Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the level of Funded Early Learning support for early years providers.

By 2019 to 2020, we will be spending around £6 billion on childcare support, which is a record amount. This includes spending approximately £1 billion extra a year on 30 hours of free childcare and to 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’. This was described as “thorough and wide ranging” by the National Audit Office. The review looked at both current and future cost pressures. We recently commissioned new research to provide us with further robust and detailed data for the costs of providing childcare for children under five.

The latest Ofsted data from March 2018 showed that the number of non-domestic providers has remained stable.