education and care to all children, including those with special educational needs. There are already some important requirements in place regarding the individual needs of children.
To make qualification requirements have a real impact on the quality of care that children receive, it is important to make sure that they equip staff with the necessary skills to identify and meet individual needs. That is why the level 3 early years educator criteria, which are set by Government, require that trainees learn how to assess and meet needs.
The teacher standards also require early years teachers to have those skills. Early years teachers must demonstrate a clear understanding of the needs of all children, including those with special educational needs and disabilities, and be able to use and evaluate distinctive approaches to engage and support them. New apprenticeship standards being developed by a group of childcare employers will also take into consideration the knowledge and skills necessary to support children with special educational needs and disabilities.
Inspection obviously plays a crucial role by focusing on outcomes and reviewing how children in settings have made progress. It requires settings to demonstrate how they have assessed and met the needs of children, including those with special educational needs and disabilities. That is a powerful incentive for providers to ensure that staff meet the needs of those children and meet all the requirements placed on them through secondary legislation.
Under the EYFS framework, all children are to be allocated a key person to assess and meet their needs. In addition, the “Special educational needs and disability code of practice: 0 to 25 years” sets out clear expectations on educational institutions, including early years providers, for identifying and supporting children with SEND. The code sets out a graduated approach, which involves seeking specialist advice and intervention where appropriate.
To ensure that providers and local authorities are equipped to deliver the expectations of the new code of practice, we are funding a number of projects to better equip the early years workforce to support children with SEND. They include the National Day Nurseries Association, which will build on local systems for self-improvement through SEND champions and the excellent Pen Green centre. That centre supports a model of peer-to-peer training to help practitioners gain the knowledge and skills that they need to support children’s needs.
Funding provided to support partnerships between teaching schools and private, voluntary and independent sector providers has also enabled some good practice in supporting children with SEND. For example, Tor View school, a specialist learning community in east Lancashire, is leading a project that is helping PVI sector providers in disadvantaged areas of Burnley and Rossendale improve their support for children with SEND. SEND specialists have worked with staff so that they can more confidently identify SEND issues and provide support for children and their families.
In some cases, it will be necessary for staff to undertake specific training to support a disabled child in their care. In such circumstances, a childcare provider can ask their local authority for funding to support such training. As the individual needs of children may differ greatly, I do not think it is appropriate to set out qualification requirements for all staff working with disabled children. The Government support a personalised approach to meeting children’s needs, whereby providers, in partnership with their local authority, determine what support is needed and how it will be accessed for each individual child.
A number of other points have been raised, for example on having more graduates in the sector. For clarification, the EYFS framework is clear that trained graduates can lead settings and utilise a 1:13 ratio in doing so.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady asks a good question. As I have outlined, the staff to child ratios in the EYFS framework will not change between the first and second 15 hours. Nor will qualifications or space requirements. I hope that the plans I have set out and the commitments I have made to develop and publish a workforce strategy that considers career progression routes, on-the-job training, how we can attract more graduates into the sector and support for staff in meeting the individual needs of children, will reassure hon. Members that the Government share their view that a well qualified workforce is vital. In view of that, I hope that the hon. Member for North West Durham will feel reassured enough to withdraw her amendment.
Pat Glass
I welcome the Minister’s assurance. The thinking behind the amendments was that there are clear links between qualified, well trained staff and good outcomes. That is recognised, not least by Ofsted. There is a shortage of qualified support staff under the current provisions, and providers tell us that they are not in a position to recruit—they are struggling to recruit even for the existing 15 hours. We therefore have concerns about how that will be carried forward into the expansion of the system.
I welcome the Minister’s assurance that if the requirement of a GCSE in maths and English on exit is causing disruption in recruitment—
Pat Glass
There appears to be evidence of that at the moment, so I welcome his assurance that he will look at that again. I was disappointed to hear him say that some awarding bodies are saying that functional skills are equal to half a GCSE. I have not heard that. They certainly did not give that evidence to the Education Committee when we looked at the matter in some detail. Providers and awarding bodies said that functional skills are different—more pragmatic in the workplace, but not easier. That was the evidence given to the Education Committee, on which we made recommendations. We are not looking to dumb down in any way, but given that we face expansion and that we are struggling to recruit qualified level 3 support staff, the Government should examine that.
