Asked by: Lord Weir of Ballyholme (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the percentage of areas where there is a shortage of childcare facilities and providers to provide their commitment of free childcare hours.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
There were 15,100 more childcare places in 2023 than the previous year, with 12,900 paid staff added to the same period according to the department’s latest Childcare and early years provider survey (2023).
To support providers to expand their provision further, the department is investing over £400 million of additional funding to uplift the hourly rate for the entitlements next year. This investment consists of £67 million in new funding to reflect the latest National Living Wage increase, an additional £57 million to support providers in respect of teachers’ pay and pensions, and the £288 million for the existing entitlements in 2024/25 announced in the Spring Budget in March 2023. It also builds on the £204 million of additional investment to increase funding rates this year. To further support the sector delivering the expansion of childcare support, the government is confirming that the hourly rate providers are paid to deliver the free hours offers will increase in line with the metric used at Spring Budget 2023 for the next two years. This reflects that workforce costs are the most significant costs for childcare providers and represents an estimated additional £500 million of investment over two years. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of children aged 3 and 4 are registered for a 30-hour place, saving eligible working parents up to £6,900 per child per year, helping even more working parents and making a real difference to the lives of those families.
Local authorities are responsible for ensuring that the provision of childcare is sufficient to meet the requirements of parents in their area. The department has regular contact with each local authority in England about their sufficiency of childcare, including supporting them through our childcare delivery support contract where appropriate.
The government has allocated £100 million in capital funding to local authorities to support the expansion of childcare places and the supply of wraparound care. The funding is anticipated to deliver thousands of new places across the country.
On top of the department’s funding reforms, it is also providing significant support for local authorities to deliver the early years expansion from April, such as:
Asked by: Lord Weir of Ballyholme (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what additional support they are providing to enable local authorities and childcare providers to meet demand arising from their commitment to provide free childcare hours.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
There were 15,100 more childcare places in 2023 than the previous year, with 12,900 paid staff added to the same period according to the department’s latest Childcare and early years provider survey (2023).
To support providers to expand their provision further, the department is investing over £400 million of additional funding to uplift the hourly rate for the entitlements next year. This investment consists of £67 million in new funding to reflect the latest National Living Wage increase, an additional £57 million to support providers in respect of teachers’ pay and pensions, and the £288 million for the existing entitlements in 2024/25 announced in the Spring Budget in March 2023. It also builds on the £204 million of additional investment to increase funding rates this year. To further support the sector delivering the expansion of childcare support, the government is confirming that the hourly rate providers are paid to deliver the free hours offers will increase in line with the metric used at Spring Budget 2023 for the next two years. This reflects that workforce costs are the most significant costs for childcare providers and represents an estimated additional £500 million of investment over two years. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of children aged 3 and 4 are registered for a 30-hour place, saving eligible working parents up to £6,900 per child per year, helping even more working parents and making a real difference to the lives of those families.
Local authorities are responsible for ensuring that the provision of childcare is sufficient to meet the requirements of parents in their area. The department has regular contact with each local authority in England about their sufficiency of childcare, including supporting them through our childcare delivery support contract where appropriate.
The government has allocated £100 million in capital funding to local authorities to support the expansion of childcare places and the supply of wraparound care. The funding is anticipated to deliver thousands of new places across the country.
On top of the department’s funding reforms, it is also providing significant support for local authorities to deliver the early years expansion from April, such as:
Asked by: Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to reduce call waiting times to the child maintenance service; and whether he has made a recent assessment of the adequacy of call handling times by that service.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
As part of its Modernisation Programme, CMS continues to improve how it communicates with customers and how customers access its service. When a customer first applies for CMS they are enrolled on the online service which provides them the ability to update their information and request changes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The majority of our customers make use of these online services to effectively meet their needs every day, though we are actively engaged in improving the service further and increasing customer take up.
We recognise some customers need alternative methods to contact us or choose to call us, and on occasion call wait times on our inbound phone lines can be longer than we would like. Speed to answer is continually reviewed throughout the working day and operational resource is regularly reviewed and flexed to minimise excessive wait times.
Over the coming year we will increase customer education on what can be raised and progressed using our online services and encourage more customers to make use of this as the primary channel for their CMS enquiries. This will help protect our inbound phones lines for our customers that need to access our service in this way and reduce the wait time they experience.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has had discussions with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the (a) affordability of childcare and (b) potential impact of conditionality requirements for benefits on people's ability to afford childcare.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Officials across the Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions continue to work closely and extensively together to ensure that families in receipt of benefits are not disadvantaged in any way in accessing childcare.
