Workplace Pay Gaps
Stella Creasy Excerpts(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
It is, as ever, a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger and I wish you a happy new year. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler), who has been a consistent champion of equalities for the entire time that we have been in Parliament.
We could forgive ourselves for feeling that we have been here before, not only because it is wonderful to see the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) in his place at every Adjournment debate, but because we have been asking for equal pay and for pay gaps to be addressed in this country for the entire time that I have been in this House—15 years. We are latecomers to this debate: women have been asking for equal pay since 1833. The first recorded instance was in Robert Owen’s labour exchange and, as a Co-op MP, I am sorry to say that it was not received favourably. I hope that we can address that today. Nor should we ever forget Barbara Castle’s contribution as a champion for equal pay. She paid for it with her career because, frankly, people in the Labour movement did not appreciate the argument that she made. Yet her argument was the argument that we always have to make, which is, first and foremost, about our economy.
Pay gaps, whether to do with gender, ethnicity, or disability, represent productivity loss and loss of talent. We have to ask ourselves why this country is languishing in the bottom half of the OECD rankings when it comes to productivity and why we have stagnating living standards. One of the answers is that we do not make the best use of our people. Let us kill the myth that when we talk about equal pay, or the gender pay gap, somehow this is women asking nicely for something as a treat. This is cold, hard economics we are talking about today, which is why it also matters when we do things that may inadvertently increase the gender pay gap. Today, I want to raise some concerns with the Government about that. When we kill the myths, we need to be clear: it is really not us, it is society.
Data from the Fawcett Society shows that even when men and women work in the same occupations, in the same industries, doing the same working hours, and are the same age and ethnicity, two thirds of the difference in their income cannot be accounted for. That is discrimination. Let us be honest about what it is. Women ask just as often for a pay rise; men are four times more likely to receive one. There is segregation within industries and it is increasingly evident that the biggest part of the pay gap is to do with motherhood, which I want to come on to.
I take a very different view to the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr (Steve Witherden) on the Employment Rights Bill, which is why I think we need to address this issue. Five years ago, in October 2020, I put forward the Equal Pay (Implementation and Claims) Bill, because of the challenges that we are facing. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) is absolutely right that we have had pay gap reporting for many years now, but it is one thing to know there is a gap and another to have the tools to do something about it. The lack of fines and the previous Government’s cavalier attitude towards the gender pay gap and ethnicity reporting—which they promised us, but never delivered—in tackling productivity and highlighting that lack of talent is a real challenge for us.
We need to give people the tools, because there are no fines. One reason why I proposed the Equal Pay (Implementation and Claims) Bill was to give women the right to know the incomes of their male comparators, so they could bring an employment tribunal. We know that this has been one of the few ways that people have actually made progress on this. Last year’s figures show that the average award for sex discrimination was £50,000, while for race discrimination it was £10,000, and for disability it was £17,000, but some of the awards went up to nearly £100,000. I pay tribute to women such as Carrie Gracie and Samira Ahmed, who took on major household names who were not paying women equally. This problem is widespread in our society.
I want to return to the issue of the motherhood pay gap, because it is not just that women face a penalty when they have children, it is that men receive a premium. The evidence from workplaces is clear that even when women do return to work after motherhood, they are undervalued, underpaid, and considered to be less committed. The reverse is true for men. What a waste of talent in this country. What on earth are we doing as a nation, if we think that when someone is able to juggle looking after a family, they are somehow less rather than more capable, and when we do not recognise that we are asking men to do something impossible, which is to not be around their children at an early age and be the guy that they want to be, because we are asking women to pick up the slack for men’s employers?
I am proud of many aspects of the Employment Rights Bill. I am proud of the equality action statements. They will be part of shining the light of disinfectant on the problem of the pay gap. Yet when we talk about the tools to tackle this, we have to recognise that if we inadvertently reinforce the stereotype that only women look after children, we may make the pay gap worse. There is a lot of evidence that even those women who do not have children experience discrimination in the workplace because employers think they might go and have children.
The concern I raise with the Minister is not only the need to introduce a “right to know”—that 2020 legislation was not written by me, but by a brilliant woman called Daphne Romney, who is a fantastic QC on these issues and who worked with the Fawcett Society. I hope I can encourage the Minister to have a look at it and see if there is anything she might want to pick up. However, I also want to bring to the Minister’s attention my concern that if we only strengthen mothers’ rights in the workplace, we might reinforce the idea that it is only mothers who look after children, and therefore the gender pay gap could get worse and not better, and people will be left out. The answer is, therefore, not to reduce those rights, but to give fathers and second carers in a relationship rights to equally paid and protected leave, so that everybody of a certain age who might be looking after children is equally discriminated against.
PAPa, paid and protected leave for fathers and second carers, is something that we could do through this piece of legislation. I will not tell the Minister how long it should be, but the principle that fathers need protected time in their own right is possibly one of the greatest tools for equality and improving productivity that we could bring into our economy.
Many of us, who are so delighted to see a Government that are prioritising tackling the pay gap, are equally concerned to ensure that we do not miss this opportunity to make the progress we need: to give dads back the time they need to be brilliant dads and employees, and to give mums the opportunities in the workplace denied to them, because too often society thinks that they put themselves out to pasture by having children. Only a Labour Government can understand the challenges that we face, but only a Labour Government can live to the highest standards, which Barbara Castle called us to, because it is her legacy that we are here to fight for and her legacy that will deliver for this country.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair for this debate, Sir Roger. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) on securing today’s debate, which marks Ethnicity Pay Gap Day.
We have heard from a host of Members this morning on the impact of pay gaps in the workplace. The hon. Members for Brent East and for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) both asked what can be done to hold companies that do not address identified pay gaps to account. The hon. Members for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) and for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr (Steve Witherden) addressed the rights of parents and the motherhood pay gap. The hon. Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) spoke about the disability pay gap and improving the working lives of disabled workers. The hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) spoke about regional pay gaps in Northern Ireland and Scotland respectively. These are important topics in an area where there is still work to be done, despite the progress made over the last half a century, first by addressing gender pay discrimination and, more recently, by addressing discrimination based on ethnicity and disability. The Labour party’s manifesto pledged to address the issue of pay gaps and stated that it intended to build upon the existing legislation.