As the Minister said, well trained staff are particularly important in the case of disabled children, which is the thinking behind amendment 11—we would never allow unqualified or untrained staff to work with children with disabilities in schools. Parents are telling us that part of the problem is that they cannot access the current 15 hours’ provision, and if that is the case, we need to explore that.
I heard what the Minister said about the excellent Pen Green nursery. It would be wonderful if we could reproduce Margy, her staff and Pen Green across every one of our constituencies. I strongly urge hon. Members to have a look at it, because they will want it in their constituencies.
I understand that qualifications are not the same as appropriate qualifications, which are not the same as training. They are different things. One issue I had with the Government’s policy in the previous Parliament on unqualified staff in free schools was that, although I would have qualified to teach mathematics because I have an MSc, it was not until I did a BEd that I understood things such as child development; identifying, assessing, helping and intervening with SEN; and managing behaviour. Those are the kinds of things that come through qualifications. People learn to differentiate in the curriculum and deliver a curriculum across the range of ability. They learn the science of learning, pedagogy and, almost more importantly, credibility. If a teacher does not have credibility with the parents, their colleagues and, more importantly—particularly if they are teaching in a secondary school—the children, they will quickly be sussed out. That is about not just having qualifications, but having the appropriate qualifications and training. Given that the Minister has offered to work with me in looking at how we can help more disabled families access childcare—presumably that offer also includes looking at the qualifications and training needed to enable them to do that—I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Margot James.)
Childcare Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)
Debate between Pat Glass and Sam Gyimah(9 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)
There are only 1.4 million three and four year-olds in the country—therefore there cannot be 1.4 million parents. The hon. Lady should check her figures, because they are incredibly wrong.
Pat Glass
I am sorry, I just do not accept that. Nobody is going to see any of this—apart from the early implementers, and there will be very small numbers of those—until 2017. The Government have plenty of time to get this right, and if they do not, we risk ending up with either less provision or poor provision. It is really important that we take our time up to 2017 to make sure that we get this right for families.
At the heart of our concerns, and those of their Lordships, is a serious funding gap. The Chancellor’s recent announcements only go some way to answering those. The other place voted to amend the Bill on three separate occasions, mainly on procedural grounds because the Bill lacked substance and clarity about funding. It has been dogged by lack of detailed information and costings. The Minister really needs to respond to those concerns and answer those questions over the next couple of days.
Mr Gyimah
I thank the hon. Lady for coming to the substance of the debate in front of us. Their Lordships inserted the amendment before the spending review when the Chancellor made clear the eligibility criteria and the funding to go alongside it. If the hon. Lady still disagrees with the £1 billion of extra funding that has been made available for the entitlement, will she make clear, therefore, how much she thinks should go into the sector to fund this entitlement and what her calculations are based on?
Pat Glass
Now I am even more confused because I want to know where the £1 billion is that the Minister is talking about. My understanding is that the figure is £650 million, but I can come on to that in some detail because I think the Government are all over the place on costs. The Minister is going to show us how he will do the basic maths on this. I have an MSc in maths and, quite frankly, I am confused about this. I always think I am reasonably good at this sort of stuff, but I am absolutely confused.
Mr Gyimah
I will be very happy to clarify all those numbers when I come to my response. On the subject of the IPPR report, which I know has been quoted a number of times by Opposition Members, I have a lot of respect for the IPPR. In fact, some of our best officials from the Department for Education work at the IPPR. I should draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that this report was published in October 2015, which is about a month before the spending review in which we set out who is eligible. Without knowing who is eligible, it is not possible to know what the programme is going to cost. This report, fortunately, is very much of its time.
Pat Glass
The Minister needs to explain to us the costs and the eligibility. All those issues need to be clarified in his response. He will have to spend some time explaining to us why, before May 2015, he himself told us that 25 hours of free childcare would cost £1.2 billion, and yet in November 2015 we were told that 30 hours of free childcare would cost £640 million. The IPPR has identified a huge funding gap, and the Minister will have to explain how reducing the thresholds will fill that gap of almost £800 million. I very much welcome the extra money that the Chancellor announced in the comprehensive spending review, but the Minister will have to clarify where and how the funding will be allocated.
The danger is that the Government’s failure to adequately fund the free offer could have far-reaching implications for the childcare market. Analysis by the House of Commons Library shows that there are more than 44,000 fewer childcare places today than there were in 2009. In addition, six in 10 local authorities tell us that they do not have an adequate supply of childcare for local parents now. There is a downwards trend in childcare places, which causes us concern. We do not want to see this well-meaning and potentially excellent policy actually leading to a further reduction in choice for parents.
