Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment her Department has made of the potential merit of allowing nannies to offer funded hours under the Free Childcare for Working Parents programme.

It is the government’s ambition that all families have access to high-quality, affordable and flexible early education and care, giving every child the best start in life and delivering on our Plan for Change.

Nannies are an unregulated part of the sector because they are employed by parents to provide care to children in their home. Parents alone are responsible for deciding the services that a nanny provides, which may or may not include early education. Parents also arrange the payment of income tax and National Insurance contributions and organise security checks for those that they employ. For this reason, successive governments have not engaged in private arrangements between the two parties.

Officials remain in touch with the National Nanny Association and we keep all such policies under review.