Paying men and women different pay for the same work has been prohibited in Great Britain since the Equal Pay Act 1970—legislation that has since been superseded by the Equality Act 2010. Gender pay gap reporting was introduced by the Conservative Government in 2017, through world-leading legislation that made it statutory for organisations with 250 or more employees to report annually on their gender pay gap. Since 2017, the gender pay gap has declined steadily from 18.4% to 13.1% in 2024. I ask the Minister: do the Government anticipate that trend continuing and, to that end, do they believe that the introduction of additional legislation will close the remaining gap more quickly or have no impact on the current trajectory?
Data from the Office for National Statistics on the gender pay gap from 2024 show that it was highest in skilled trades and occupations, and lowest in caring, leisure and other service occupations. Although the Government’s new legislation will seek to ensure that gender pay disparities are eradicated within organisations, what plans do the Government have to address the differing pay gaps across industries?
The gender pay gap is much higher for full-time employees aged 40 years or over than it is for employees aged below 40 years. There are a variety of reasons for why that might be the case. Although I do not have a breakdown for the rationale for that observation, one reason might be the impact of motherhood on careers and earning potential. What steps are the Government taking to address the gender pay gap within that demographic? It is notable that, in occupations where pay generally increases with age, the proportion of women decreases. Additionally, the difference in pay between the sexes is largest among higher earners.
In May 2021, the Labour party pledged to modernise pay laws to give women the right to know what their male counterparts earn, as alluded to by the hon. Members for Brent East and for Walthamstow. Although that detail did not make it into the manifesto—not that that has stopped the Government from implementing some of their other recent policies—do the Government still intend to introduce that right, and if so, will the Minister outline how such a policy would work in practice? Can the Minister provide assurances that private sector pay will remain confidential and not subject to inquiry by co-workers by law?
Close to home, we see how this presents itself in our political parties. In 2023, the Conservative party had a mean gender pay gap of minus 1.8%. Labour party reporting shows that it has a mean gender pay gap of 2% and that:
“The gender pay gap for men and women therefore shows that on average, men’s hourly earnings are higher than women’s within the Party. There has been a change from the -2% recorded in 2022.”
Can the Minister outline what steps have been taken to address the seemingly worsening gender pay gap within the party of Government since the 2023 report was published?
Ms Creasy
I am pleased to hear that the shadow Minister thinks that gender pay gap reporting is something that should drive change. Does he therefore want to apologise for the fact that the only business reporting that his party’s Government abolished, during the pandemic, was gender pay gap reporting? If he thinks the gender pay gap is such an important metric, does he now recognise that that move sent a terrible message about this data?
Ben Obese-Jecty
Obviously, that was before my time in this House, so I am not completely au fait with the detail the hon. Member is referring to, but I will come back to her with some clarification.
I was unable to find a Labour gender pay gap report for 2024, nor could I find any ethnicity or disability pay gap reporting, so I ask the Minister whether she can provide an update on the 2024 pay gap figures for gender, ethnicity and disability for Labour party employees. It would be reassuring to see the party of Government lead by example, by placing itself in the vanguard of organisations that voluntarily provide such clear data ahead of the introduction of the legal requirement to do so.
On race, Labour’s manifesto pledged to introduce a landmark race equality Act to enshrine in law the full right to equal pay for black, Asian and other ethnic minority people. The Minister for Women and Equalities, the right hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), pledged 18 months ago that such an Act would form a core part of Labour’s plans in government. The aspect of that Act applicable to this debate is the Government’s commitment to fine companies that do not act on data highlighting a racial pay disparity. The right hon. Lady stated that that was a Labour priority, yet as we approach the six-month point of Labour being in office, I ask the Minister who here today to clarify when that Act will be brought before the House and when companies can be expected to have to implement ethnicity pay gap reporting. Labour first made the pledge to introduce ethnicity pay gap reporting in 2021, in a document that has now been deleted from the Labour party website, but I ask the Minister to say how such a policy is likely to be implemented.
In March 2022, the previous Government published “Inclusive Britain”, its response to the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. Action 16, which directly addressed ethnicity pay gap reporting and responded to recommendation 9 in the report, was to
“Investigate what causes existing ethnic pay disparities.”
It stated:
“We will address the challenges with ethnicity pay gap reporting to support employers who want to demonstrate and drive greater fairness in the workplace.”
It also said that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy would
“publish guidance to employers on voluntary ethnicity pay reporting in summer 2022. This guidance, which will include case studies of those companies who are already reporting, will give employers the tools to understand and tackle pay gaps within their organisations and build trust with employees.”
The previous Government published their guidance to employers in April 2023. I ask the Minister whether this Government will retain the existing guidance and use the measures already in place. Once reporting becomes mandatory, how will the Government ensure that enough workers disclose their ethnicity to make reporting accurate? Can she give assurances that employees will not be forced to disclose their ethnicity on record? How will the legislation improve individual situations if an ethnicity pay gap is identified? Will employees on the wrong side of an identified ethnicity pay gap be informed of their specific circumstances, or will they be left to see the gap identified in the reporting and then have to rely upon the organisation’s action plan to redress any imbalance?
In January 2023, the then Labour party chairman, who is now the Minister for Women and Equalities, addressed the reported 9% ethnicity pay gap within the Labour party between its black and minority staff, and its white staff. She stated:
“Labour is determined to close these pay gaps, not just among our own staff.”
Two years later, and ahead of mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting being introduced, I ask the Minister to say whether the Labour party has now addressed its own ethnicity pay gap. The Guardian reported in November that senior Labour MPs were frustrated that
“there were no senior black staff members at the very centre of a Labour Government.”
It would appear that the party of Government still has some work to do.
