Childcare Bill

I was due to serve on the Committee on this Bill, but because of a double booking with Standing Committee on the Equality Bill, I was unable to do so. Equality won out, which is as it should be. I eventually got here, and the hand of fate means that I am involved at the end of the day. I reiterate the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) earlier about the cross-departmental child care team on the Opposition Benches. My hon. Friends the Members for East Worthing and Shoreham and for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) are part of the official Opposition’s strong child care team, and I am pleased to be part of it too. In Committee there was vigorous debate, particularly on issues that I shall cover in this group of amendments. It is a diverse group—something of a shopping list—but these are important amendments and are worthy of further consideration. This group focuses on the duties of local authorities to ensure the well-being of children and I shall subdivide it further so that the debate makes sense. I shall first look at amendments Nos. 1 and 2, which relate to clause 1, about improving the well-being of children. On Second Reading, the Secretary of State stressed the idea of children having the best start in life, and the Opposition wholeheartedly endorse that. We believe that amendments Nos. 1 and 2 would instil that ideal more into the Bill. Our concern is that ““the reduction of inequalities””—the wording currently in the Bill—could be interpreted in a number of ways and lacks the clarity that legislation should provide. Clarity of direction is vital. We believe that the Bill needs to focus on raising standards—an objective that we all share. We have heard today that the Government have failed to meet their target for reducing child poverty, and we share their obvious concern about that. Many hundreds of thousands of children who should have been out of poverty remain in it. We have to focus on what we can do to close the gap between rich and poor, because it must be addressed in terms not merely of targets, which can sometimes create perverse outcomes, but of raising standards for all, especially the quality of experience for the most disadvantaged groups. We believe that the Bill should, and will, set the tone and ethos for what we want from child care. The Bill is important because every child deserves the opportunity to maximise his or her potential. In Committee, some philosophical differences were expressed about the reduction of inequalities versus improvement in the quality of outcomes. I hope that we can agree that we should continue to work on those points, but we may be closer together than the Committee debate suggested. I refer to an interview given by the Prime Minister on ““Newsnight”” in 2001, when he clearly stated that the Government’s objective was to level things up. He said:"““Surely the important thing is to level up those people that don’t have opportunity in our society.””" We wholeheartedly endorse that view, which our amendments would make much clearer in the Bill. Our philosophy is simple: to maximise the potential of children so that no child is held back or left behind. The amendments would help to make that clearer to the people who implement the legislation. It will be useful to deal with amendments Nos. 34, 43 and 56 together. They all refer to improving children’s well-being, which relates to the Government’s objective of ensuring that we help the people who need it most, which the Secretary of State stressed on Second Reading. The objective of the amendments is to focus the Bill on doing exactly that. As child poverty remains of great concern, I hope that the Government find the amendments useful in ensuring that our objectives in the legislation are clear. I am sure that the House agrees that we have much to learn from other experience of child care provision. The US head start programme is interesting. It puts tremendous focus on the most disadvantaged families and has resulted in significant, measurable improvements in language, social development and parental interaction with their children, in terms of reading and discipline. In the UK, Sure Start is a welcome help for the most disadvantaged, although it covers only 40 per cent. of disadvantaged children. Indeed, my constituency, which has areas of significant disadvantage, receives no such help, although I am pleased that the situation will change in the future with the establishment of children’s centres. As the Minister of State has stressed, when I have put questions about the results of Sure Start, these are early days, but is the programme targeted enough on the most disadvantaged? In the light of the national evaluation of Sure Start, will the Minister consider whether more can be done directly to underpin and support the most disadvantaged groups, especially those important groups that the research showed were as yet unsupported by the programme—lone parents, teenage mothers and workless households. We all feel that they deserve more support. We all want to improve the well-being of children in the broadest sense, but it is vital that support for the most disadvantaged is at the heart of our discussions. All three amendments would focus resources more actively on those most in need, which we hope will do most to help children in poverty. The proposals would not merely facilitate but maximise access to the services on offer and not merely identify but target the parents most in need, making the Bill much more active and its support more directed. We are concerned about the structure of the Sure Start programme, which needs some attention. It is rather loose and variable in execution, so it can be difficult to measure outcomes. Our key concern is that we are ensuring help for those who need it, and perhaps that is not ingrained in the implementation of Sure Start to date, as evidenced by the Birkbeck study, which was published in November 2005. I am, of course, aware of the supplementary pamphlets and notes that have been issued as a result of that research. I ask the Minister to comment on whether she feels that that background is sufficient to cause the change that we probably need to see in Sure Start to underpin those important groups. The Government clearly have continuing problems with poverty levels. We have been targeting to reduce poverty, but hundreds of thousands of children whom the Government were hoping to lift out of poverty have not been removed from it. