Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 30 November 2017 to Question HL3576, what steps his Department is taking to strengthen families.

The Government is committed to supporting working families and will introduce 30 hours of free childcare a week for working families with 3 and 4-year-old children. This builds on other family friendly policies which are already in place including the extension of the right to request flexible working to all employees with 26 weeks qualifying service and the introduction of shared parental leave and pay, which enables working parents to share responsibility for caring for their children in the first year.