Childcare is a vital enabler for parents to work. By the 2027/28 financial year, this government will expect to be spending more than £8 billion every year on free childcare hours and early education, helping working families with their childcare costs. This represents the single biggest investment in childcare in England ever, and is set to save working families using the full 30 funded hours up to £6,500 per year from when their child is nine months until they are five years old by September 2025. By 2027/28, the Office for Budget Responsibility expects around 60,000 parents to enter employment, and for there to be an equivalent effect on the 1.5 million mothers of young children already in work, increasing their hours by a small amount.
In addition to the expanded entitlements, the government has also taken action to support parents on Universal Credit with childcare costs upfront when they need it, rather than in arrears. The department has increased support for these parents by increasing the childcare cost maximum amounts to £950 for one child and £1,629 for two children. This is an increase from the current rate of up to 70% in the Tax Credit and Universal Credit systems. Families will benefit from the decision to increase the rate of childcare costs support from 70% to 85% and will get more out of the money they earn.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool, Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to close the gender pension gap.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The gender pension gap is a complex issue tied to the labour market, the private pensions system and demographic differences, but one the government takes very seriously.
Addressing the gender pensions gap will only be possible through the collective effort of government, employers and industry.
The new State Pension was designed to correct some of the historic unfairness in the previous system, in particular for women. Our reforms are working, under the pre-2016 system women receive 85% of the amount received by men. This is currently 97% under the new State Pension.
Automatic enrolment (AE) has helped millions more women to save into a pension, with pension participation rates among eligible women in the private sector rising from 40% in 2012 to 86% in 2022.
The government is committed to build on this success and is making progress on implementing the measures as set out in the 2017 review of AE. The Pensions (Extension of Automatic Enrolment) Act 2023 was introduced into Parliament with government support and provides the necessary powers.
Once implemented, the measures will disproportionately increase the pension saving of lower earners; a woman working part-time earning National Living Wage could see her pension almost double as a result when saving over her career.
Our labour market policies will also help. Working parents will soon be even better supported through the extension of free childcare announced in the Spring budget in 2023. DWP also announced generous additional financial help to encourage and support lead carers of children who are receiving Universal Credit to move into or progress in work.
By 2027-28, the Government will expect to be spending in excess of £8bn every year on free childcare hours and early education, helping working families with their childcare costs. This represents the single biggest investment in childcare in England ever.
And we are working with stakeholders across government to better understand the challenge of the gender pension gap. In June, DWP published an official measure of this wealth gap, which is currently 35% between men and women shortly before they retire. The wealth gap between men and women who are eligible for automatic enrolment is lower, at 32%.
The publication of an official annual measure will help us track the collective efforts of government, industry and employers to reduce the Gender Pension Gap.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of allowing future childcare costs to be met in advance through Universal Credit rather than being recovered retrospectively.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government recognises that high childcare costs can affect parents’ decisions to take up paid work or increase their working hours which is why on June 28, 2023, the Department started providing even more help with initial upfront childcare costs when parents move into work or increase their hours.
This means that a parent who needs this additional financial help can now be provided with funding towards both their first and second set of costs (or increased costs), upfront, thereby easing them into the UC childcare costs cycle.
Asked by: Afzal Khan (Labour - Manchester, Gorton)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to reduce child poverty in Manchester, Gorton constituency.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government is committed to reducing poverty, including child poverty, and supporting low-income families. We will spend around £276bn through the welfare system in Great Britain in 2023/24 including around £124bn on people of working age and children.
From April 2023, we uprated benefit rates and State Pensions by 10.1% and, subject to Parliamentary approval, working-age benefits will rise by 6.7% from April 2024, in line with inflation.
In 2021/22 there were 1.7 million fewer people in absolute poverty after housing costs than in 2009/10, including 400,000 fewer children.
With almost one million job vacancies across the UK, our focus remains firmly on supporting people, including parents, to move into and progress in work. This approach which is based on clear evidence about the importance of employment - particularly where it is full-time - in substantially reducing the risks of poverty. The latest statistics show that in 2021/22 children living in workless households were 5 times more likely to be in absolute poverty, after housing costs, than those where all adults work.
To help people into work, our core Jobcentre offer provides a range of options, including face-to-face time with work coaches and interview assistance. In addition, there is specific support targeted towards young people, people aged 50 plus and job seekers with disabilities or health issues.
In addition, the voluntary in-work progression offer started to roll-out in April 2022. It is now available in all Jobcentres across Great Britain. We estimate that around 1.2m low-paid benefit claimants will be eligible for support to progress into higher-paid work.
To further support parents into work, on 28th June 2023, the maximum monthly amounts that a parent can be reimbursed for their childcare increased by 47%, from £646.35 for one child and £1,108.04 for two or more children to £950.92 and £1,630.15 respectively. Importantly, we can now also provide even more help with upfront childcare costs when parents move into work or increase their hours.