Lastly, the disability pay gap receives far less scrutiny than either the gender pay gap or the ethnicity pay gap. As someone with a close relative who is a wheelchair user, it is easy for me to see how disabilities, both visible and hidden, can be overlooked. The Government pledged in their manifesto to introduce a full right to equal pay for disabled people, as well as mandatory disability pay gap reporting for large employers.
A TUC report from last November highlighted the current disability pay gap, and we would all benefit if that gap was closed. Can the Minister say when the Government intend to introduce mandatory disability pay gap reporting and also how the mandatory action plans will be used to address identified gaps?
A proactive step would be to introduce reasonable adjustments passports to ensure that the impact of employees’ disabilities is documented. Adjustments can be agreed and any future potential adjustments can be identified. An employer then has a clear record of adjustments that have been agreed upon, which can be easily communicated to new managers. I believe Labour also pledged to improve access in its manifesto, so can the Minister outline what progress has been made in that regard?
ONS data for 2023 showed that the disability pay gap was 12.7%. Unlike the gender pay gap, the disability pay gap has remained constant for around a decade, as highlighted by the hon. Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan). That gap is actually wider for men, at 15.5%, than it is for women, at 9.6%. It is also wider for full-time employees than it is for part- time employees. The ONS’s disability pay gap analysis showed that disabled men earn a median hourly pay that is similar to that of non-disabled women. The ONS data also showed that the biggest impact is on those with autism, epilepsy or learning difficulties. Disabled employees with autism had one of the widest pay gaps, with a 27.9% difference, and those with epilepsy had a 26.9% difference.
I ask the Minister what steps the Government are taking to reduce those categories of pay gap with the highest difference. Given the increase in instances of autism in children with special educational needs and disabilities, I ask the Minister: what steps are being taken now to ensure that a better structure is in place for what is likely to be an increase in those disabilities in the workforce?
There is still progress to be made on addressing pay gaps in our workforce. I look forward to the Minister’s response and await clarity from her on the steps the Government have pledged to take to address those issues.
Seema Malhotra
I understand that we are engaging with our colleagues in the devolved Governments, and across the country in relation to mayors playing a part, and I am very happy to pick that point up with the Minister for Disability. It is a priority for this Government to engage much more with our devolved Governments and work together to ensure that the voice of the whole UK is heard in the legislation that we are bringing forward.
I want to make a couple of comments about parental and shared leave and employment rights. Our plan to make work pay included a commitment to review the parental leave system alongside our wider plans to boost family friendly rights, so that workers and employers can benefit from improvements in productivity and wellbeing. The Employment Rights Bill will make existing entitlements to paternity leave and unpaid parental leave available from day one of employment, and will enable parents to take their parental leave and pay after their shared parental leave and pay.
We are improving access to flexible working, which will be extremely important in how we move forward further in this space.
Ms Creasy
I absolutely welcome the commitment to look at these issues, but I want to put on record that many of us believe that shared parental leave has set us back in terms of equality between the genders. It has been a disaster in terms of who has taken it up, because it asks women to give up their maternity leave and men do not pick it up. We need to give men leave that is paid and protected in its own right if we are ever to have equality between the sexes. I put that on the Minister’s table as something we need to look at, because shared parental leave is not the answer here.
Seema Malhotra
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point; her views and her voice are very much heard in this place. A number of these issues go across Government Departments, and I encourage her to continue to engage with other Ministers on this.
Hon. Members have raised issues relating to pregnant women and new mothers. Pregnant women and new mothers deserve to know that the law is on their side. We will put in place legislation that makes it unlawful to dismiss pregnant women, mothers on maternity leave and mothers who return to work for a six-month period after they return, except in specific circumstances. Strengthening the legislation in this area is an important part of how we are continuing to take our programmes forward in a way that is good for our economy, society and families.
Returning to ethnicity and disability in relation to employment and pay gaps, introducing mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting will provide transparency and the vital data to help businesses to identify and address pay gaps within their workforces and identify and remove barriers to progression. It will shine a light on the businesses taking welcome steps to promote the talents of ethnic minority and disabled workers while holding to account those who neglect to do so and make progress. The equality (race and disability) Bill will enshrine in law the full right to equal pay for ethnic minority and disabled people, and we will seek to remove barriers to redress for claimants.
These measures are not just about diversity and inclusion, as hon. Members have commented: they make good economic sense. Evidence shows that the adoption of such policies leads to improved productivity, improved rates of progression and retention, and profitability. Our analysis in opposition indicated that closing the employment gap faced by ethnic minority people could add almost £36 billion to our economy.
Anyone who is familiar with pay gap reporting knows, however, that the changes that we are making are not simple. These are complex matters with numerous challenges, whether it be disclosure rates, for which we will be producing more guidance, or the granularity of reporting. That is why we have listened to stakeholders when it comes to introducing the measures, and we continue to listen about how we will make this work in practice. That will be part of an important set of consultations that we are to undertake this year, including roundtable discussions over the next few months. I look forward to attending my first one, in collaboration with ShareAction, early in March.
As for when we will introduce legislation, we have committed to publishing the draft legislation in this parliamentary Session. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East, we will bring forward the consultation shortly. That will be an opportunity for many of the issues to be raised in wider dialogue as we move forward with our plans.
On closing the employment gap and on best or good practice in workplaces, the “Get Britain Working” White Paper was published by the Department for Work and Pensions in November last year. It was a groundbreaking piece of cross-Government work. It sets out the details of reform to employment support to help tackle rising economic inactivity levels and to support people into good work, creating an inclusive labour market, all of which is part of the backdrop for how we make legislation more impactful in workplaces. That includes a new service to support more people to get into work and to help them get on in work.
Local “Get Britain Working” plans across England will be led by mayors and local areas and will include a youth guarantee—for all people aged 18 to 21 in England—for education, training or help to find work. I encourage Members to engage in such activity as we take it forward.
We are also making changes to existing reporting requirements further to ensure that employers are taking the steps we need to narrow their gender pay gaps. It is absolutely right to say that progress on reducing the UK gender pay gap has stagnated, and we need employers to take action to change that.
