Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether additional support will be available for providers who are negatively financially impacted as a result of the introduction of 30 hours of free childcare policy.

The Government is committed to extending the entitlement to childcare from 15 to 30 hours a week for working parents of three- and four-year-olds. We are clear that we need to get the funding right to ensure that providers are funded on a fair and sustainable basis. We will be investing over £1billion more per year by 2019-20 to fund our commitments on the early years entitlements – this includes £300 million per year from 2017-18 for a significant increase to the hourly rate paid for the two-, three- and four-year-old entitlements.

Our recent consultation set out proposals to allocate our record level of funding fairly and transparently, with the maximum amount reaching providers. We will publish our response shortly.