I represent one of the youngest constituencies in the UK: over 20% of the population of my borough is under 16. Between the last two censuses, the population in the borough of Hackney grew by 30,000. That included a large increase in under-fives, and many people in their early 20s and 30s, many of them parents. Child care is therefore of great importance in my constituency, as well as up and down the country.
The Bill deals with many important issues, but I want to focus on child care. The muddle of Government child care policy is not helped by the child care clauses. They make nothing clearer; in fact, they make the chaos worse. First, the Bill repeals the local authority duty to assess child care provision. I am against that, because it is important that we provide an accurate assessment of the availability of, and demand for, child care in an area, and it is reasonable to expect that to be done locally. I am greatly in favour of local authorities having more say on the subject, but if we remove that statutory duty, in areas unlike mine, where there are not that many children, that may be something that falls off the edge of a local authority’s area of responsibilities. That is another example of the Government’s small-state-is-good
ideology, this time on a local level, and with working parents as the victims. It does not square with the Government’s desires—all our desires, indeed—and need to encourage people into work.
There is also a huge issue to do with the proposed ratios between children and their nursery carers or childminders. The policy is unworkable. It beggars belief. It does nothing to reduce costs, but if one were to say, on a generous reading, that it did, it would be at the cost of quality. So that Members are absolutely clear, let me explain that the Government propose that the adult-child ratios for nurseries should go from one adult per three children to one adult per four children for one-year-olds and younger—for the baby room in a nursery, as most of us would know it—and from one adult per four children to one adult per six children for two-year olds. They propose changing the childminder-to-child ratios from 1:1 to 1:2 for the under-ones, and from 1:3 to 1:4 for children aged two to five.
I am the second of 10 children, so I do not have a problem with lots of children being looked after, but imagine taking six toddlers through potty training, or to the park. A constituent wrote to me on the subject. She is just one of the many parents, childminders and professional child carers in Hackney who are really concerned about the proposal. Her child is looked after by a childminder, whom she values greatly. She says:
“If this ratio had come in before I had gone back to work I may not have gone at all. I didn’t want my baby in a nursery. I feel very strongly that parents need the option of leaving our children in a safe, caring home environment”
with a childminder. She speaks for so many parents up and down the country, and indeed for childminders.
That brings me on to the proposals in the Bill relating to the setting up of childminder agencies. I mentioned my concerns about this in an intervention. I am not alone in my scepticism. It is unclear from the Bill how the proposals will work. Among other things, I am concerned that the concept of an agency is different to different people. It might mean one thing to the Minister who made the proposal, and another to others. Is it a children’s centre or a local authority effectively acting as an agent for Ofsted and professional development locally—something that I could support, with the right safeguards—or is it the relentless march of the private sector, supported by the Government, who are enabling it to turn a profit from the relationship between child- minders and parents? We have had no further clarity on that from the Minister today. Will the agencies be able to allocate any childminder to any family, or will the parent have a say? The local, very specific negotiation about a child is vital to the relationship between parents and childminders.
Will there be the recreation of what we could laughingly call the paradigm of the agencies that manage domiciliary care for older people? As someone who has been a carer for two older people, I would hate to see child care go down that route—to see agencies creaming off a profit while providing inadequate care—when we have a very good childminder sector that has improved immensely thanks to the Ofsted badge of quality, which is prized by childminders and valued by parents.
That is not to say that I do not support any change. Sometimes there are challenges arising from Ofsted inspecting such a range of childminders, but I would prefer that to be done through the local authority, or
possibly the local children’s centre, both of which already have a relationship with the childminder, rather than through new agencies being set up.
I want to touch on special educational needs, which are a big issue in my constituency. Of course I welcome the principle of improving provision; I think we would all agree on that. On all these issues, I seek to work with the Government to try to improve what they have to offer, because we have no great desire to make a political battleground of an issue as important as the future of our children, but where are the safeguards around special educational needs, and the measures to ensure that the new education, health and care plans include proper, joined-up working to make life easier for parents and to deliver swifter, fairer outcomes for children?
At the moment, there is no single point of accountability for parents seeking redress, and that is a big challenge in areas such as mine. Parents with deep pockets who care for their children can find the money to challenge the provision that is made—or not made, more likely—for their children, and to argue the case. However, many families in my constituency—the majority—cannot afford to pay for their own private support through the SEN minefield. Although there is a lot of good talk about the new provisions, there is no detail on how they will work. A single point of redress is very important if there is to be a level playing field for all parents—and, more important, all children, as they seek the educational support that they need.
For all that I want a cross-party approach on the importance of quality child care and proper SEN provision, my worry is that the former Children’s Minister, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), was correct when he said to the Select Committee on Education a month ago that the children and families agenda was being “downgraded” by his colleague, the Secretary of State for Education, and was “a declining priority” for the Government. I hope that is not the case. I hope that the House can send the message to the Government that we care very deeply about making sure that the Bill really delivers for parents, and for the children in my constituency who will be paying the pensions of the rest of the country in years to come.
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