Organisations have been reporting data since 2017, but with employers encouraged to publish action plans voluntarily. Analysis in 2019, however, found that only half of employers had produced details of the actions that they had developed or implemented to address their gender pay gap. As part of the Employment Rights Bill introduced to Parliament in October last year, action plans will become a requirement. They will ensure that organisations are taking effective steps to improve gender equality in their workplace, and we continue to engage on how we will make them most effective. This will also focus minds on steps, for example, to support employees during the menopause and will introduce much-needed accountability into reporting.
Finally, the Government are acting in a number of ways to act on the drivers of pay gaps and to secure fairness more broadly in our workplaces. The landmark Employment Rights Bill contains robust measures to safeguard working people, including protections from sexual harassment and enhanced rights for pregnant workers, as well as measures that have the potential to change workplace culture for the better, with the elements I mentioned to do with flexible working and expanded day one rights.
We have an ambitious agenda to ensure that workplace rights are fit for a modern economy, and will empower working people and deliver economic growth. That is why we are working at pace across Government to make this agenda a reality. Over 50 years after the Equal Pay Act 1970 and almost 15 years after the Equality Act 2010, I am proud that we are now taking action at pace. In closing, I again thank all hon. Members for their contributions this morning.
Children and Bereavement
Stella Creasy Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris. It is a privilege to be part of a debate that reflects Parliament and politics at its best, which happens when we see the injustices and the suffering that have befallen those whom we represent, and we seek to make sure that they never happen again.
I start by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) for eloquently opening the debate, to Mark and John, and to the hon. Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson). Time passing does not make it easier for them; it makes it more important that we have not yet dealt with the situation that they are in. I am grateful to have heard about their experiences and to contribute to this debate with those experiences at the centre. We are speaking for thousands of people in this country, of all ages, who have lost a parent.
In my short contribution, I will raise with the Minister some examples that I have dealt with as a constituency MP. They are the cases that nobody ever wants to see. When a young child comes through our door in that position, it takes all our courage not to burst into tears when we hear their heartbreaking story, but that becomes even more of a challenge when we realise that services are not built to wrap around them. It seems so obvious that we must do everything we can for this young person, because an awful thing has happened to them, but that is not a given.
Sadly, I have dealt with several children who, as Mark lost his father, have lost their parents to murder—horrific, public murders in my local community. It seems obvious that those children would be traumatised. One child was there when it happened, but we are still struggling to get them counselling; it is not a given. The school does not have any understanding of what needs to provided. That does not mean that people at the school do not want to help, but it is so out of their worldview that that could happen, so counselling is not in place. The family have been trying to push for it for some time, but it is still a work in progress. Ironically, we have now discovered that a child can get counselling if they view a murder or are a witness, but not if it has just happened to a member of their family or to a parent.
This petition tells us about the need to recognise that children are traumatised in that way—they are traumatised by the loss of a parent whether they see it or not—so we must get counselling in. That seems so obvious, but it is not consistent. The counselling services are there, so it is a question of joining them up. I hope that the Minister can take that back to her Department.
I have also seen, for children who have lost parents to terminal illness, that counselling is not an expected part of the conversation about what we can do. It has come up only in relation to whether we can keep the child in school, but that seems too late. I would wager that the hon. Member for South Shropshire feels that, in his experience, one reason he got to that point was that nobody intervened early enough; indeed, they tried to stop the conversation rather than recognise how traumatic it would be for him. It is therefore not just about providing counselling when something horrific has happened, but about recognising how horrific it is to lose a parent at such a young age—full stop. That would make a real difference.
Stuart Anderson
The hon. Member makes an excellent point. Even in the Ministry of Defence, the UK armed forces have recognised that an annual MOT of mental health to discuss death, dying and bereavement, and their impact, gets a far better performance out of the soldiers who will face them. Why on earth do we not have that discussion earlier in schools too?
Ms Creasy
One of the reasons it is important to have counselling in schools is that, when I think about the partners who I have worked with who have lost somebody, we want to try to take as many burdens off their shoulders as possible and recognise that they are dealing with grief too. This debate focuses on children, but there is a need to join up the welfare system to support families. They have lost somebody—they have lost an income provider—and often, the time that the remaining parent wants to spend with their child is taken away because they have to work to try to make up the loss of income. We should be able to join that up.
I first became involved in many of these issues when I worked with the brilliant Widowed and Young with parents who were not married, where the impact was that families would lose an income provider who was not recognised. The children were clearly suffering, but in those cases the mums, and in one case the dad, were having to think about all the practical things, such as bills and how to keep a roof above their head. They did not have as much time to be with their children, which in itself caused grief and harm to them. We managed to get the allowance for bereaved widows extended to non-married partners, but we did not really look to challenge the idea that somehow, after 18 months, a child and a family should have recovered to the extent that there would be no impact. That affects our ability to help children.
There is another scenario I want to raise with the Minister, which addresses the first petition about data. I recently had a case that really floored me, of two children who lost their mother and then, shortly afterwards, their father—it was just extraordinary. We relied on their family members to help them, but because those family members did not have immigration status here in the UK, the children, who were British citizens, lost all their rights and were living in absolute, abject poverty. My community in Walthamstow brilliantly picked them up to try to help them while we resolved their immigration status, but the children’s rights here were gone as soon as their parents died. It got me thinking about how many other families might be in that position.
I asked the Ministry of Justice about children who have legal guardians, because that was what these family members had become for those children. It was sorting out their status that then opened up doors for the children, which took far too long—more than a year. We do not have a record of how many orphans are in this country. Think about the worst thing that could possibly happen: someone loses one parent and then the second, or maybe even loses both together. The state does not know how many of those children there are, so I asked the Ministry of Justice about the numbers of children being allocated a legal guardian because both parents had passed away. The Ministry of Justice told me, in answer to a written question, that while it thought that the information was held in court records, it was not uniformly gathered. That means the Minister’s job is doubly difficult, because she will not know how many children have no guaranteed guardian to pick any of these issues up, whether that is counselling or their financial position. It seems obvious that, as corporate parents, we ought to know how many children are in the position of sadly losing both parents.
