Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Elizabeth Truss

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

The reality is that the vast majority of those centres have been merged or have seen their management restructured. Only 1% of children’s centres— that is 45 children’s centres—have closed outright. The hon. Gentleman is using a misleading figure. The fact is that Labour Members would rather have bureaucracy and management than outcomes-based front-line work. Are they seriously saying that they would reintroduce the managers and the bureaucracy?

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

That is 562 fewer children’s centres already. [Interruption.] Those are your figures. Another 23 children’s centres are scheduled to go in Tory Kent. According to last week’s report from the Children’s Society—[Interruption.] The Children’s Society is rubbish—is that what he has just said? According to the report by the Children’s Society, which is anything but rubbish, there will be a budget cut of more than 50% over this Parliament. While millionaires enjoy their tax cuts, vital public services such as Sure Start are left to wither on the vine. When will these Ministers admit that their choices will cost all of us much more in the long run and apologise to the parents who have lost such valued services?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I do not think that the hon. Lady listened to my previous answer. Those centres have not closed. The Government and local authorities have been saving money by reducing bureaucracy and management and running things more efficiently, which is what Conservative-led Governments do. She will be pleased to hear that our recruitment of early-years teachers is above trajectory, so there will be even more quality personnel in our children’s centres and nurseries.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Elizabeth Truss

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Hodgson]

Yes, the French system is of a lower quality. That comes out in the OECD ratings of its nurseries, which are lower than those of the British system. When people meet French nursery providers, they are often asked about our system. French nursery providers look to emulate our model and cannot understand why we look to emulate their systems. [Interruption.] That is what we are told, but again, I am more than happy to hear evidence to the contrary.

Within 24 hours of the Deputy Prime Minister saying that the policy was dead in the water, both the Leader of the House and the Prime Minister’s spokesperson denied that a decision had been taken. The Department for Education said absolutely nothing for six days. We had to wait six days for a Minister to come to the House and make a formal announcement confirming that the plans are indeed dead in the water. We were grateful to hear that at long last, even though we will not have time to discuss it in detail this afternoon.

Even though the Minister has said today that the plans have been shelved, I do not have confidence that we have seen the last of them. After all, the Government are struggling to meet their target to provide free child care for the 20% most disadvantaged two-year-olds. With just three months before the policy is due to be introduced, a freedom of information survey that I have conducted shows that only 60% of councils have the capacity to provide the places, probably for some of the reasons cited a moment ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck), who is no longer in her place. The temptation for the Government just to click their fingers and increase the number of two-year-olds that each worker can care for must be great. We should be clear: all they would have to do is change statutory guidance, meaning that Parliament would have no say.

In proposing the new clauses in this group, the Opposition are giving this House a say. We have an opportunity to nip any such future reforms in the bud. We have an opportunity to send the strongest possible message to Ministers that this House has listened to the tens of thousands of parents and professionals who have been campaigning against these changes, not to mention the Department’s own experts, and to say that we will not risk the safety of children in child care settings or the quality of the early learning and development they receive by allowing any such plans to go through unchallenged.

[Elizabeth Truss]

Does that mean that the hon. Lady thinks it was wrong for the previous Government to increase ratios for three and four-year-olds in 2008?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I was not in the Department or in position in 2008, but if we raised ratios, I am sure it was done after full consultation and with the support and backing of child care professionals, which is the exact opposite to now. That is the key difference, and I am sure that people out there listening to this debate will know whether that is true and whether that case is a fair comparison.

I sincerely hope that today the Deputy Prime Minister will put his MPs where his mouth is and lead his Liberal Democrat Members into the Aye Lobby with Labour when we seek the opinion of the House on these new clauses shortly, to ensure that in future no Secretary of State can force through, against the will of the House, changes such as those that the Minister has now dropped.

Amendment 76 would require the Government to take the novel step of consulting on the formation of childminder agencies before they legislate to create them. I hope that Ministers will learn the lessons from the furore over ratios. I should say from the outset that I do not have a dogmatic objection to childminder agencies, particularly if they are voluntary. What the Government say they want to achieve through such agencies is all very sensible: greater co-operation and peer support for childminders, as well as access to training and help with gaining bursaries. Childminder agencies will also be a single point of contact for parents who might need a mix of child care solutions. These are all good things that make for a vibrant childminder sector, and are all things that local authority childminder networks and family information services should be providing at the moment. That some of them are not is perhaps down to the devastating cuts to the grant that local authorities previously received from the Department for Education to pay for them.

