My Lords, my name is also attached to Amendment 20A. I feel strongly about this issue because a few years ago I chaired a policy working group about how families could balance their working lives with their family commitments. In looking at childcare issues, the three As—availability, accessibility and affordability—were thought to be extremely important, and we are hearing a lot about them today. But something else was felt to be equally important by the people we talked to: flexibility.
I was very taken by some recent research produced by Citizens Advice about the experience of parents in the childcare market, which really highlighted how those children who need childcare at non-typical hours were found to be at a far greater disadvantage, and parents spoke of their “intense difficulty” in finding childcare that worked for them. They often did flexible working hours or shift work, were in low-paid employment and were dependent on public transport. Their experience suggested that it was close to impossible to find childcare before 7 am and after 7 pm on workdays, or at any times at weekends; for some, even finding care outside 9 am to 4 pm was difficult. Childminders were seen as just as inflexible as nurseries. That is why I think it is very important to say something about this in the Bill.
I would just like to respond to the very important point that the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, has just made because I think it really would be a problem if this applied to every provider, as he said. Clearly, some small providers would not be in a position to do that but if you look at the wording of the amendment, it talks about having that flexibility,
“within the local authority area”,
not in relation to every single provider. That is an important point to stress.