I make a plea that we make counselling a given. It must not be something to be asked and fought for and sought out, whereby hopefully the local Member of Parliament knows about Victim Support or another charity, even though those charities do brilliant things. We must organise counselling for every child who loses a parent and do that through schools, partly to take some of the weight off the parent who is grieving. We must also start to act as corporate parents and record how many orphans there are. I hope that the number is infinitesimal, but for the two I came across in Walthamstow, I have never felt more impotent as an MP. We were trying to stop them living in horrific circumstances in which they had lost all support, funding and assistance, while we as a community were gathering together school uniforms for them and the foodbanks had to be there every single day.
I would be horrified if there were more children in that position, but since we do not know, we must do more to gather basic data to understand what is happening to some children in this country. We hope that it is a scenario we never have to deal with, but we sadly know that it is not the case. That is why it is so important that the House, as it does at its best, hears the stories and sees the reality of the messiness of human life, and acts. These petitions call on us to act on scenarios that sadly happen more than we might realise, and which we do not know the full extent of. I know the Minister shares my concern and compassion for people in that position and will want to do all she can. We must help her in lobbying her colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Justice for a better dataset of the children in that position. I know that is a view we hold across the House. Again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage for introducing the petition so eloquently.
Government’s Childcare Expansion
Stella Creasy Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Stephen Morgan
I thank the shadow Minister for his response, and welcome him to his place. I know that he will want to be a keen champion for the early years sector, and I was glad to hear him welcome the update that I have given to the House.
As I said in my statement, Labour is committed to the delivery of expanded entitlement across Government. The last Government left significant challenges, but we are not shirking that responsibility. With Labour, the early years sector can rest assured that we will be working tirelessly to deliver a wider sea change in early education, as well as high and rising standards throughout the education system.
Let me now deal with some of the hon. Gentleman’s specific points. It is clear to me from my consultation and engagement with parents and providers so far that we have inherited a pledge without a plan, and the consequences of that are inherited delivery challenges relating to workforce and places. I appreciate the points that the hon. Gentleman made about the workforce; I believe by resetting the relationship with the workforce, we can have a much more positive relationship with the sector in the future.
Over 300,000 children have benefited from the entitlement offer since September this year, which demonstrates that we are actively engaging and working with parents to promote opportunities to take up the offer. We will continue to do so.
On school-based nurseries, the pilot during the testing phase is for 300 places from April. Our ambition is for 3,000 places over the course of this Parliament. I look forward to working with the hon. Member constructively to bring about the change that early years education so desperately needs.
Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Minister for all the work he is doing to right a much overdue wrong. It is extraordinary to hear the shadow Minister trying to claim credit for something this Government have finally done today, putting to rest the concerns that many of us tried to raise with the previous Government. I thank the Minister for being honest enough to finally publish the data about the numbers of people we need working with our children to make these plans happen. The previous Government always avoided the question and now we can see why, because the data shows that we will need an extra 35,000 people working in our childcare sector by autumn next year to fulfil all our pledges, and an extra 6,000 by the end of this year. Will the Minister tell us more about his workforce strategy? We take our hats off to the people who look after our children. I know this Government want to invest in them, but we need a lot more of them. What can we do to make that happen?
Stephen Morgan
I thank my hon. Friend for her tireless work speaking up for children, young people and parents up and down the country. As she rightly says, we are working hard with the early years sector to recruit the staff we need, including through the extended recruitment campaign Do Something Big, so that we attract more people to work in the early education system and ensure there are good training pathways into careers in early education. We are resetting relationships with staff across the education sector to ensure they are respected and valued for the important work they do. School-based nurseries currently have lower turnover and have the option to use some staff flexibly between reception and early years in primary schools. I am looking forward to cracking on with delivering on those commitments.
Childcare Entitlements
Stella Creasy Excerpts(9 months ago)
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David Johnston
I thank my hon. Friend for raising some important issues. He is right that certainty and increasing those rates have been some of the most important things that the sector has asked for. It was very warmly received that we were providing that certainty for 2025-26 and 2026-27, which we think will help the sector. According to various reports that have been carried out, it will help them to unlock private sector investment and capital to help them expand, because that was the biggest thing they felt might be holding that back. It is part of a doubling of the amount that we are spending on childcare, from £4 billion to £8 billion. I will continue to work with my hon. Friend in ensuring we address the sector’s needs.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
I start by declaring an interest as a parent of a two-year-old child. What all of us parents are talking about is the cost of childcare, and the Minister did not address the cost. The survey clearly showed that over half of all nurseries and pre-schools say that the funding does not cover the cost of providing the service in the way that the Government are asking them to provide it. It does not take a rocket scientist to work out that somebody’s got to pick up the bill—a toddler could do it.
The estimate before the Government announced the new hours was that fees would rise by 8.5%. Every single parent of a child in a nursery in my local community who has come to me has said that their fees have gone up as a direct result of this policy, because that is how nurseries are trying to stay open and make ends meet. Will the Minister prove me wrong? Will the Minister commit to publishing the data on the fees that parents of all children under five in nurseries and pre-schools are paying in this country, prior to and post the changes in hours?
David Johnston
We have a survey of 6,000 parents and 9,000 providers to set our rates based on exactly what they are paying. The hon. Lady must have missed my saying that our rate for under-twos is over £4 more per hour than that paid by a parent privately. I know that she does not like these facts, because they are at odds with her narrative. She asked me to prove her wrong; this month, we have just done so.
Oral Answers to Questions
Stella Creasy Excerpts(10 months, 1 week ago)
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Damian Hinds
I join my hon. Friend in congratulating Ruislip High School and Hillingdon Council’s children’s services team. Nearly 90% of schools in Uxbridge and South Ruislip are now rated good or outstanding by Ofsted, up from under 70% in 2010, following the great work of teachers and our relentless focus on improving school standards.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)
To ensure high-quality childcare for children with special educational needs, we are investing hundreds of millions of pounds to increase hourly funding rates and the amount of dedicated additional SEND funding, such as the disability access fund, for all eligible children, and funding the training of early years special educational needs co-ordinators.
