Childcare Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. Today is a landmark for families and children, as we have embarked on the Second Reading of the first ever Bill on child care, ensuring that all parents can make genuine choices to help them to balance work and family life, and that children have the best start in life. When the Labour Government came to office, child care and early years provision had suffered from years of underfunding and neglect. We inherited one of the worst sets of child care and family-friendly provision in Europe, and one of the worst records on child poverty in the industrialised world. We are determined, however, that child care and early years provision should be at the heart of our strategy to allow families to make the choices that modern lifestyles and work patterns demand. In doing so, we must ensure that we help the people who need it most and improve the life chances of every child. The Bill builds on our manifesto commitments and sets out our aspirations. It ensures both that we have sufficient high-quality provision and that parents have the information that they need to be able to access the services that they want for their children. The Bill recognises that families on the lowest incomes need the greatest support. It achieves those things by setting out a new duty on local authorities to take steps to provide sufficient child care, integrating inspection regimes, setting targets for outcomes that we want to be achieved for children and ensuring that local authorities provide clear and accessible information for parents.