To support those who are in work, on 1 April 2024, the Government will increase the National Living Wage for workers aged 21 years and over by 9.8% to £11.44 representing an increase of over £1,800 to the gross annual earnings of a full-time worker on the NLW.
This government understands the pressures people are facing with the cost of living which is why we are providing total support of £104bn over 2022-25 to help households and individuals.
Included within this, to support low-income households with increasing rent costs, the government will raise Local Housing Allowance rates to the 30th percentile of local market rents in April 2024. This will benefit 1.6 million low-income households, who will be around £800 a year better off on average in 2024-25.
Asked by: Judith Cummins (Labour - Bradford South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to support families' with childcare following changes to work related activity requirements for lead carers.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
From 28 June 2023, the DWP will now provide even more help with upfront childcare costs for parents on Universal Credit who wish to move into or progress in work.
At the same time, we have also increased the generosity of the Universal Credit childcare costs maximum amounts by nearly 50%.
These changes are part of a much wider package of generous childcare reforms including a phased introduction of 30 hours of free childcare for almost all working parents of children aged between nine months and three years of age.
Asked by: Alison McGovern (Labour - Wirral South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of Jobcentre plus offering employment support to unemployed individuals that are not in receipt of out-of-work benefits.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for getting people into work and making work pay.
We are driving forward significant recruitment to deliver on our Labour Market programmes to get more people off benefits and into work, which is fair stewardship of taxpayers money.
At Spring Budget, we introduced a range of measures providing extra support for people to move into work and progress into better-paid jobs, particularly disabled people and those with long-term health conditions, parents, over-50s, unemployed people and people on Universal Credit and working fewer than full-time hours. Along with increased employment support, this includes increased expectations for lead carers of children on Universal Credit, as well as increasing the AET.
Asked by: Bill Esterson (Labour - Sefton Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 14 September 2023 to Question 198639 on Childcare, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure the adequacy of (a) trained staff, (b) safe premises and (c) registered places in Sefton Central constituency by the start of September 2025 to offer eligible children aged nine months and above to access 30 hours a week of free childcare for 38 weeks each year until the end of the term before they start at primary school.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Having enough staff in place to deliver high-quality education and care will be key to ensuring the successful delivery of our record expansion of early years entitlements. Driving up interest in early years careers and ensuring there are enough opportunities for career development is a priority for this government.
In the government’s Spring Budget 2023, my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced transformative reforms to childcare for parents, children and the economy. By 2027/28, this Government will expect to be spending in excess of £8 billion every year on free hours and early education, helping working families with their childcare costs. This represents the single biggest investment in childcare in England ever.
The department is developing a range of new workforce initiatives including the launch of a new national campaign, planned for the beginning of 2024, to boost interest in the sector and support the recruitment and retention of talented staff. To increase interest in early years, we are working to remove unnecessary barriers to entering the sector as well as considering how to make early years qualifications more accessible, coordinated and relevant.
Over the summer the department launched a competition for Early Years Skills Bootcamps with a pathway to an accelerated level 3 Early Years Educator apprenticeship, and we will consider degree apprenticeship routes so everyone from junior staff to senior leaders can easily move into or indeed enhance their career in the sector. We are also working across government to boost early years career awareness by collaborating with the Department for Work and Pensions and Careers & Enterprise Company to promote the importance and value of a career in early years.
Regarding safe premises, with a growing number of staff joining the sector, the safety of our youngest children remains as important as ever. All new and existing early years providers must keep children safe and promote their welfare. The Early Years Foundation Stage statutory framework sets the standards that all early years providers in England must meet to ensure that children are kept healthy and safe. More information can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1170108/EYFS_framework_from_September_2023.pdf.
Under these requirements, all owners and managers of childcare settings have a responsibility to ensure that their premises, including overall floor space and outdoor spaces, are fit for purpose and suitable for the age of children cared for and the activities provided on the premises. All providers must also comply with the requirements of health and safety legislation, including fire safety and hygiene requirements. At all times when children are present, at least one person who has a current paediatric first aid certificate must be on the premises.
Under Section 6 of the Childcare Act 2006, local authorities are responsible for ensuring that the provision of childcare is sufficient to meet the requirements of parents in their area. Part B of the Early education and childcare statutory guidance for local authorities highlights that local authorities should report annually to elected council members on how they are meeting their duty to secure sufficient childcare, and to make this report available and accessible to parents. More information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-education-and-childcare--2.
The Department has regular contact with each local authority in England about their sufficiency of childcare and any issues they are facing. Where local authorities report sufficiency challenges, we discuss what action the local authority is taking to address those issues and where needed support the local authority with any specific requirements through our childcare sufficiency support contract.