Childcare: Affordability and Availability Debate
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Stewart Hosie
Main Page: Stewart Hosie (Scottish National Party - Dundee East)Department Debates - View all Stewart Hosie's debates with the Department for Education
Childcare: Affordability and Availability
Stewart Hosie Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
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Mr Dhesi
Thank you, Mr Hosie, for your expert chairing of today’s debate. I thank all the Members who have participated for their excellent interventions. I particularly want to thank the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), especially given his knowledge and expertise of the area as a former elected councillor and cabinet member for children’s services and, like me, as a parent. He highlighted the various technical issues that need to be addressed.
I thank the Minister for her promises to parents, and also the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), for the first-class work that she is doing to hold the Government to account and for highlighting the increased importance of the role that grandparents and family members play as they try to plug the gap to help parents, and in particular for helping to delineate the problems of the recruitment of nursery staff.
We have heard in today’s debate how important affordable and high quality childcare is, and about the difficulty that families face today in accessing childcare and all the consequences that follow on from that to children, parents and businesses. Fixing the problems with childcare provision should be far more of a priority for the Government than it appears to be, so I look forward to seeing what the Minister implements to support families in the coming year.
This is the last day of the school term for many, just as it is for parliamentarians here today, so I want to put on the record my thanks to all nursery nurses, daycare centre staff, breakfast club providers, teachers and everyone else in the childcare sector for the really important work that they do for our children.
Finally, as this is the last Westminster Hall debate of 2022, I want to put on record my thanks to all the staff of the House who support these important debates. I wish all the staff of the House and everyone here a very merry Christmas. I look forward to seeing everyone in the new year.
Stewart Hosie (in the Chair)
Merry Christmas, everybody.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the affordability and availability of childcare.