International Women�s Day

Sarah Russell Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Dr Tidball) for her incredibly powerful speech, all the women who I have heard speak today, and those who have formed such a supportive group as new MPs in this House.

However, the people I primarily want to thank today are the women who look after my children, and all the women who look after all of our children. Of course, childcare is not solely the provenance of women, but the overwhelming majority of the childcare workforce in this country are women. It is some of the most undervalued work in our society�it is often paid at minimum wage�and other parents cannot work without it. I know that nursery providers are currently deeply concerned. Labour is putting �1.8 billion into the early years, and we want 75% of children to be school-ready. That is an ambitious target, and I am proud of it, but the people who will deliver that work are our childminders and our nursery staff.

Childcare is key national infrastructure, for which we need a stable and well-trained workforce. If we do not fund early years and childcare well enough, the risk is that the only businesses that will survive in this sector will be major chain nurseries backed by private equity. Those are the businesses that can manage economies of scale, which will enable them to thrive in most environments. There is nothing wrong with those nurseries�I do not wish to suggest that the staff who work in them are anything other than committed, or that their owners are working for anything other than the greater good. However, I do not want to see small, passionate, women-owned businesses squeezed out of the sector, which might happen. That is partly because that is the kind of childcare I had for my children in the early years, so I want it to be an option for all children, but it is also partly because in Australia, when the ABC nursery chain went bust, 19,000 families lost their childcare overnight. I guarantee that it was predominantly women who did not go to work the next day, not those children�s fathers.

A consolidated sector is an inherently fragile one. As such, I hope that in the upcoming spending review, we will look at the rates that we pay for three and four-year-old childcare, as I understand that that is part of what is causing concern. I also hope we will make sure that our breakfast club places are kept for as long as we can possibly manage, and that they are well funded, so that their uptake is�as we all need it to be�100%.

I want to say thank you to all the women who have inspired me, both in this Chamber and beyond, and all those women who have helped me. Most of all, though, I want to say thank you to the women who looked after me and the women who look after my children.