My Lords, I just want to speak briefly about baselines. As we are talking about quality, I wonder whether the Minister has seen the report of the Family and Childcare Trust, Access Denied, which does not talk about quality but about 38 English local authorities which failed to carry out and publish assessments of local childcare since 2012. Therefore, a large number of working families have no access at all to childcare. The report gave an example of a mother who said:
“I was so happy when my boy turned three and we got free nursery education. I decided to try and move him from the childminder to a nursery, where he could get the free hours. But I could not find a place with any vacancies. The local nursery and the school were both full, so I’m still with the childminder, so no free hours for him and a big bill for me”.
Would the Government like to comment on this problem of access to basic childcare, never mind quality?