The Minister suggested that this is about quantity as much as quality for parents. However, parents are concerned about the quality of childcare, and the concern is that this could be damaged by the Government’s failure to adequately support their proposals with funding. There is a wealth of evidence from the Select Committee on Education and from Ofsted that clearly identifies the strong links between outstanding provision and the best qualified—and, therefore, usually the best-paid—staff. Poor childcare is worse than no childcare, and can be detrimental to a child’s development. I am very concerned that, unless the Minister can provide answers on funding, the result will be a diminution of quality provision. Insufficient funds and poor delivery could have the opposite effect to that which the Government want, and will lead to fewer places, poorer quality and higher costs for parents. That is not something that will definitely happen, but it is a serious risk. We want to ensure that risk is taken out of the policy, in so far as we can. The Government have ample time, as I said to the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton, to address these concerns before their policy is introduced in autumn 2017.
We want to interrogate some of the more glaring gaps in this Committee. Their Lordships agreed the amendment requiring the Government to carry out a review of the sustainability of the Bill—a sunrise clause, I think it is called. I understand that they did so for two reasons: because they were very worried about the very large funding gap, and because there is absolutely no detail at all in the Bill. Everything is going to be in regulations. There is no detail about how the 30 hours of free childcare will be paid for without reducing quality or increasing ratios, or about how the additional 15 hours will be delivered. Will it be early-years learning, will be it part of the early-years framework, or will it be childcare? Will it be delivered differently in different places? Is the first 15 hours to be early-years education and the second 15 hours to be pure childcare—someone of indeterminate qualifications and experience watching over children and ensuring they are kept safe?
The Chair
This debate is on amendment 10 and on whether clause 1 should stand part of the Bill, which gives a wider scope to the Opposition spokesperson, but it would be helpful if Members did not go too wide.
Mr Gyimah
I said that we legislated for that in the previous Parliament. Tax-free childcare will come into effect from 2017. I know the hon. Lady is concerned about the cost of school-based, wrap-around childcare, but she can use tax-free childcare to help to offset the cost of her wrap-around childcare. In addition, parents can get subsidies through childcare tax credits for up to 75% of the cost of childcare, and that figure will be 85% when we move to universal credit. The Bill is part of a package of reforms through which the Government will spend £6 billion in this Parliament to support parents with their childcare.
Pat Glass
While we welcome the moves within universal credit to increase subsidies for childcare from 75% to 85% of the costs, does the Minister accept that there will be a lag? Universal credit will come into being six months after this childcare policy is implemented, so there will be a lag of six months between the two.
Mr Gyimah
Parents can get 75% of their costs paid for today, and that will rise to 85% when universal credit comes into force. That goes to the crux of the measure: no parent will be worse off as a result of the Bill, and no parent will get anything taken away from them as a result of the Bill. This is a new entitlement.
Mr Gyimah
By having tax-free childcare and the high needs block, and also by having increased the hourly rate, we will ensure that local authorities continue to have the flexibility to target funding where it is most needed to help children with disabilities and their families, including the youngest children.
Pat Glass
I hear what the Minister is saying about the high needs block of grant funding, but will he not accept that local authorities such as mine have lost 40% of their funding? They argue that the funding that goes into the high needs block is insufficient in itself to fund education for children who have statements or education and social care plans—the statutory bit. They will therefore not be able to find money to fund the non-statutory bit, which is childcare, even if they want to, which they do.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady pre-empts my next point. When it comes to funding for children with additional needs, we know that one size does not fit all. That is why I have committed to considering early years funding for children with special educational needs and disabilities as part of our wider consultation on allocation and a fairer funding system in 2016—specifically to look at the issue that the hon. Lady points out.
However, we also know, going back to a previous point, that access is not just about funding. We have heard throughout this debate that although funding is important, it is not the only issue. I am sure that in a later debate we will talk about how the workforce support children with additional needs, but the way in which local authorities and providers work together to ensure that all children access their entitlement goes beyond funding into how services work together and how the workforce are supported. I therefore want very clearly to commit that as part of our early implementation of 30 hours from September 2016, we will seek to encourage innovative approaches to providing flexible childcare for working parents whose children are disabled or have special educational needs. I am sure that the hon. Lady will have a view on that when we sit down to discuss how we can make that happen.
