Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

I will happily look at the point my hon. Friend raises. As we have done with the new “Working Together” statutory guidance document, we want to make sure that all children, whether they are in need or whether they require protection, are given the earliest possible help, so that the problems in their lives do not fester longer than they need to, but I am happy to look at what she says.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I hope that Ministers, especially the Minister responsible for child care, will set an example of the behaviour they clearly want to see from the nation’s toddlers, and that they will sit silently and listen and then answer politely. Professor Cathy Nutbrown is the latest expert commissioned by the Government to slam the Minister for her plans to loosen adult to child ratios, saying that they will

“shake the foundations of quality provision for young children.”

I know that the child care Minister has a touch of the Iron Lady about her—she might take that as a compliment—but will she ever be for turning on that? Will she or the Government ever listen to the experts they have commissioned and the tens of thousands of professionals and parents who disagree with her?

[Mr Timpson]

What I do know is that my hon. Friend is used to a maelstrom of linguistic turbulence coming from the Opposition, but I doubt whether that will turn her from her strong and well-evidenced reform programme, which ensures that ratios, which are not mandatory but which are, along with staff salaries, the lowest in Europe, are going to work towards our having higher quality child care which is more flexible and which parents can afford. The hon. Lady should welcome that and I hope she will listen attentively when the Minister with responsibility for child care makes that case in the future.