Childcare Bill

Indeed, and those costs are ongoing because the assessment must carry on; it is not a one-off effort by the local authority. That is why I said that I found it amazing that the Secretary of State felt able to stand up today and say that there were no new unfunded requirements on local authorities. With the debate on private sector provision and local authority budgets, it is easy to forget the real reason why we are discussing the Bill today. We are all concerned with ensuring, as Government slogan-writers put it, the best start for all children. That brings me to my final and perhaps most important concern about the impact that the Bill will have on our children. We all know that, as part of the Bill, the Government are establishing for the first time a national curriculum for children from birth until the age of five. This causes concern for many on this side of the House. We have had the foundation stage national curriculum in place for some time now, but I have been warning that the Government were intent on pushing a more formal educational approach further and further down the age range. At one stage, the DFES had even coined the phrase ““educare.”” Whatever it is called—national curriculum or educare—it is clear that Ministers want to see children in the classroom at an ever-younger age. Childminders and nurseries will be under a legal obligation to teach the early years foundation stage curriculum to children from birth until three years of age. Ofsted inspectors will then check that children are developing according to the Government programme. For the first time, we are seeing the Government’s involvement in the lives of our children moved from the classroom into the maternity room. As the Minister for Children and Families has said:"““We want to establish a coherent framework that defines progression for young children from nought to five””." I think that a potentially insidious part of the Bill is the idea that the Government should and would decide how any individual child should develop month by month and use legislation to determine the outcome of children’s development. Therein lies the problem. It is impossible for a Government official or a Minister to establish a framework for the development of babies—[Interruption.]