I would now like to talk more widely about clause 1 and why I do not believe it should stand part of the Bill.
Mr Gyimah
I do not see the case for a further independent review after a review has been held. The autumn statement set the Government’s budget and spending plans for the entirety of the Parliament. We have a very generous settlement: we will be spending £2.9 billion in 2018-19, having spent £2.8 billion in the last Parliament. That is a significant increase.
Finally, Members have asked questions about the detail in the Bill. The hon. Member for North West Durham is a veteran of childcare debates in this House, and I say to her that regulations are the right place for much of the detail. The full eligibility criteria, and the details about the childcare providers that local authorities are required to fund for the current entitlement, will all sit in regulations. The previous Labour Government made the same choice. We set out our intentions in a series of policy statements, and the regulations will be subject to the highest degree of parliamentary scrutiny.
Pat Glass
I accept that on previous occasions much of the detail on childcare has been in regulations. The difference is that there has previously been some detail in the Bill. The concerns raised in the other place and by the Opposition today are about the singular lack of detail in the Bill. That is why we are concerned about so much being pushed into regulations.
Mr Gyimah
As I said, the regulations will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. I hope that hon. Members will agree that the proposals in clause 1 have been fully met through the completion of a robust and evidence-based review and a substantial financial settlement. It is important that we consider one of the key reasons why the clause was inserted in the other place—namely, concern that the Bill would not be scrutinised by Parliament in the light of spending decisions. I understand that concern, but we are now scrutinising the Bill line by line, with further stages of debate ahead. It may not have been the intention of the other place to delay the implementation of additional free childcare by inserting the clause, but I am clear that setting up an independent review would risk delay. I therefore believe that clause 1 should not stand part of the Bill, and I hope that the hon. Member for North West Durham will feel reassured enough to withdraw amendment 10.
Pat Glass
I started this morning by saying that we support the Bill. We want to see it have a fair wind, but we have a number of concerns about the lack of detail in it. It is particularly lacking in detail about funding. I am somewhat reassured that we now appear to have £1 billion, but that leaves us still almost £0.6 billion short of the figure mentioned in the independent review, so there is still a major funding gap. We want to help the Government persuade their lordships that the Bill is sustainable and deliverable.
The Minister is not being fair when he refuses to accept that there is an existing cross-subsidy in the system, and that the current 15-hour offer is underfunded and is subsidised by parents who are taking more than 15 hours. We have real concerns that if the number is increased to 30 hours, it will remove the opportunity for that cross-subsidisation and push the cost down in the system, so that there will be a sharp increase in the cost of childcare for babies, one year-olds and two year-olds. It will produce an ongoing squeeze on costs elsewhere, and our real concern is that as a result, quality will suffer.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady has repeated the claim about £1.6 billion that she made on Second Reading. That figure predates the funding uplift and ignores the eligibility criteria that we have introduced and the savings we get through working tax credit and tax-free childcare. I ask the hon. Lady to withdraw that comment, given that it ignores all those facts, which we have known about since the spending review.
Pat Glass
I am sorry, but from what the Minister has said today he has not convinced me that we have the funding we need to deliver this policy. I think he will have to try harder. He is refusing to accept that cross-subsidisation underpins the system. If we pull away the opportunities for that cross-subsidisation, it will either squeeze costs somewhere else or affect staffing ratios and quality.
Mr Gyimah
I thank the hon. Lady for being so generous with her time. My point is that before the spending review, as before any spending review, there was wild speculation about what Government promises made in their manifesto will cost. Until the Government have actually set out the detail of a policy, that is all speculation. Since the spending review we have made clear who is eligible and provided the money to fund it, so it is wrong for hon. Members to keep referring to speculative figures that were published before the spending review.
Pat Glass
I have looked at the IPPR document and the Government’s review of the cost of childcare, and there is hugely more detail in the IPPR document than in the review. The Minister has referred to the review several times, and I have it here. My reading is that it does not take account of cross-subsidisation.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Pat Glass and Sam Gyimah(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
Questions about childcare—wrap-around, flexible childcare and childcare during school holidays—are particularly opportune. Before the election in May, the Minister told us that Labour’s 25 hours of free childcare would cost £1.2 billion. The independent Institute for Public Policy Research has said that the Government’s 30 hours will cost £1.6 billion. Last week, the Chancellor told us that he was setting aside just over £600,000 for this, which leaves a shortfall of almost £1 billion annually. Will that come from quality, will it come from ratios or will it come from both?
