Childcare Bill

No, I shall not give way again on that issue. I want to move on to amendments Nos. 51 and 53, which were tabled by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. He asked me to provide more clarity about the waiving of learning and development requirements in certain circumstances. I want to reassure him that the measure will not drive a coach and horses through all our early development aims. Such a waiver might occur where a local authority had difficulty in securing the training required to improve the skills of the local child care work force by 2008. For example, a small provider such as a playgroup might not technically yet fulfil all the requirements of the early years foundation stage, but could none the less offer an excellent service, or be not too far from being able to do so; the staff might be undergoing training but not have completed it. We would want the provider to improve so that it could deliver the framework rather than closing it down for a short period until the staff managed to gain the required qualifications. There could thus be a time-limited exemption so that the provider was not closed down when the early years foundation stage was implemented. We want to provide flexibility, while ensuring that quality is maintained and improved. We also want to take into account some of the practical difficulties that small, local organisations might experience in getting themselves up to scratch as we make the transition to the early years foundation stage. The hon. Gentleman suggested that it would be appropriate to publish the reasons for exemptions, disapplications or modifications in respect of individual children. It would, however, be unfair to single out individual children in that way. Indeed, Members said earlier, with reference to another matter, that they did not want data about individual children to be published, yet the amendment seems to suggest that we should do just that. The situations that we are talking about are likely to be very rare. For example, it might be necessary to exempt specific individual children from certain aspects of the early years foundation stage where it is necessary because of their parents’ religious beliefs. For example, I understand that members of the Plymouth Brethren do not really like information and communications technology, and they do not like their children to work on computers. If work on a computer does not conform with a parent’s religious belief, even though that is a minority religious belief, it may be appropriate to exempt an individual child from requirements that relate to ICT. We are talking about smallish and individual exceptions such as that. We do not anticipate that the provision would be widespread or extensively used. We want to try to provide the necessary flexibility to ensure that we are not riding roughshod over important matters such as human rights and the rights of individuals to follow their own religious beliefs, for example. I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman, and that he will feel able to withdraw his amendments. I am sure, however, that hon. Members will feel less happy to withdraw their amendments in respect of the word ““taught””, and I fear that we might continue to have that debate in another place.