Childcare Bill

My Lords, my amendments in this group are Amendments No. 10, which relates to workless households, and Nos. 11 and 15, which relate to quality and suitability. Amendment No. 10 would add to the duty of local authorities to have regard to childcare provision for workless households, subject to adequate resources being available. I accept that the Government’s main focus in the Bill, as clearly outlined by the Minister in Grand Committee, is providing childcare so that parents can go out to work and take the family out of poverty. That is all well and good, but my main focus is on the child’s best interests. In that case, you have to remember that the children of workless households can also benefit greatly from good quality childcare. Indeed, given the stresses and strains of life in such households, they may well benefit more than other children. If some parents either choose to stay at home or have heavy caring commitments to either a disabled child or an elderly relative, it is not right that the other children in the household should lose out by not having their needs catered for. Government Amendments Nos. 16 to 18 emphasise the needs of disabled children, but other children in the same households are often very disadvantaged, and if their parents do not go to work, the Bill ignores them. Addressing the needs of such families is very cost-effective. We know that having a break from child-caring can improve parents’ mental health. That could save costs on the NHS. Access to appropriate childcare is a cost-effective form of support, and may prevent the family reaching crisis point, possibly resulting in a residential placement. Having the opportunity to associate with their peers is vital to the development of children’s social skills, as evinced by the EPPE project and other studies. If the Government want to reduce inequalities—the prime objective of the Bill—they should start with the children of workless households. Amendments Nos. 11 to 15 would introduce the word ““quality”” into the duty in different ways. My Amendment No. 11 was No. 28 in Committee, and somehow the word ““must”” in Amendment No. 28 has become ““may”” in No. 11 today. That is a mistake, and I am not quite sure how it happened. My intention is that local authorities must have a duty to have regard to quality. Amendment No. 11 also introduces the concept of suitability for the communities in the area. I will not repeat the arguments I made in Committee about the need for settings to have regard to the child’s cultural needs and his ethnic persona. Part of the objective of good quality early years learning is to help the child develop his sense of self, and to interpret the world around him in relation to that self. If the child has no role models among the staff, or the setting takes no regard of his particular culture or persona, that is not in the best interests of that child. In this country we have many cultural communities: White, Black, Arabic, Travellers, Jewish and eastern European, and many different religions. It is vital that settings make the effort to recruit and train staff from all these local communities, or, if that fails, that they at least have regard to the child’s needs in that respect. I hope that the Minister will have regard to the strong feelings of the House on quality. All the studies show that good quality childcare benefits children, and bad quality childcare harms them. The Government have shown their commitment to the right kind of care in many ways, including the development of the early years foundation stage. It seems more than surprising, therefore, that the word ““quality”” is absent from the Bill. There is a strong feeling in the House that it should be included somewhere in the Bill, as a matter of principle. Guidance is not good enough. As we said earlier, the Bill should contain reference to the principles underpinning the legislation. The word ““quality”” is another of those underpinning principles, which is why we have returned to it on Report. I hope that the Minister has moved on a bit about this since Grand Committee and can reassure us further.