Mr Gyimah
It was impossible for the IPPR to know how much the Government’s policy would cost before it knew the eligibility criteria for the new entitlement. The Chancellor announced the eligibility criteria at the autumn statement and made it clear that there is record investment going into childcare—£1 billion in 2019-20. That is something we should all be proud of.
Childcare Bill [Lords]
Debate between Pat Glass and Sam Gyimah(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
This has been a really good debate, with informative contributions from Members on both sides of the House. I will highlight a few of those contributions.
My hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) hit the nail firmly on the head: there is a huge funding gap between the hourly rate the Government are making available for childcare and what parents are actually paying. The hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) talked about the importance of early learning in childcare, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) spoke of falling numbers of childcare places and the shrinking market in childcare. The hon. Members for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry) and for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Corri Wilson) talked about the importance of narrowing the gap between those children from the most advantaged and affluent homes and those from the least well-off homes. The hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer) talked a lot of sense about the barriers that a lack of childcare can place in the way of women wanting to return to and contribute in the workforce. I applaud her remark that the Bill should have the needs of the child at its core.
I confirm that Her Majesty’s Opposition welcome the Government policy of extending free childcare for working parents to 30 hours a week. However, the promise of 30 hours of free childcare has gradually been whittled down, in the other place and in this place, to something very different from what parents would expect. We want the provision to be inclusive, high-quality and supportive of good outcomes for all children. We want it to narrow the attainment gap between those from well-off homes and the rest. We know that that gap begins to open from the age of 22 months.
Any parent who has worked, either by choice or necessity, and has placed their child in someone else’s hands will know just how hard that is to do. It is much easier for parents to work if, as they go out to work each day, they can be confident that their child’s provision will have a positive long-term impact on their child’s development, their health and wellbeing, and their future life chances.
We need to be realistic about what is now happening in relation to childcare. We have already heard that there are 40,000 fewer childcare places now than there were in 2010, that six in 10 councils do not have enough childcare available for working families, that working families are spending on average £1,500 more on childcare today—if they can access it—than they did in 2010, and that 40% of parents of children with a disability who want childcare cannot even get access to the 15 hours to which they are entitled.
We want to work with the Government to make the policy work for families, and particularly for children, up and down the country, and we want it to be in place as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, however, as the Bill stands—even after today’s announcement about the 30p per hour increase in the rate the Government pay to providers—there remain really serious concerns, many of which have already been raised in the other place, not least about the lack of detail in the Bill, which the Minister really must address.
The Opposition’s first concern is the funding gap. I do not believe that the Government have adequately explained during the Bill’s passage to date, including today, how the policy will work in practice and how it will be properly funded. The Government have been all over the place on this matter. As we have heard, when talking about Labour’s promise of 24 hours of childcare, the Minister said that it would cost £1.2 billion. However, when he first announced the Government’s offer of 30 hours, he said it would cost £350 million, or £365 million to be precise. By their own admission, they have recently revised the figure to £640 million. However, the Institute for Public Policy Research has identified a £1 billion funding gap in the Government’s plans, even on the basis of the current hourly rate. We welcome today’s announcement, which on the face of it shows that the Government understand there is a funding shortfall, but we believe that the policy is still £1 billion short of the true cost.
The Government have called this Bill the Childcare Bill, and the Department for Education has responsibility for taking it through Parliament, but in fact it is an economic Bill targeted first and foremost at getting parents, particularly mothers, back into employment. There is nothing wrong with that, but it does not put the child at the centre of the Bill. Given the massive funding gap, there are serious concerns that quality will be the first casualty of this policy, and capacity the second.
A wealth of evidence, not least in the 2013 Education Committee report on Sure Start centres and the foundation years—I was the Opposition lead on the Committee—and from Ofsted, clearly identifies the strong links between an Ofsted judgment of outstanding and the presence of better-qualified practitioners and of appropriately funded settings.
In its report the Education Committee highlighted the fact that the cost of poor quality childcare is not neutral. It went on to say that poor quality childcare is worse than no childcare at all and can be damaging. It can have negative long-term impacts on the development of children, particularly children who are already disadvantaged. If the policy is to work, it cannot be at the expense of good quality childcare or a widening of the already wide attainment gap between those from better-off homes and the rest.
