My Lords, I am very grateful to noble Lords for their contributions on this important issue. There is consensus across the House about the importance of making sure that parents have access to good quality, affordable childcare, as we heard during the debate introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, earlier this month. Changes in demographics and in parents’ behaviour mean that this continues to be an important issue. It is important we see the reform of the statutory assessment duty that we are discussing here in this wider context. I hope that noble Lords will allow me to set that out.
The most important thing for ensuring sufficient childcare is to create the right conditions for growth in supply to happen in every part of the childcare market. To that end, the Government are making it easier for schools to increase their age range to take two year-olds and to offer childcare out of school hours. We are relaxing planning rules so that nurseries can expand more easily. The aim is that childminder agencies will make it simpler for people to become childminders, provide training and support, and help parents to access home-based care. Local authorities also will have a very important part to play. They are under statutory duties to ensure that eligible children can access the funded early education entitlement and to ensure that sufficient childcare is available in their areas.
My noble friend Lady Tyler is right that we need an effective means of holding authorities to account for their performance against these statutory duties. In its current form, however, we believe that the sufficiency assessment duty that we are debating is not the most effective way to do this. We remain convinced that it is better for local authorities to be held to account locally for the delivery of their sufficiency duty, and we want parents and council members to have regular information in a helpful format about the sufficiency of childcare in their area.
The childcare sufficiency assessment process does not currently meet these objectives. It seems that the two noble Baronesses who have spoken agree with that. It is too long and technical to be useful to parents and, as it is produced only every three years, it will usually be out of date. Instead, we propose to repeal the duty on local authorities to publish a sufficiency assessment every three years. In its place our statutory guidance already sets out that local authorities should prepare and publish an annual report on the sufficiency of childcare, giving parents more frequent information which is more focused on what they need to know. I hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, said about an annual assessment. This change has been welcomed, including by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, in terms of it being annual, and these proposals were supported by the majority of respondents to the
public consultation. More than 60% of respondents agreed with the repeal of Section 11, with only 10% saying they were not in support of it.
In order to support parents and the public to hold authorities to account, which in many ways is the crux of what both noble Baronesses are saying, I can commit that the Government will explore how we can present data in the clearest and most effective way. We will, for example, continue to monitor parents’ perception of the availability of childcare regionally through the biennial parent surveys.
Turning to the specific issues raised by my noble friend Lady Tyler about assessing the impact of this repeal, we agree entirely with the spirit of her proposal. The Government keep a watching brief on the impact of everything that they do and we are sure that childcare will continue to be high up the political list of priorities. We would support any post-legislative scrutiny of this undertaken by Parliament. There is also the extremely important point about the difficulty that parents who work irregular hours can have in accessing childcare. I can commit that the Government will include this point within revised statutory guidance.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, asked a specific point and I am waiting for inspiration which has not yet come to me. I had hoped that it would come while I was speaking. She asked about differences between the provision here and in terms of social care.