My Lords, in this group, I will speak to Amendments 1, 27, 40, 41 and 42, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and to Amendments 29 and 38A, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. I will attempt to flesh out a sequence of events and a road map which the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Andrews, spoke about. I will write to noble Lords about this and place a copy in the Library well before Report.
The Government are committed to delivering the provisions in the Childcare Bill in a way that is flexible, affordable and high quality for parents. A number of amendments in this group refer to specific activities that have been discussed with reference to the Motion to move the Bill into Committee and that were covered in the policy statement published last week. As I clarified on Second Reading, the Government are reviewing the cost of providing childcare and have committed to increase the average funding rate paid to providers. It is essential that the rate that we pay is fair for providers, value for money for taxpayers and consistent with the Government’s fiscal plans. I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, in Amendment 29 that value for money must be a consideration for all aspects of government spending, and the early years should be no different. The extension of the free entitlement is a significant government investment.
Last month, the Government launched a call for evidence as part of the funding review and, as I have said, we have already had more than 500 responses. As I have also said, we will report back on the review’s findings by Report and will then be able to say a lot more about the delivery model. I can confirm that we want childminders to be able to deliver the extra 15 hours of childcare, as they already deliver the universal 15 hours.
On 25 June, I wrote to noble Lords with an assessment of the impact of the Bill on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, child poverty, the public sector equality duty and the family test. The collective conclusion of these assessments is that the extension of the free childcare entitlement will have a positive impact for children and families. I can confirm to noble Lords that the Government will publish a full impact assessment on the extent of free entitlement when draft regulations are published for consultation in due course.
The Government want to engage with parents, providers, local authorities, employers and representative bodies about how parents currently access childcare and how it is delivered. This will begin shortly. We want to hear what is important to parents in choosing a childcare provider, and their views on how the extended entitlement will best meet their childcare needs.
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I am pleased to say that we have already received a number of great offers from voluntary and community organisations to host events for parents and providers. They include groups representing and supporting disabled children and their parents. It is the Government’s
intention also to work closely with employer organisations, such as the CBI, to ensure that we listen to employers’ views about how the entitlement could work best.
The Government will roll out the extended free childcare entitlement in certain areas under pilots from September 2016, in advance of full implementation from 2017. I was pleased that so many noble Lords welcomed this intention on Second Reading. A number of local areas have approached the Government to register their interest in taking part. This is a really positive sign of the engagement of the childcare sector in the new entitlement. We are currently considering where early implementation of the extended entitlement should take place, including the number of areas and the locations to ensure geographic balance. The areas will test out the important operational details for delivering the extended entitlement and provide a source of intelligence to support the Government in refining the systems to deliver the entitlement. As I said, we will provide a full update on our plans for piloting ahead of Report.
I welcome the reference to the childcare task force which the Prime Minister announced on 1 June. The task force is chaired by the Minister of State for Employment, with significant cross-government representation from the Department for Education, the Department for Work and Pensions, HM Treasury, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Cabinet Office. The establishment of the task force demonstrates how seriously the Government take the implementation of this policy. It is a cross-government ministerial group co-ordinating childcare work across government. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is right that it will not produce a report. It is there to drive implementation of this policy and other policies, such as tax-free childcare, so that we can deliver on our commitments.
All the activities that I have described will feed into the development of draft regulations and draft guidance. These will be subject to public consultation in 2016. Therefore, I do not believe that each activity listed in the amendment requires the production of a separate report to Parliament. Although I am in agreement with the noble Baroness that a certain sequencing of activity is required to ensure that the Government implement the extended free entitlement in the most effective and efficient way, I do not believe that the detail of this activity needs to be set out in the Bill. Indeed, I hope noble Lords will agree that it is important that a number of these steps take place now, in parallel with these debates, and do not wait until the Bill is passed. The call for evidence as part of the review into the cost of providing childcare is already under way, and the consultation with parents, providers, local authorities, employers and representative bodies will begin in the summer. I believe that the sooner the Government begin listening to the views of those accessing and providing childcare the better it will be. This is the key to ensuring that we can deliver the entitlement in the best way for working families.
I have listened carefully to noble Lords’ specific concern that it is important that Parliament is able to scrutinise the detailed secondary legislation that will underpin this Bill. I recognise and greatly value the
expertise that noble Lords can offer as the Bill progresses through this House and beyond. Draft regulations will be published for consultation, and I look forward to comments from and engagement with members of the House’s Affordable Childcare Committee and others on those draft regulations. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and I have spoken about the best way for my department to support that. In relation to the comments of my noble friend Lord True, we have no intention of setting up a situation where we drive any providers out of business. On the contrary, we want to encourage the sector to grow and flourish.
Evaluating the impact and benefit of programmes such as the free entitlement is extremely important, and I welcome the amendments tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, on this issue. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, referred to the importance of this evaluation. The highly influential Effective Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education project, to which the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, referred, ran between 1997 and 2014 and demonstrated the benefits of high-quality early education on children’s outcomes. I hope that noble Lords will welcome the Government’s building on this with the new longitudinal study of early education and development commissioned by the Department for Education to update our evidence. This is a large-scale longitudinal research project that will follow the progress of more than 5,000 children from the age of two, assess the quality of provision and quantify the impact.
The study will also offer insights into the perspectives and experiences of childminders and of children with special educational needs and disability. The study is particularly relevant to Amendments 29 and 38A and will specifically examine the impact of providing funding for early years education to two year-olds from lower-income families. The reviewers will also be working with settings to collect cost information and to estimate the value for money offered by different ways of delivering government-funded early education. The first reports are expected to be published later this autumn with the final report in 2020.
The Government also welcome evidence gathered by others. The specific membership of the commission proposed by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, in Amendment 29 reflects previous, informative evaluations carried out in this area. The Impact of Free, Universal Pre-school Education on Maternal Labour Supply, a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, is a great example of this type of work. The Nuffield Foundation report published alongside the IFS report was a welcome addition to the increasingly rich evidence base about the early years. This report was of course carried out before many of our reforms, such as the two year-old entitlement, had been introduced, and looked specifically at the impact of funding early education on child outcomes rather than the impact of early education per se.
The Children’s Commissioner in particular has a strong role in reporting on government policies which impact on all children, including in the early years. Under the Children and Families Act, as noble Lords will recall, the primary function of the commissioner was strengthened to promoting and protecting children’s
rights, and the wide range of work that she carries out ensures that the rights of children are at the heart of what we do. This external consideration is valuable and must continue. However, I believe that setting out a requirement to produce this work through a commission would limit the scope and flexibility to report at the most appropriate time and with the most appropriate focus.
I hope that I have reassured the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, that the Government will complete a number of steps to ensure that parents, providers, employers and Parliament are engaged in the development of the extended free childcare entitlement. I also hope that I have provided the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, with sufficient reassurance that although the Government recognise the value of evaluating significant programmes such as this one, it is not necessary to place it in primary legislation. I therefore urge the noble Lords not to press their amendments.