Providers have been clear that unless the policy is properly funded, it could result in more poor quality childcare and less, not more, childcare provision. If that happens it will be, as is always the case, the few, well-off, sharp-elbowed who get access to 30 hours of good quality childcare, at the expense of the many, less well-off and less advantaged. That cannot be allowed to happen.
The Bill lacks detail so, as we go through the Committee stage, we will be looking for detailed answers. How will the Government pay for this policy without reducing quality or capacity within the sector, without increasing ratios or reducing regulation, which would have implications for the safety and well-being of children? How will the Government ensure that we have both the premises and the staffing necessary for this expansion in the sector to occur? How will the voluntary sector be helped to contribute to the extension of childcare without pushing out the pensioners luncheon clubs, the WI and the many other groups that currently use church halls alongside mother and toddler and childcare groups?
Exactly who is going to qualify for the extra 15 hours of childcare? Will it apply to those who work non-standard hours, those on flexible working hours, zero-hour contracts, self-employed parents, and parents in education or training who want to return to the workforce? As has been asked many times in the House today, how will the Government ensure that the parents and carers of disabled children can access the extra 15 hours when the overwhelming evidence now is that those parents and their children cannot even access the 15 hours that they are entitled to at present? Some 41% of parent carers of disabled children report that they cannot access the 15 hours of free childcare currently on offer, either on the grounds of cost or because staff are not trained and sufficiently confident to care for their children.
Only 21% of local authorities say that they have sufficient childcare for disabled children in their area. The Minister may recall that I chaired a parliamentary inquiry into childcare for disabled children. I was going to say that I was shocked by the outcomes, but actually I was not shocked; I was incredibly disappointed that disabled children and their parents matter so little in our society that we are not prepared even to make sure that they get access to the minimum entitlement to childcare. Parents have talked to me about institutional discrimination and systematic discrimination in childcare, and that is with the current 15 hours. They are very concerned that the existing awful situation for disabled children will deteriorate further unless the Government specifically address this issue.
I mentioned earlier that the manifesto promise was 30 hours of free childcare. That has been whittled down ever since. The Secretary of State told us today that the rates that will be paid are £4.88 for three and four-year-olds and £5.39 for two-year-olds. However, early analysis shows that when the early years pupil premium is taken into account, the 30p increase is, in fact, 17p. Taken with the Government’s plans for reviewing funding in the maintained sector, this will result in 250,000 children in 31 local authorities being less well funded than at present. For those local authorities whose rates will drop, including Manchester, Bristol, parts of London and Birmingham, as we heard earlier, the Government must put in place transitional funding to make sure that the 250,000 children and their families who are potentially affected do not miss out.
We heard today from the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the eligibility rate will change from eight hours to 16 hours. Early analysis tells us that this will affect at least 1.4 million workers working less than 16 hours, most of whom are women. The Minister said that there would be a cumulative effect, and that the criterion would be not hours, but money. However, he confirmed that workers on 16 hours who were on the minimum wage would not qualify. Those will mainly be women.
Pat Glass
That means that those on low pay and short hours—mainly women—will be affected.
We have heard today that the thresholds for access have increased; that there will be further delays in implementation, so none of this will be in place before 2017; and that there is a massive shortfall in funding. Quite honestly, parents who voted Conservative in May on the basis of this manifesto promise will be feeling seriously short-changed this evening.
We want the policy to work and we want to help the Government to make it work. However, the Government must be able to answer the questions we have during the line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill, because they have studiously avoided answering them so far. Good opposition is about scrutiny and challenge. We cannot scrutinise and challenge when there are outrageous situations such as the publication of all this information halfway through the debate today. Quite frankly, it is disingenuous. The Minister can be absolutely sure that when he comes to Committee, there will proper scrutiny and challenge of this policy. We want it to work, but it will not work unless we get it right. Proper scrutiny and challenge is exactly what he will get.
School Funding
Debate between Pat Glass and Sam Gyimah(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I hope my voice will last out. I congratulate the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) on securing this debate. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for making time for the debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), but I have one comment on her remarks. I am from the north-east of England and we used to look enviously over the border at the quality of education in Scotland and the outcomes for Scottish children. We do not do that any more.
