Children’s Education Recovery and Childcare Costs

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I must inform the House that the amendment has not been selected. I call the shadow Secretary of State for Education.

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[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend has consistently campaigned on issues around childcare over many years and I am grateful to her. She is exactly right to raise those concerns, as well as the work that she did in exposing how the Government knowingly and deliberately underfunded the early years entitlement—the 30-hour offer—to parents. I pay tribute to her for that.

The Government are failing parents and children alike, because it is during the first few years that the attainment gap opens up for our children. It is also the first chance to step in and support the children and families who need it. We all see the difference that early support makes—when it happens and when it does not. In power, Labour acted decisively to support families and children, tackle the disadvantage and close the gap. A generation grew up with children’s centres. A generation such as mine were supported after 16 with the education maintenance allowance. I saw in my community the difference that those changes made. I see it in the lives of young people who grew up with that advantage, with the support that it unlocked. Some 20 years later, the evidence around attainment and early intervention is clearer and stronger than it was even then, yet the Government have been almost silent. Even before covid, children on free school meals were arriving at school five months behind their peers. That gap is set to grow. It is utterly shameful in Britain in 2022 and a damning indictment of the Government’s 12 years in power.

Right now, our children are being failed again in this cost of living crisis. When parents cannot afford to feed their kids, children are being failed. When parents cannot afford to take their kids out for the day and cannot afford an ice cream at the park or a ride at the fair, children are being failed. When mams and dads do not see their kids in the evening or at the weekend because they are working every hour that God sends to pay the bills, children are being failed. When parents skimp on food and are exhausted, without time and energy to spend with their kids, children are being failed. And when the cost of childcare, not just for two to four-year-olds but from the end of maternity leave to the start of secondary school—I am talking about parents being able to choose whether to go back to work; affordable breakfast clubs; after-school activities so parents do not have to rush back for 3 o’clock pick-ups; after-school clubs costing more than women’s median wages; and parents paying over the odds for each hour of childcare, because the Conservatives decided that the Government would not pay the going rate for the places they promised—is quite literally pricing people out of parenting, children and families are being failed. That failure is not just about the individual kids and the individual families failed by this Government, although there are millions of them and that is bad enough. Our whole country is failed when we let our children down.

This Government have no plan, no ideas, no vision and no sense of responsibility to our children and their future—the rhetoric of evidence, but no reality. We have responsibility, ambition and determination for our children. We would deliver the plan that children need now, because education is all about opportunity—the opportunities that we give all our children to explore and develop, to achieve and thrive, and to have a happy and healthy childhood. Through a broad and enriching curriculum and education, we can foster a love of learning that stays with them throughout their lives, turning our young people into the scientists, musicians, entrepreneurs, sportspeople and, yes, perhaps even the politicians of the future, generating ideas and innovation that we cannot even dream of.

Education can transform every life, just as it transformed mine. Growing up, we did not always have it easy, but I know that in many ways I was very lucky: I had a family in which I was supported and encouraged to read and where education was valued. I was lucky to attend a great local state school at a time when the last Labour Government were transforming education across our country. My teachers were fiercely ambitious for me and my friends because they believed in the value and worth of every single one of us. I want every child in every school, in every corner of this country, to benefit from a brilliant education, supported by a Government who are ambitious for their future. That is why we would make private schools pay their fair share—not to tilt the system, as the Secretary of State claims, but to support every child across our great state schools to realise their ambitions.

Today the Minister has a choice. He could stand up and deliver a speech that I suspect we have heard a couple of times before, he could continue the hollow attacks on the last Labour Government, despite no child today having been at school when we were in office—or he could stand up and, like the Chancellor, admit that the Government got it wrong. He could say that they should have acted sooner, but that they will act now to match at last the ambition of Labour’s children’s recovery plan and put our children and their future first.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I suggest a limit of about eight minutes for Back Benchers, so that we can give everybody equal time.

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[Mr Walker]

The hon. Lady raises an important point. As the parent of a nine-month-old, I definitely recognise the challenge. [Interruption.] The Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, refers to the support that is available through tax-free childcare and universal credit, but of course we recognise the challenge. I have to say that I do not see anything in Labour’s plans that would fix it.

To support childcare for families with school-age children, the Government are investing more than £200 million a year in our holiday activities and food programme. The programme provides free holiday club places, with healthy meals, enriching activities and free childcare, to children from low-income families, benefiting their health, wellbeing and learning. Last summer, our programme funded free holiday places for, in total, more than 600,000 children and young people in England, including more than 495,000 children who were eligible for free school meals. That means that hundreds of thousands of children from low-income families are benefiting from healthy food and extracurricular activities, thereby helping to level up children’s educational outcomes, provide better nutrition and improve their wellbeing, behaviour and social skills.

The Government are continuing to invest more than £200 million a year in the holiday activities and food programme, with all 152 local authorities in England delivering the programme. We are also committed to continuing support for school breakfast clubs. The Department for Education is investing up to £24 million to continue its national school breakfast programme until July 2023. This funding will support up to 2,500 schools in disadvantaged areas, which means that thousands of children from lower-income families will be offered free nutritious breakfasts to better support their attainment, wellbeing and readiness to learn. The enrolment process is still open to schools that wish to sign up to the national school breakfast programme.

We recognise that we must ensure that childcare works the best it can for families’ lives now. The Government are committed to continuing to look for ways to improve the cost, choice and availability of childcare. With safety and quality at the heart, as a first step we will consult on ratio requirements by the summer to give providers more flexibility and autonomy to make decisions about their settings and the needs of their children. We will continue to work across Government to ensure that parents are given the information that they need to access support from tax-free childcare, universal credit, and other entitlements. We will actively consider how we can ensure a sufficient supply of childminders, giving more parents access to an affordable and flexible type of childcare, as well as creating further flexibilities to enable parents to be able to spend Government funding on childcare that best meets their need.

The Government are committed to helping families and giving every child the best start in life, and we back that with significant investment at the spending review. We are investing £695 million in the Supporting Families programme to provide targeted support to 300,000 of the most vulnerable families. We are also providing a further £600 million for activities and healthy food for children in the school holidays, and we are delivering on our manifesto commitment to champion family hubs. Family hubs bring together services for children of all ages. We will invest £302 million to transform Start for Life and support local authorities to create the network of family hubs in 75 local authorities across England.

I am proud of our record in supporting children and young people both before and during the pandemic. The Government have ensured that supporting our children and young people is at the heart of our recovery plans, with the latest evidence suggesting that real recovery is taking place. Those on the Labour Front Bench have no plan other than to keep promising more of other people’s money. Nowhere in their proposed plans are detailed costings of their proposed interventions on childcare. We will continue to follow the evidence and provide investment where it makes the greatest difference.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Both Front-Bench speakers have been incredibly generous in taking interventions. Some of those interventions have been quite long, which has put a bit of pressure on time. That makes it even more important that we help each other out, so that I do not have to impose a time limit. The eight-minute limit has become a bit more like seven.