Stella Creasy
To the surprise of no one who looked at what the Government were proposing, my inbox, like those of many other MPs, is full of emails from parents who cannot get the 15 free hours in April without paying for a massive hike in their fees. One group in particular that is struggling is parents of children with special educational needs or a disability. That was entirely predictable, because the Government’s own impact assessment said explicitly that changing the ratios could have a “negative impact” on the provision of places for children with special educational needs.
The Minister stood at the Dispatch Box on 22 January and pledged to me that every parent who wanted the 15 free hours for their eligible two-year-old would be able to get a place. Can he restate that pledge today explicitly for parents of children who have special educational needs, and pledge that they will not have to pay a higher fee—yes or no?
David Johnston
I appreciate that it must be very frustrating for the hon. Lady, who genuinely cares about childcare, to be in a party that cannot be bothered to come up with a plan for it and has had to ask someone else to write it one because it cannot think of one. On her specific issue, as I said, we are working with every local authority to ensure that they have the places that they need for all children.
Funded Childcare
Stella Creasy Excerpts(1 year ago)
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David Johnston
My hon. Friend is right that it is the biggest expansion of childcare provision in history. By the time the roll-out is complete in September 2025, it will save the average family up to £6,500 a year in childcare costs.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
Many of us tried to warn the Government that this would be like Help to Buy, pushing up demand without tackling supply. Numbers matter in this sector, and it is 313 days since the policy was announced and just 70 days before it is due to be implemented. There have been 30 separate questions in this place about the staffing shortfall, and none of them has been answered. There are two children chasing every registered place, and only two local authorities have actually agreed the rates. It is little wonder that parents are frustrated. Will the Minister set out, here and now, the staffing shortfall in terms of delivering the two-year-old offer in April? Will he tell us what it is, and will he tell us when he expects to close it?
David Johnston
As I have already said, the roll-out is based on—
David Johnston
The hon. Lady cites the figures for September 2025, not for April. I am confident that, in April, she will see that we have the staff available for the roll-out.
Oral Answers to Questions
Stella Creasy Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Robert Halfon
I say to the hon. Gentleman, whom I respect enormously, that 70% of apprentices are at level 2 or 3. I hoped that he would be getting up to celebrate the 10,130 apprenticeship starts in Birmingham, Selly Oak since May 2010.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)
We are investing over £4.1 billion to expand the current free childcare entitlement offer to eligible working parents of children aged nine to 36 months. We are also increasing the hourly rates for childcare providers for the existing entitlements, and funding rates will be confirmed in the autumn.
Stella Creasy
The Government’s proposals will lead to thousands more families expecting to access childcare, so we might expect to see more childcare opening. However, in the past year some 600 nurseries have already closed, and in my constituency of Walthamstow there are now three children chasing every childcare place. Why does the Minister think that is the case, what will he do about it, and how will we ensure that in April parents who are not already accessing childcare can do so?
David Johnston
Part of the reason why we are staggering the entitlement is to ensure that we have the staff in place to deliver it. In the next few weeks we will announce changes to the processes for recruiting people. We will launch a big campaign of recruitment in the new year to increase the workforce, and I have every confidence that we will meet the commitment.
Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete in Education Settings
Stella Creasy Excerpts(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Gillian Keegan
The reason that we have deliberately spoken to and worked with three portacabin or equivalent providers is to avoid just that problem. If my hon. Friend gives us the details, we will follow up on that.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
I fear that the Secretary of State will rue her boasts about her good understanding as a hostage to fortune in what is going on today. Late on Friday evening, she wrote to me to say that Walthamstow School for Girls was being surveyed for suspected RAAC. That was a source of deep frustration to my local authority, which, when it saw that there were national incidents, spent its own money surveying every school in our borough and then paid for the remedial works. It has told the Department for Education about that not once, not twice, but three times. When there is this little grip on what is going on, how can any parent, pupil or school staff member have any confidence? If the Secretary of State wants to know why people are laughing rather than saying that she is doing a good job, she needs to look in the mirror.
Gillian Keegan
I will take the hon. Lady’s advice and look in the mirror later. It is the responsible body’s job. If it has already gone ahead—as per the warnings we issued in 2018; we told everybody what they needed to do—I am delighted that it got on and did that work.
Childcare: Affordability and Availability
Stella Creasy Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
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Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
There is a simple problem here. For some families, having childcare is the difference between being able to work or not. What should those families do with a child that is perhaps between the ages of six months and two years when there is no support at all? A six-month-old baby could be left in a cupboard at work, I guess, if that is the logic behind this. By the time they are one year old and they are crawling and walking around, that is not feasible, yet the subsidies kick in only at two years old. It makes no sense at all.
Ruth Cadbury
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I could not take my babies around to meetings and so on after about four months. At that point, I needed either not to attend and not to go to work or to make sure that they had childcare.
Research in this week’s Guardian shows that there are fewer places in less affluent parts of the country. The settings are also more likely to be lower quality.
If I might add to my hon. Friend’s point, one woman wrote to me saying that she is a high earner and that when she got pregnant she worked out she could just about afford to go back to work—until she discovered she was expecting twins. Because of the cost between six months and the two or three years when funded provision comes in, which would help her a bit, she was in a desperate state.
The cost to parents and providers is rising, the funding for the free entitlement does not cover providers’ costs, and the current system of Government support is complex and leaves many gaps. There is also a quality gap affecting less well-off areas and poorer families. This crisis has been fuelled by 13 long years of this Government not acting. Before I finish, I want to ask the Minister a few questions.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you for coming in at short notice to chair this debate, Ms Fovargue. It is hugely appreciated, I suspect, by the thousands, if not millions, of mums who are just fed up. Because we are: we are fed up. For generations, we have debated this issue in Parliament as though people are talking Klingon—as though it is something that is beyond our reach or our capacity to resolve. I think the dads are pretty fed up, too, because they are not getting to be with their kids. Outside this place, that is the norm: parents want to spend time with their children and find ways of working that allow them to do so. Our childcare system, unlike those in many other countries, militates against that.