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has estimated that an additional £1.4 billion will be needed to hit the Government’s targets by 2010. Obviously that is down to the Chancellor, who must ponder and think about it. We accept on both sides of the House that work is an important way out of poverty. Indeed, that was reiterated this morning by a Minister speaking on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions during an interview. The Bill is an important way to support parents with the aim of getting back to work in mind. If we are to ensure that the proposed legislation reaches its maximum potential, there may be room to consider the amendments to ensure that we are focusing our activities in the right direction. Amendments Nos. 40 and 52 were tabled to offer some support and help in improving the well-being checklist. What is on the checklist will dictate the approach that the local authority takes. As we all know, what happens to us as children influences us for the rest of our lives. The way in which we assess the progress of children is of paramount importance. Amendment No. 40 is about the physical and emotional health of children. I am sure that we all realise that mental health is a long-term issue that develops over time. It is not static, and cannot be considered at only one point in time. We need to consider the mental health development of children, and that is a continuing process. As for amendment No. 52, there is the recognition that children’s relationships with their parents are important in their long-term well-being. I was somewhat surprised to see that that was not recognised in the Bill, particularly after some of the debates that we have had recently on the Children and Adoption Bill, during which we all agreed on the importance of the relationship with parents. This should be a pivotal element of the well-being checklist, and I ask the Minister to consider that carefully. The amendment would lead to a constructive improvement. With amendment No. 36, we try to draw attention to the importance of the quality of outcomes. As part of improving the well-being of children, we are improving access. We are also improving the quality of child care on offer. We have already discussed our disappointment that so many private and voluntary nursery places have come to an end, although there has been a net gain. We see that as a positive move, but we are concerned that 200,000 places have been closed. We need to ensure that when, or rather if, the Bill is enacted, local authorities focus on quality, not quantity alone. We feel strongly about that, and the issue was debated thoroughly in Committee. It is worthy of being set out in the Bill, and the amendment would do that. It would put into the Bill the importance of quality and the importance of raising the quality of outcomes, which should be at the heart of the legislation. Amendments Nos. 41, 42 and 46 have been tabled to encourage better acknowledgement of the importance of giving local authorities some room to manoeuvre in their local approach to putting child care in place in their areas. We all know that our constituencies are diverse—Basingstoke is a mixture of suburban and rural communities—and even within a single constituency and local authority area the Bill will have to deal with a great deal of diversity. The amendments would give the local authority the ability to adapt to local needs, and more autonomy, making sure that they were not just driven by centrally dictated targets but could take into account what was happening in their own communities. Amendment No. 55 has a specific aim, and echoes the debate about ““may”” and ““must”” in Committee. Clause 4 deals with the duty of local authorities to work with relevant partners such as the national health service in the delivery of integrated child care. Members on both sides of the House will agree that collaborative working is vital if the Bill is to succeed. The Bill makes it clear that local authorities must work with their relevant partner agencies, and clause 4(4) says that they"““may . . . provide staff, goods, services, accommodation . . . and maintain a pooled fund.””" That wording suggests that there is a choice. The Government may have overlooked that usage, but we need to be certain that that is the case. We know from debates on the health service that there is enormous pressure on finances in this area, and that one in four primary care trusts are in financial deficit. When we talk to Ministers about the provision of services in other areas we are told that that is the responsibility of local management. I have asked Health Ministers on a number of occasions about the provision of local health services in north Hampshire, but they tell me that that is dictated by local management. We need to take that into consideration when we assess this part of the Bill. Can the Minister explain where the well-being of children will fall in local NHS priorities? The amendments recognise the need for a statutory directive in the Bill to ensure that it can achieve what it sets out to achieve. Finally, after that rather long shopping list of amendments, amendment No. 47 would remove clause 5. Under that clause, the Minister could redefine the nature of early childhood services, thus giving her unlimited powers to change the group of people whom the Bill is intended to help. How would those services be redefined? Will she explain why that provision was included by telling us when and why it would be used? I commend the amendments to the House, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.