Childcare Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for such a clear and wholehearted introduction. No one could disagree with the principle behind this Bill: to give children the very best start in life should be at the heart of any civilized and caring society. Like many organisations, we welcome the broad thrust of the Bill and support it, but we also share a number of their concerns. I declare a number of interests. I am a governor and director of a school which has an 84-place private nursery and provides after-school and holiday care. I am also a former director of Bolton Lads & Girls Club, which was a pioneer in after-school clubs. I have recently become a patron of OXPIP, the Oxford Parent-Infant Project, which is a registered charity working with families who are struggling to cope with the emotional demands of their baby and helping them to form secure attachments. That is an area in which I know the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has considerable interest. The outcome we all want to secure with this Bill is to help parents establish and maintain those loving bonds to ensure that children develop in safe and stimulating environments and are bought up in loving homes. Acknowledging that patterns of life have changed out of all recognition and that the pressures on modern families are very different from those which we might all remember is a part of that. Today, only one out of 10 workers works a standard nine-to-five, 40-hour week, and the number of women in work has risen steadily from 43 per cent in 1983 to 53 per cent in 2004. A quarter of all families are lone-parent families, and of the other three quarters that are couple-households, both parents work in the majority of them. Families survive—in fact, they thrive—because of a whole host of arrangements that would have been unimaginable 20 or 30 years ago. For that reason, it is more important than ever for us to develop policies that recognise the way people live their lives today and that are flexible and responsive enough to meet their complex needs. That is why we must ensure that government policy is joined up, and works for families as a package across the whole of government. Along with a number of your Lordships I have also been involved in the Work and Families Bill. Here we have just discussed at length work/life balance and the benefits and success of flexible working, where many employers and companies are ahead of legislation in offering working styles that allow parents a chance not only to provide for their families but to spend time with their families. When the Childcare Bill was debated in another place my right honourable friend Theresa May expressed surprise that the issues of work and families and childcare were being discussed in two separate Bills and reflected that it would have made more sense to debate them together to ensure joined-up legislation to address the issues that families face. I agree with her. Each of these issues has a significant impact on the other and on the lives of families across Britain. Indeed we must also consider the read-across to the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill which the Minister mentioned and is starting in your Lordships’ House next week. As I have said on many occasions in numerous debates, the safety of a child, especially a vulnerable child, is of the utmost importance. However, there is a fine line between protecting our children and stifling normal life and activity. This is an area we will want to discuss at length in the Bill and also in the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill. In the introduction to the 2004 document Choice for Parents, the best start for children: a ten year strategy for childcare, the Government say:"““Parents are the best judges of their family’s needs””." I could not agree more. It is parents who know what is best for their children, not Ministers and not civil servants. It is parents who should be in control of their childcare choices. We have to trust parents to make the right decision, yet I am afraid that, despite the rhetoric, trusting parents is something that this Government sometimes find hard to do. Parents do not want to be told what type of childcare they should have. Mothers do not want to be told by government that the best thing to do is to race back to work as soon as their baby is born. Nor do they want to be told to stay at home indefinitely producing more and more children. They want to decide. Our role as politicians is to support the choices they make. As everyone’s aspirations are different, those choices will vary dramatically from family to family. Childcare should be as varied as the families it serves, and because of the different needs and decisions of families a ““one size fits all”” policy will not work. Yet that is what we are in danger of seeing from this Government—a desire to force children into the form of childcare that Government think is preferable, rather than widening the choices available to parents. The Government say they want local authorities to work with existing providers, and yet the facts are that for every two childcare places that the Government have opened since 1997 another has closed somewhere else. Rather than complement and add to existing childcare provision, state-funded Sure Start is all too often forcing independent providers to close their doors, unable to compete with well-funded schemes. We are supportive of Sure Start and applaud much of what it has achieved, but Sure Start does not suit the needs of all parents. Government provision is leading to the closure of private and voluntary-sector childcare services that offer smaller groups and more flexible care. In January 2004, a survey of private and voluntary-sector nurseries showed an occupancy level of 85 per cent, which has now fallen to 75 per cent. In order to be viable, childcare organisations need an occupancy rate of at least 80 per cent. In case anyone thinks I am special pleading on behalf of the nursery I am involved with, I should say that our nursery is full and there is a waiting list for every place. One of the areas where the private and voluntary sector is particularly struggling is after-school clubs. The introduction of extended schools has had a particular impact here, and yet when my noble friend Lady Shephard of Northwold first introduced