Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential effect of increases in inflation on the new early years national funding formula.

This Government is investing £1 billion of additional funding per year in the early years free entitlements, including £300 million per year to increase the national average funding rate. This record level of investment was based on a rich source of evidence – the ‘Review of Childcare Costs’ (available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-childcare-costs). The Review looked at both the current costs of childcare provision and the implications of future cost pressures facing the sector.