Childcare Bill

The hon. Lady is wrong about that. The level of detail that relates to children of other ages is not aggregate. Local authorities must increasingly provide individual level data, because the funding flows from Government to local authorities. Local authorities may allocate it, but the level of provision is based on numbers of children, and in this instance, where those children are accessing the free nursery entitlement that the Government have provided. We want the money to flow more effectively to the providers. In order to give parents more flexibility, so that they have a range of options for that nursery offer, we need to make sure that we can disaggregate in the case of children for whom the offer is spread over a number of different providers. That is happening now and providers are losing out, because only one provider is getting the total amount of money, whereas there might be another one, two or three providers who have the child for part of the week but are not getting the money that flows from that. The other important issue is the outcomes duty. Local authorities will want to test themselves as to how far, for the population as a whole, they are improving outcomes for children and reducing inequality. We as a Department want to assure ourselves that local authorities are fulfilling the terms of that duty. There will, of course, be further opportunity to discuss the matter in the other place, and I can assure hon. Members that further details of how we envisage the measure working, short of the regulations, will be available for that debate.