after-school clubs, as well as providing much-needed childcare, she was also keen to promote small and social enterprise. I recognise that Sure Start has helped to provide children’s centres in some of our most deprived areas, but it currently focuses only on the most deprived fifth of wards. Yet, government figures show that 46 per cent of the most deprived children do not live in those wards. Too many parents who could benefit from Sure Start or a similar project are denied it—often because, by not working with the private sector, Government are not making the best use of resources. The voluntary sector and private companies should be helped to increase the variety and quality of choice available. I hope Ministers will realise that only by working with them, rather than by competing against them, can we ensure that the government resources put into childcare deliver value for money. This Bill seeks to reduce inequalities between children, which raises some fundamental questions. During its passage through another place there were long, spirited and principled debates about what exactly reducing inequalities means and what that entails. How will that be measured and by what means will it be delivered? We on the Conservative Benches are in no doubt that the best way of helping our most disadvantaged, vulnerable children is to raise the standard for all children. I really look forward to the debates that we shall have on that issue in further stages of the Bill. Since all the research shows it, there can be no doubt that good early attachment is the best possible start in life that a child can be given. We were very pleased, then, to welcome extended maternity leave in the Work and Families Bill. We also support the choice that many families make—most families, indeed—in using informal childcare through grandparents, other members of the family or friends. Yet we also recognise that there are undoubted benefits to formal early years care, the most important being the building of confidence and social skills. Those are particularly significant for the most vulnerable families and children. The chance to release the pressures of bringing up children who are going through the terrible twos could be a lifeline for many such families. Therefore, what assessment have the Government made of the needs of children whose parents are not working? I know that in his speech the noble Lord, Lord Rix, will raise, with his usual passion and conviction, the crucial issue of childcare for families of children with mental and physical disabilities. I recently visited Hurdles, a charity in the north-west that supports such families. I simply cannot explain to your Lordships what a humbling experience it was. I met parents of children with a whole range of disabilities; truly, amazing people. The chairman, Geraldine Greene, said to me, ““Trish, in an imperfect world we’re not looking for perfect solutions, simply the support and help to do the best we can for our broken children””. We share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Rix, regarding the cut-off point for childcare being at 16 for children with disabilities and will want to look at that in more detail in Committee. I want to raise two further points. First, we remain concerned about the Government’s intentions for a foundation stage from 0 to 3 years, where Ofsted inspectors will check that children are developing according to the government programme. It is vital that all Ofsted inspectors in that area are not only properly trained in early years development but understand their surroundings. We discussed this at length in passing the Education Act 2005, but my fears were recently confirmed by the story of a nursery where the inspector noted that the children did not seem to be making use of the materials put out for them. The nursery owners pointed out that this may have had something to do with a pin-stripe suited gentleman—a stranger—sitting and observing the children at the end of the table where they were expected to play. However, our main concern in this area is about the word ““taught””. So far, Ministers have failed to convince us that that will not mean ever younger children being forced into academic activities—and, as a result, missing out on natural development through play and taking risks. Deborah Lawson, the section committee chairman for PANN, the Professional Association of Nursery Nurses, has warned that,"““It is important to find the right balance and not have unrealistic expectations of what young children can achieve . . . Prescriptive formal education can be too much . . . for children under five””." Margaret Morrissey of the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations said on BBC News last November that,"““We are now in danger of taking away children’s childhood when they leave the maternity ward. From the minute you are born and your parents go back to work, as the Government have encouraged them to do, you are going to be ruled by the Department for Education””." Finally, with many of us currently receiving our council tax demands and looking forward to local elections in May, it would be remiss of me not to raise the genuine concerns of local authorities across the country. The Bill places a new duty on them to secure, and I quote from the Explanatory Notes,"““as far as is reasonably practicable, sufficient childcare to meet the requirements of parents . . . who require childcare in order to work or to undertake training””." Surely Ministers do not believe that we can expect local authorities to take on these new obligations without that having an impact on their budgets. The Local Government Association estimates that meeting the requirements in the Bill will require additional investment of £200 million in the next two years, over and above existing resources. It would be unacceptable to expect council tax payers across the country to foot the bill for this key government policy. I hope that the Minister will explain how these obligations on local councils are to be paid for. My party is happy to work constructively with the Government to improve the Bill. We recognise that for many families the decision about whether to go out to work is not one of choice, but necessity. For many families, childcare is the most important issue. If their childcare does not work, their lives simply do not work.