Cost of Child Care

Debate between Thérèse Coffey and Bridget Phillipson

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I am grateful for this opportunity to lead this afternoon’s debate on the cost of child care—a growing concern to many Members across the House. Perhaps I should start by declaring an interest as the proud mother of a little girl. Like many Members, I have come to realise how difficult it can be for families to find the right kind of child care place. I am in the fortunate position of not having to make the same kinds of financial decision about what works for my family. I am very lucky, but I am conscious that many people face difficult situations.

Once again, it is the Labour party that is highlighting the cost of living crisis. We are all too familiar with the challenges that our constituents find in accessing affordable child care and the increasing burden that they face. The failure to keep down the cost of child care has put immense pressure on household budgets and directly contributed to the cost of living crisis facing so many families across our communities. That failure applies equally to pre-school provision and provision for school-age children.

By 2015, families with children will have lost up to £7 billion a year of support. Right now, families with pre-school children face a triple blow of spiralling child care costs, a reduction in nursery places and a cut in financial assistance. Some of those families are losing up to £1,500 a year due to tax credits changes.

Parents often say that child care can really become a logistical nightmare once children reach school age. Despite that, the previous Labour Government’s programme to support school-age children has been abandoned by the Department for Education, leaving many parents struggling to juggle work and family life. The Minister will no doubt claim that the Government are making progress; unfortunately, however, creative number crunching cannot hide the fact that the Government’s plans are failing to support the majority of families. It has been left to Labour to respond to the current crisis, with our proposals to extend child care for working parents of three and four-year-olds and to introduce a legal guarantee for primary schools to make child care available from 8 am to 6 pm.

The previous Labour Government understood the importance of the issue. The 1998 national child care strategy recognised for the first time that child care was not just a private family matter, but one where Government had a role to play in ensuring the affordability, availability and accessibility of high-quality child care places. Much was achieved during those 13 years of Labour Governments.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

I should say to the hon. Lady and other Labour Members that the number of child minders fell significantly during their party’s time in office. It will be interesting to hear more about availability.

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, for whom I have a lot of respect. She takes a keen interest in these matters and wants to make sure that families have real choice among the options available when finding child care places for their children. I will make the very point put to her during yesterday’s debate: we need to make sure that child minders are of the right quality and can provide the best possible care for children. Unfortunately, some child minders, who are no longer registered, were not able to make that leap forward in providing the best possible high-quality care that we all want for the youngest children in our society.

The early-years entitlement was pioneered for four-year-olds in 1998 and it was extended to three-year-olds in 2004. Labour introduced the extended schools programme to help meet the needs of children, families and the wider community. Labour created Sure Start children’s centres and established more than 3,500 of them across the country.

Before the last general election, I was, like many others, relieved to hear the current Prime Minister acknowledge that Labour was right to prioritise child care support for families and pledge to protect Sure Start. However, like so many people, I have been bitterly disappointed that more than 500 Sure Start centres have closed since 2010 and that more than half of those still open are no longer providing on-site child care. All we heard today from the Prime Minister was a confirmation of that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bridget Phillipson]

Houghton and Sunderland South.

[Dr Coffey]

I got that wrong—I apologise to the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), whom I congratulate on securing this debate. I appreciate that we had a debate yesterday on a similar topic, and I welcome this opportunity to contribute again on this important matter.

I thought that, rather than just reading out my entire transcript from yesterday’s Hansard, I would spend a bit more time saying a little more on the issue. The aspirations set out by the hon. Lady—affordability, availability and accessibility—are critical. As she said in the answer that she kindly provided me, the reason why so many child minders fell out of the system in the 13 years of Labour Governments was quality. She is absolutely right; we need to ensure that high quality—in fact, world-class quality—child care is widely available.

That is why I support what the Government are doing to try to raise the quality of child care. The issue is also about improving our young children’s access to education. As has been pointed out by many on both sides of the House, it is key that we do our best with our youngsters to ensure that they are able to access the opportunities available to everyone. That is also an important part of social mobility.