Childcare Bill

The point that I am trying to make, to which I hope the Minister was listening, is that we can use the amendment to focus attention on those whom she is trying to exclude from the Bill’s provisions. She may need to do that for technical reasons, but if she is saying that we are wrong to be concerned about the interests of children who would otherwise be covered in theory, she is wrong. One thing that the Government should do is to direct their attention to improving the situation of children in the circumstances that I described. The Minister may say that the peg for that is purely a technicality. She may say that the amendment is purely a technicality. However, the lives of the young people who concern me are not a technicality. They are at a stage when some of them have a chance of redemption and of getting a positive experience of life. The sooner she acknowledges that the better. She gave bland responses to the points made by Conservative Front-Bench spokesmen on the previous group of amendments. She can rightly say that nought to five does not cover those people, so the amendment does not relate to them, but the welfare of older children, whose circumstances would otherwise be covered by the Bill, does matter. I hope that the Government take that forward in a more positive way and that there is a process of assessing the outcomes, rather than just having targets.