Childcare Bill

I shall not detain the House on these technical amendments, which the Minister was gracious enough to admit might have been dealt with earlier. On a general note, however, the Government recently tabled a number of amendments for discussion today, several of which are completely new provisions, yet no accompanying explanatory notes or letters from the Minister have been forthcoming. That is not helpful. Usually when the Government table amendments on new matters, one would expect an explanation, as a courtesy at least. Furthermore, I notice from the Order Paper that the Secretary of State is making a written statement on ““Safeguarding in early years and childcare””, which I presume is germane to the Bill, yet neither I nor my hon. Friends—nor, I suspect, the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), who speaks for the Liberal Democrats—received notice of that statement. My office rang the Minister’s office this morning and we were promised that a copy would be e-mailed straightaway, but that has not appeared. That is regrettable, especially in the light of what happened last week with the Children and Adoption Bill, when Opposition Members were not notified about the imminent publication of a report that was absolutely germane to the business, and was referred to during that business by the Minister of State. That is a shame, because it diminishes the detail of our debate at a late but crucial stage. I am thus not in a position to take issue with the points that the Under-Secretary of State has just made, although based on a scant reading of the provisions, we do not want to raise any objections to them. However, it would have been nice to receive an explanation of them sooner.