My Lords, Amendment 10 is in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Tyler of Enfield. It seeks to ensure that the new free entitlement provided under the Bill is also available to parents with a child aged between one and two. The Government’s announcements on this Bill have made it clear that they intend to target their support at three and four year-olds, who already receive 15 hours of free childcare a week. While I welcome this, it means that a significant gap in childcare arrangements will remain. At the moment, a parent with a newborn baby will receive support during parental leave, which—thanks to the work of Liberal Democrats in the previous Government —can be shared between mothers and fathers, helping them to share child-raising duties. However, once their statutory pay expires, they must make ends meet on their own. It can therefore be of little surprise that many parents see the end of their statutory parental pay as the point at which they need to return to work. It is a luxury that few can afford to go on for many months, especially due to the high cost of housing.
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However, when parents do return to work under our current system they are likely to receive a nasty shock. They will find themselves suddenly in need of childcare but receiving little, if any, of the support that others with slightly older children receive. These parents, who are just at the point of wanting to get back to work, will not see the benefits of the free entitlement under either current policy or the Bill. How can this be right or fair? Surely this is exactly the time when support needs to be there to help parents to get back to work, which is clearly the intention of the Bill, applying as it does only to working parents.
Indeed, the failure to support people looking to get back to work can have significant long-term effects. The Office for National Statistics released a report in 2013 that stated:
“Over the year from April-June 2012 to April-June 2013, if one had been unemployed for less than three months one was 3.2 times more likely to move from unemployment into employment compared with someone who has been unemployed for over two years, and 1.9 times more likely compared with someone who has been unemployed for between six and 12 months”.
In 2014, a United States study by, among others, Alan Krueger from the Brookings Institution, suggested that those in long-term unemployment have a 20% to 40% lower probability of returning to work in the future than those who have been short-term unemployed. These studies show the importance of ensuring that new parents are given all the support that they need to return to work when it suits them, rather than delaying
support until when they can afford it. Of course, parents may choose to return to the same job that they left, or move to a more flexible job, but the point remains the same. That is why the Liberal Democrats, in our election manifesto, specifically prioritised extending the 15-hour free entitlement to all working parents with children aged between nine months and two years after extending the 15 hours to all two year-olds.
I appreciate that that proposal would cost money. It is estimated that the manifesto policy that I have just described for 20 hours’ entitlement for those aged from nine to 24 months would have cost £1.26 billion a year. The proposals in the amendment would, of course, cost substantially less; I have not been able to cost them because they would apply only to working parents. It is worth pointing out that we are not talking about two different sets of people: anyone who has a child aged between three or four has also had a child aged between one and two. It does not make sense to target one but also to leave the gap at one to two year-olds.
It is hard enough for someone to leave their baby and return to work, without the additional challenge of struggling to afford childcare. The Bill provides us with an opportunity to correct this imbalance. I beg to move, and urge the Minister to consider how parents of one to two year-olds may be helped by the free childcare offer from the Government.