I will speak, on behalf of my noble friends Lady Jones and Lady Hughes, to Amendments 237, 239 and 240 in their names.
I have listened patiently for weeks to the deliberations of this Committee and have been very impressed with the standard of expertise and knowledge. I have been asked to speak to these amendments relating to childminders and childcare agencies because, when we started to discuss this, I became very animated. I felt that noble Lords were all at the grandparent stage while I am still at the mother stage. Having served as an MEP, rushing off to Brussels every week while my children were very young, and now abandoning them again to come to your Lordships’ House, I confess that I am utterly dependent on my childminder, Margaret. There are hundreds of thousands of other parents in the same situation. We all, of course, want the best for our children. We need to feel confident that they are in a safe and secure environment, especially if we are not there to protect them. Getting this right is critical, not just for the well-being of the children, but for the piece of mind of countless parents throughout the land and to ensure respect for the profession.
I will focus on the issue of childminder agencies, as mentioned in Clause 74. It is essential that a high standard of care is maintained and important to note that there have been many improvements over the years. In 2008, the early years foundation stage was a welcome development in the professionalisation of childminders, leading to increasing standards and better qualifications. However, I remember watching my own childminder despair at the paperwork that mounted up; a new and challenging part of her job. The purpose of this clause is the introduction of agencies which would take away the paperwork burden and allow childminders to concentrate on what they do best.
At first, encouraging childminders to join agencies might seem like a sensible suggestion, as these agencies can give advice, share best practice and provide a useful network as well as lessening the burden of paperwork. The problem is that, however competent the agencies are, much of the paperwork involved is about observation, assessment and planning for the individual child. So I am not quite sure what they will bring to the party, other than an extra tier of bureaucracy and significant additional cost. This goes directly against the Government’s recently published paper More Affordable Childcare.
These costs will, inevitably, be passed on from childminders to parents, adding to their burden. Childcare costs are one of the key issues causing the cost of living crisis under which so many are currently suffering. In addition, as this is a dramatic departure from the current system, it would make sense to wait until this proposal has been properly piloted and consulted on, prior to putting it in the Bill. We seem to be putting the cart before the horse here. This is the general gist of what we are trying to address with Amendment 237.
On inspection, childminders are currently inspected by Ofsted, operating under the early years foundation stage statutory guidance. I want to probe further what the Government are suggesting in new Section 51D of the Childcare Act 2006:
“Inspections of early years childminder agencies”.
The new system would allow childminders to register with, and be inspected by, a childminder agency, rather than by Ofsted. Ofsted would not be responsible for assessing the quality of care of the individual childminders registered with the agency; rather, it would inspect the quality and support provided by the agency.
My concerns are threefold. If the nature of your private business—the agency—is to attract more people to use your service but you are at the same time policing the people who pay you on the quality of the service that they provide, there is a clear conflict of interest. Paid, privatised regulation should be regarded with a degree of suspicion. Is there not a chance that standards of care will be reduced if agencies are inspecting their own people? How can the Government ensure standards when individual childminders are not inspected? We all know the pressures that Ofsted is already under. In time, it is likely that fewer and fewer individual childminders, signed up to agencies, will be spot-checked.
Under the current system, the costs of inspection are borne by the local authority. In future, these costs will inevitably and dramatically fall on parents. The costs of childcare are already seriously impeding many from returning to the workforce, in addition to putting immense pressure on already hard-pressed families. Is the Government seriously suggesting that, in future, they will have to cough up significant extra money to pay for childminders to register with an agency? We are creating a two-tier system, and a lack of reference in new Section 51D to individual childminders being inspected seems to underline this. Amendments 239 and 240 draw attention to this two-tier system, and ensure that all childminders are treated equally, with no temptation for the agencies to cherry-pick which childminders they inspect.
The introduction of a two-tier inspection system could dramatically increase the cost of childcare for already hard-pressed families. Before launching into such dramatic changes which have not been well tested or consulted upon, surely we should see if they work through properly constructed pilot programmes which are endorsed by the profession and by the parents they impact on. I beg to move.