Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has made an assessment he has made of the effect of increases in the (a) national living wage and (b) minimum employer pensions contributions on the average hourly cost of providing childcare; and if he will make a statement.

By 2019-20 we will be spending around £6 billion on childcare support – a record amount. This includes around £1 billion extra per year to deliver 30 hours of free childcare and fund the increase in hourly rates that we introduced in April 2017.

Our average funding rates are based on the department’s ‘Review of Childcare Costs’ which was described as “thorough and wide ranging” by the National Audit Office. The review looked at both current and future cost pressures.

We continue to monitor delivery costs and have recently commissioned new research to provide us with further robust and detailed data of the costs of delivering childcare for under five-year-olds using a representative sample of early years providers.

In terms of the rate of the National Living Wage, the independent Low Pay Commission makes recommendations taking in to account the state of the economy and evidence from a wide range of business and workers representatives.