There is no other area of public policy where we accept—nay, celebrate—the idea that there will be a struggle and a juggle. Nowhere else do we think that if people are not struggling and having a miserable time—unless they are incredibly wealthy and have multiple nannies and people to stay at home with them—they are doing it wrong. Let us change that; let us have a different debate in this place. Let us come together across political parties to say that is it not enough to keep talking about this and worrying about extra hours here and there. I agree with the hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) opposite that tinkering around the edges will not do. It is time for a fundamental rethink of how we do childcare in this country, not least because of the impact on children themselves. That was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), who secured this debate, for which I thank her.
The very simple question we all need to ask ourselves is: at what age do we think children start learning? When I look at my 18 month-old son and what he can do with an iPad, I know that it is very early on. We invest in children because they are our future, and yet our system does not reflect that thinking. We cannot solve the cost of living crisis unless we solve the cost of childcare. As we know, multiple families are now spending more on childcare than on their rent or mortgages. The number of women in this country who are economically inactive because of caring responsibilities is increasing; it has risen by 53,000 in the last year alone. Those women cannot get the decent childcare they need to be able to make it work for their families, and the economic impact of having them out of work is felt by us all.
That is the argument we need to take to the Treasury. With the greatest respect to the Minister, who I have no doubt is doing that, I want to see Treasury Ministers here, explaining why we are not investing in economic infrastructure—because that is what childcare is. Just as good roads get people to work, so too does good childcare. Yet, too often, we act in this country as if the opposite is true; as though we are doing mums a favour by providing childcare, giving them a couple of hours to go to baby yoga, rather than recognising that it is about how families balance their different commitments.
That is why I encourage the Minister to support the amendment that is being supported by Conservative colleagues of hers in the Lords right now, to make sure that we treat childcare as infrastructure and that local authorities are able to invest in it. Over the last five years, only 0.06% of developer contributions have been spent on childcare—that is just £1 in every £1,167 spent —yet we all know that when we build new flats, we are going to bring in new families. What are we supposed to do with them?
I encourage the Minister to take up the point made by the hon. Member for Stroud about the eight separate schemes. Of course, there is money there that could be better spent. I think of the 1.4 million children who are eligible for 20% off their childcare via the tax system but for whom it is not claimed. I do not think that is just because the system itself is completely bonkers; it is because so many families who want the help the most cannot afford to stay in childcare to the point where it is subsidised.
Of course childcare should kick in when a child is born, so we need to reform our maternity provision, but we also need to look at provision for children from six months on. We need the system to be universal, because that is when it pays for itself. The evidence from other countries makes it incredibly clear that it can help more families to stay in work, and it can help more women to keep their career and keep their caring commitments.
Some 85% of providers of childcare in this country are operating at a loss. This is not an industry that needs us to tinker around the edges. It needs investment to get us to a point at which there is a return. There is no area of economic policy in which investing leads to saving so clearly as in childcare, yet in this country we still act as if it were an optional add-on to an economy that is already struggling with productivity issues.
The fact that there are 5,500 fewer providers than a couple of years ago attests to how the system is not working for anybody. It does not work for the industry: these wonderful people caring for our children are professionals, so we should value their professionalism rather than playing it down. It does not work for the mums and dads who are looking at astronomical costs. It does not work for our economy. It certainly does not work when we tinker around with ratios or when the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions sends a letter to women who are out of work, telling them they really ought to think about going back.
What works is investing early. The £2.8 billion that is sitting unused and unclaimed in the Treasury’s coffers, just for the tax-free childcare system, could be spent right now on childcare. It could be invested in getting early years right so that in the next five to 10 years we will have a universal system that matches those of our economic competitors.
I say thank you to Pregnant Then Screwed and Mother Pukka—to the people who have refused to let politicians take the issue off the agenda. During the pandemic, when we were patting parents on the back but investing in potholes, the message from those mums was, “Up with this we will no longer put.”
In my final 15 seconds, I want to let Ministers know that “This Mum Votes” is not just the name of a campaign; it is a statement of intent. If we do not get this right, mums and dads around this country will not forgive the political party that has yet again put childcare in the box marked “Too difficult to deal with”. Children who deserve the best future need us now to stop messing around and start investing.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)
It is pleasure to serve under your very welcome chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) on securing a debate on this important subject. It is genuinely a pleasure to come to these debates. I see the faces who come here regularly, who bring interesting information, and I genuinely like taking part in these debates.
I know how important the early years are. I have worked on families policy for a long time. Not only are the early years crucial for children’s development, we also want families to benefit from the childcare support they are entitled to, both from a cost of living perspective and in enabling parents to work. I spend a lot of my time visiting the sector, and I recognise that it is a challenging time. It has been a privilege to spend so much time there. I am always impressed by the dedication of staff, who work absolutely tirelessly to give our children the best start in life. It is a credit to them and this country that 96% of providers are rated as good or outstanding. My hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) mentioned Becky at Imagination Nursery. It was just wonderful to see the dedication of Becky and her wider staff, and the brilliant environment that I know his daughter is enjoying.
I will start by talking about funding, which has been mentioned multiple times. It is fair to say that it was a Conservative Government who increased funding. Not only did we expand the offer for three to four-year-olds, we also introduced a specific offer for disadvantaged two-year-olds. We have also looked at other things to give wider support, such as family hubs or holiday activity schemes, which I will talk more about later.
We have invested more than £3.5 billion in each of the last three years on our early education entitlement. We know that the sector, like many sectors in the country, is facing economic challenges. We announced additional funding of £160 million in 2022-23, £180 million in 2023-24 and £170 million in 2024-25, compared with the ’21 settlement, for local authorities to increase the hourly rates paid to childcare providers. I want to assure everyone that we continue to look at the matter. How we can improve the cost, choice and availability of childcare is important to me and to the Government.