The debate has been really interesting, especially the way in which Members have lined up one after another to say how far they are down the financial league tables. I noticed that Tower Hamlets was highlighted quite a few times. I remember visiting a couple of schools in Tower Hamlets with the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness and the current Chair of the Education Committee, the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), when we were carrying out an investigation into sport in schools. We visited a couple of schools in Tower Hamlets and were struck by the huge level of problems that the teachers faced. About a third of the children were in receipt of the pupil premium, but what struck us most was that almost half of the children were the children of the working poor who did not qualify for the pupil premium, and yet in many cases their disposable income was less than that of the parents of those who did. We were told that many of the parents had two or three jobs and often did not have the time or sometimes the skills to be able to support their children in education. I do not think any of us came away thinking that the money those schools got was not needed or was wasted.
The matter has been debated many times and the coalition Government promised to address it in 2010. Like many of the things we think are easy, they are far from easy. I feel for the Minster, because this is not going to be an easy circle to square.
Pat Glass
Before the election, Labour also promised to introduce a review of school funding. We want to support the Government as they move forward with their review, but we are clear that funding has to be fair and just. It cannot simply be a recycling or shifting of existing resources within the system from those with greater needs to those with less great needs. One or two people said that children with the same levels of need must receive the same levels of funding. We support that in principle, but we want to see new money in the system.
The basic inequalities in the system go back a long way. My right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter was absolutely right when he said that its roots lie in the old standard spending assessment. I read the Hansard from the previous debate just before the election. The then shadow schools Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), said that the formula was known only to three people and
“one was dead, one had gone mad and the other one had forgotten”.—[Official Report, 10 March 2015; Vol. 594, c. 260.]
I am not sure where I fit into that, but there are advantages to being around the education system for a long time and having some degree of shared memory of all this.
Mr Gyimah
The Chairman of the Education Committee is absolutely right. When looking at the funding system, we must consider all schools, be they free schools, academies or local authority maintained schools. While on this point, I noted the tests that he outlined, and how his Select Committee will review any proposals that come forward. We will bear those tests in mind as we consider what to do over the coming weeks and months. I thank him for making them and the criteria very clear.
Let me bring my remarks to a close. Fairer funding underpins our vision for a world-class education system. To really support schools, we need to make the funding system fairer for every school and every child. Our vision is of a future in which every school in the country, whatever their characteristics and wherever they are, provides excellent education, allowing every child to succeed. I am enormously grateful to colleagues who have been campaigning hard for this over several years, and thank them for their contributions to the debate. To move forward, we want a real consensus, so I would like to see the Labour party, which did not mention fair funding in its manifesto at the last election—
Mr Gyimah
If the hon. Lady wants to intervene, I will take the intervention. I would like to see the Labour party come forward and support the proposals, because schools in constituencies represented by MPs of both our parties need this problem addressed. We have already protected budgets for 2016-17, and have baked in the extra funding from last year. I hope to be able to update right hon. and hon. Members on our further plans shortly. In the meantime, I encourage all those who have spent years campaigning for fairer funding to continue. We are making good progress. I hope that what we have done so far and the fact that we are willing to listen show that, at last, we are not just talking, and that the Government are ready to act.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Pat Glass and Sam Gyimah(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Gyimah
Labour Members continue to count buildings rather than services when they talk about children’s centres. One million families have benefited from children’s centre services. Free childcare for disadvantaged two-year-olds and for all three and four-year-olds is delivering the school-readiness that has seen record numbers of children ready for school, according to the early years foundation stage profile.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
The Minister continues to talk about the services that are offered. However, he will be aware that the charity 4Children has recently highlighted that more than 2,000 children’s centre sites have had their budgets significantly cut this financial year and that fewer centres are now able to reach fewer families. Nearly 60% report cutting front-line services, nearly 30% have significantly cut the range of services they offer, 28% are now forced to charge for services that would otherwise have been free and 20% are reducing their hours. Is the Minister proud of the Government’s legacy on Sure Start?
Mr Gyimah
I welcome the hon. Lady to her new post. It is great to see that many of her predecessors are still in the shadow education team. It is wonderful that the new politics is being led by the same old faces.
I am proud of our record on children’s centres. We have seen record numbers of families receiving support, but there has also been a 50% increase in the number of health visitors and we have expanded the troubled families programme. We are on the side of the families that need children’s centres most, and we are doing something about it.
Nursery Schools
Debate between Pat Glass and Sam Gyimah(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Gyimah
As I said early in my speech, parents and their needs are the starting point. No one size fits all for early education and child care. We should accept that we have diverse provision and we should support those different forms of provision and ensure that, whether parents choose a childminder, a maintained nursery school or a private, voluntary or independent setting, they get the quality they expect. That has some relevance to priorities, which the hon. Member for North West Durham mentioned. There was a suggestion that somehow the Government’s priorities were biased against maintained nursery schools. In a time of austerity, we need a targeted and effective approach to the early years.