Since the publication of this Bill, the Department has been consulting on removing many of those duties from local authorities—such as providing training and quality improvement support—and this on top of the attempt in clause 75 to remove the duty to publish child care sufficiency reports, which our amendment 77 would block. All this seems to be a clear sign that the Government want local authorities almost completely removed from the child care equation and that agencies are therefore the preferred configuration for childminders.

Given that the Minister has said that there will be no direct funding from the Government for agencies to provide those services, the implication is that there will be a cost to the childminder. That cost will in turn have to be passed on to the parents, because most childminders do not earn the sort of money that would allow them to soak up the kind of membership fee or commission that we might expect an agency to demand. The most recent childcare costs survey from the Daycare Trust found that childminder fees were already increasing by an average of more than 5%, year on year.

Of course, as all the parent surveys tell us, cost is a secondary issue to quality, and it is the end of individual inspections by Ofsted that is the most worrying reform. Parents really value the fact that their childminder has proved their effectiveness to Ofsted. A National Childminding Association survey last year found that 80% of parents thought that individual inspections were important, and that 75% might not choose a childminder without the reassurance of an individual inspection. Childminders value the inspections too: 80% felt that moving to an agency model of inspection would have a detrimental effect on their professionalism, and they are obviously concerned that this would put parents off using them as well.

Of course we want more childminders to set up—as I said earlier, we have seen the number drop by more than 1,500 since the election—but we should not be trying to achieve that by passing legislation that has the potential fundamentally to change the market, without first consulting on it and establishing consensus. I would therefore welcome assurances from the Minister that the Government will set up such a consultation before the Bill completes its passage through the other place.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Elizabeth Truss

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that there are no national ratios. Indeed, in parts of Sweden, no ratios at all are set for some nurseries. What the Swedes do is to rely on high-quality professionals exercising their professional judgment in the particular setting. That is the system we want to move to here. It is backed by the OECD and by Sir Michael Wilshaw of Ofsted, so I suggest the Opposition back it as well.

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

I am sorry to say that I truly believe that the Minister and the Secretary of State sat before us today are the most out of touch in the whole of Whitehall—apart from those in Downing street, that is. They pursue policies such as increasing child care ratios that generate almost unanimous opposition from across the country, to which they refuse to listen while systematically undermining popular services such as Sure Start by slashing the budget by almost half. When will they start listening to the people whom they are supposed to serve and put the best interests of children and families—rather than dogma and pet policies—at the forefront of their policy?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I have already pointed out that there is strong evidence for our reforms, and I point out to the hon. Lady that fewer than 1% of Sure Start centres have closed. They provide about 4% of full-time child care places. I would be interested to hear what the hon. Lady’s policies are for the other 96% of child care places and how she plans to make them more affordable. Under her watch, fewer women or mothers went out to work, and we were overtaken by countries such as France and Germany. What is her solution to that?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Elizabeth Truss

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My role is to make sure that the child care provided in this country is of the highest quality and provides value for the money that the Government are putting in. My hon. Friend is right: many parents choose to look after their own children at home. That is important, too, but my role is very much to ensure that child care is of the highest quality.

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

Two expert advisers on child care, Professors Helen Penn and Eva Lloyd, have warned the Government about their child care plans. Does the Minister agree with Professor Lloyd that changing ratios would not reduce costs, but would result in “a reduction in quality”? Will the Minister publish the expert report that her Department commissioned nine months ago and take the advice of these experts who said, in effect, that she needs to go back to the drawing board?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I suggest that the hon. Lady speaks to her boss, who has advocated Danish and Swedish child care systems, both of which have higher ratios than we currently have in England. They also have higher salaries and higher levels of qualification.

We are looking at best practice in Germany, France, Denmark and the Netherlands to make sure that we end up with a system in which we pay child care workers more than the £6.60 an hour that they are getting at the moment. That is a legacy of the previous Government. We are paying those who should be highly paid professionals £6.60 an hour—barely more than the minimum wage.