As well as supporting families, it is also important that we help early years providers continue to do what they do best, which is educating and developing young children. From 2023-24, we are investing an additional £20 million in early years, on top of the £180 million announced at the spending review, to help with national living wage costs. These funding increases will take place across England, so I am pleased to say that in the constituency of the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth, the funding rate for two-year-olds will increase by 10% to £6.92, up by 63p per hour. We have also announced an additional £10 million for maintained nursery schools’ supplementary funding from 2023-24 and are introducing a minimum and maximum hourly rate that local authorities can receive for their maintained nursery schools to create a fairer distribution of the funding.
I want to talk about families. We know that childcare is a key concern, as ably raised by many hon. Members today. We recognise that cost of living pressures are affecting families across the country and we have been looking at a range of measures to directly support households. One of our key areas of support has been the 30 hours’ free childcare entitlement. It was introduced in 2017 and has helped countless working parents. Nearly 350,000 children were registered for a place in January 2022, which saved those families up to £6,000 per child per year. That is making a real difference. Our 2021 childcare and early years survey of parents found that 73% of parents reported having more money to spend since they started using the 30 hours and 38% thought that without those 30 hours, they would be working fewer hours. We also remain committed to that universal 15 hours of free early education, which is helping more than 1 million children this year.
Government support for childcare is not just for three to four-year-olds. In 2013, the coalition Government introduced 15 hours of free childcare for disadvantaged two-year-olds and in January 2022, 72% of eligible two-year-olds were registered for a free early education place and more than 1.2 million children have benefited since its introduction. I think I heard the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) say earlier that the take-up in Scotland was about 46%. Clearly, we want to do more and I urge all hon. Members to encourage all their constituents to take up places where possible. In September 2022, we also extended eligibility for the entitlement to children in households where no recourse to public funds applies.
On the low-income household point mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (James Grundy), we have introduced two things. The first is the holiday activity fund schemes, and the data that shows children using the scheme for the first time and saying that that is the first time they have accessed some kind of activity scheme in the holidays has been buoying. The second is family hubs, about which I am passionate and on which I worked before becoming a Member of Parliament. We are rolling them out to 75 local authorities in the most disadvantaged parts of the country. I have visited several of them and they are doing very good things.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon and the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth mentioned another matter that is, again, dear to my heart: SEN. I see more of that when I go to nurseries, and when I talk to providers, they are worried about both the aftermath of the pandemic and having the right skillset to make sure they deliver for those children. We are training 5,000 early years staff to be special educational needs co-ordinators and I will also bring forward SEN reforms in the near future that will help with setting out what people can do. Recently, I was talking to Julian Grenier at Sheringham Nursery School and looking at some of its schemes, such as talking time, which will help with some of the speech and language challenges that have come out in the aftermath of the pandemic. It is an area that is very important to me.
It is crucial that as well as being affordable, childcare is easily accessible. We constantly monitor the sufficiency of childcare places and at the moment, local authorities report that they are fulfilling their duty to ensure sufficient childcare. However, we continue to monitor that carefully. I acknowledge that one of the things I hear a lot when I talk to providers is the challenge around recruitment and retention, and I am keen to focus on that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) also mentioned childminders. The majority of people that have come out of the system are childminders. I have been very privileged to shadow childminders and see the work that they do. Often, people do not realise that their outcomes are just as good as those of nurseries. They do a tremendous job and it is important to me to look at the reasons that they are leaving.
The majority of early years childcare places in England are provided by private, voluntary and independent group-based providers. I pay huge tribute to their work. The hon. Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) gave a very moving tribute to her children’s own childcare providers. I can see her smiling now at the work that they do. I reiterate my thanks to those in the sector. They work so hard day in, day out in challenging circumstances to ensure that they provide children with the best start in life.
I thank the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth for securing the debate. The early years sector is an integral part of our economy and education system, so my Department treats any changes to the system carefully. Our childcare offer is co-ordinated with other Departments to give parents a range of options, depending on whether they want to receive childcare in a formal, nursery-style setting or from a childminder in a home.
Stella Creasy
On that point, I think the Minister is starting to talk about one of the challenges: where money has been set aside for childcare, but has not been spent. She spoke earlier about the not-100% take up from those who are entitled. Since the scheme began to give parents 20% off their childcare costs, an average of £2 billion to £3 billion a year has gone unclaimed. Given that it started in 2017, we are talking about a possible £17 billion that could go into tackling these challenges with the cost of childcare. Before she sits down, what conversations has the Minister had with the Treasury about getting our £17 billion of tax that parents have paid into the system back, so we can put it into paying those who care for our children properly?
Claire Coutinho
The hon. Lady will know that underspends in government do not sit there and pile up; there is not £17 billion in a pot somewhere that has not been used. It has gone into lots of things, whether that is increasing hourly rates or the massive overall increase to the education budget of £2 billion over the next two years alone.
I talk to the Treasury regularly about tax-free childcare. I agree that it is not used enough. Many parents could be benefiting and we want them to benefit. We started the childcare choices campaign last year. The uptake of tax-free childcare has actually been quite good. I think it is about 30% from memory, but I will go away and double-check the figures. Of course, we need to do more and, of course, I would love to see more parents use that.
Finally, I reassure all Members present that my Department continues to evaluate what more can be done to help parents access a childcare place that not only suits their working arrangements and family circumstances, but gives their children the best possible start in education. I look forward to working with the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth in the future to hear her further thoughts about making our childcare system the best it can be.
Oral Answers to Questions
Stella Creasy Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Nadhim Zahawi
The purpose of the important package announced today is to ensure that parents on universal credit, or the tax-free childcare element, claim what is rightfully theirs. We are spending between £4 billion and £5 billion on helping parents with childcare.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
Ministers keep telling us that it is important for parents to claim the tax breaks for childcare. Last year the Government spent just £150,000 on advertising them, saving the Treasury £3 billion. What additional funding has the Department secured for advertising child tax credit spending?
Will Quince
The hon. Lady and I have discussed this before. Today’s announcement was all about increasing accessibility, availability and affordability. We want to see an increase in tax-free childcare. There is going to be a big comms campaign, so watch this space.