Pat Glass
The Minister is saying that we need a targeted approach, so will he commit to looking again at the report from the Education Committee and its recommendations for placing nursery schools at the centre of a network? Given the quality of the provisions, it seems sensible that they should sit at the centre of a network providing support and good practice for other provisions. He should commit to the Committee’s recommendations.
Mr Gyimah
I thank the hon. Lady for making that point. I am very aware of the Education Committee’s recommendations and I will come to some of the points in a moment. As the hon. Lady rightly said, we should not just look at what other countries do, but remember to praise the good practice in this country. There is great practice and some excellent and visionary practitioners in this country. There is a lot to be proud of.
We have universal provision for three and four-year-olds in this country so every three and four-year-old is entitled to 15 hours of child care. That is a tremendous achievement. The latest “Education at a Glance” report from PISA—the programme for international student assessment—puts us in the top 10 of OECD countries, which we can be proud of. More than 90% of three and four-year-olds in this country receive 15 hours of free child care at the moment.
On targeting, the Government have introduced the free early-years entitlement for two-year-olds, which will benefit 260,000 two-year-olds from the least advantaged families in the country who will receive 15 hours of care a week. We should be proud of that, but we must be targeted in how we use finite resources.
We have also introduced the early-years pupil premium, which is £300 a year for three and four-year-olds. I assure hon. Members that maintained nursery schools will receive the early-years pupil premium from 2015 and I hope that private voluntary independent organisations and maintained nurseries will use that to help to boost their ability to attract higher-quality staff for children in nurseries.
There is a lot to be proud of, and the Government have a plan and clear priorities for the early years. However, funding for maintained nursery schools is obviously an issue, and we fund that provision through local authorities to enable them best to make decisions for parents and children. Some 49 local authorities do not have any maintained nursery schools and 43 have only one or two. Therefore, a funded approach that treats maintained nursery schools differently would not be fair to those areas. Many areas of high deprivation have good inspection results in early-years foundation stage profile outcomes. Some make use of maintained nursery schools as part of local provision, but others are doing that with high-quality nursery classes in primary schools and private providers, not large numbers of maintained nursery schools.
Maintained nursery schools play an important role in many areas, but our approach, including that to funding, must ensure that parents retain a choice of early education provision that meets their needs and, whatever their choice, that they can be assured of high-quality provision. Maintained nursery schools are more costly than other providers, but it is for local authorities to determine funding levels. There are often good reasons for higher funding levels and many local authorities have chosen to retain them with their single funding formula, indicating that most deliver excellent value for money, but they are not the only solution.
Many primary school nurseries and private and voluntary providers offer high-quality, affordable early-years provision that is good value for money, and that provision must also be funded fairly. We must ensure the highest-quality provision across the board and our policy approach and funding decisions should reflect that.
Mr Gyimah
I thank my hon. Friend for another forceful point. As I said, it is in my in-tray. It is something that I am looking at, and at the appropriate moment, I will let him know what my thoughts are.
Ofsted assessments were also raised, I think, by the hon. Member for North West Durham. I assure her that from September 2014, Ofsted will give primary schools a separate assessment for their early-years provision.
Pat Glass
Ofsted will give a separate assessment for early years, but the Minister will no doubt be aware that that early-years assessment will include nursery classes, reception and year 1 and the foundation stage, and therefore will still not be a direct comparison against the nursery school, which is purely nursery years, prior to reception.
Mr Gyimah
There are different Ofsted inspections, depending on the type of organisation, but one thing that is not in doubt is the quality of the provision of maintained nursery schools. That is not in doubt at all.
In summary, I think that we all agree that maintained nursery schools provide excellent provision. They do a tremendous job in meeting local needs, especially in deprived areas. In a mixed economy, with maintained nursery schools, private and voluntary providers, and nursery schools in primary schools, they have a role to play. They have greater protection than other sorts of providers, and because there is a presumption against closure, the local authority has to think long and hard before embarking on closure. I shall bring my comments to an end by saying that, yes, we value them, but the starting point for this—whether we are looking at provision, quality or funding—should be parents, and when it comes to parents, there is no one size fits all. We should therefore support diversity of provision in the sector.