I support the Bill, and I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett), who I think welcomed it broadly as well.
For decades, my hon. Friends and I have campaigned for decent child care. The Bill brings that ideal one step closer. Nothing is more important than investing in our children’s future. The Bill is intended to support families, particularly parents who wish to work or undergo training, and to enable them to take such action safe in the knowledge that their children are being well looked after. It builds on the significant amount that the Government have already invested to support hard-working families with, for instance, extended maternity leave and extended paid maternity leave.
Since 2003, parents of children under six or disabled children have had the right to apply to work flexibly and to have that request considered seriously. Paid paternity leave has also been introduced. Moreover, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble), for the first time adoptive parents have been given rights to adoption leave and pay. The Government have invested in Sure Start centres, which are intended to provide excellent child care in a multi-disciplinary setting and a range of services to support young children and their families in our most disadvantaged communities. That programme is being extended, and a pledge has been made that there will be a children’s centre in every community by 2010. I applaud that.
An important framework of support for all parents, catering for a wide range of needs, is already in place, but the Bill aims to go further. Under the present Government more people are in work, and that can have beneficial effects on children. Children with working parents are less likely to live in poverty, more likely to do better at school and less likely to become disadvantaged adults. A variety of Government policies and initiatives have been devised with the aim of enabling parents to enter and remain in employment, from the new deal to in-work financial support and extended nursery provision—along with, of course, many opportunities for learning and skills development.
When we consider the employment patterns of families with dependent children, the need for more good-quality child care is obvious. According to data from the Office for National Statistics and on labour force trends, in 2004 most working-age families with dependent children included at least one parent in employment, and half of them included two parents in employment. When only one parent was employed, it was usually the father. Couples with pre-school-age children were much less likely to be dual earners than those with school-age children, and couples with three or more children were less likely to be dual earners than those with one or two children. That may indicate a need for more flexibility in child care provision.
Employment rates among parents have increased steadily in recent years. That upward trend reflects increases in both full-time and part-time employment. Over the 10-year period up to spring 2004, employment rates for couple mothers and lone parents with children under five increased by eight and 12 percentage points respectively.
The need for high-quality child care is clear. As I said earlier, a good start has been made with Sure Start, extended schools and the local focus on ““Every Child Matters””, but more needs to be done to implement the Government’s 10-year child care strategy. Many families have difficulty in finding affordable child care that fits their circumstances and is flexible enough to meet their needs. Services that seek to support families with young children can be disjointed and lack effectiveness. The complexity and inconsistency of the current inspection regime sometimes makes it difficult for parents to secure the assurances that they expect about the quality of the provision on offer.
The Bill attempts to deal with those problems, and to implement the child care strategy further. It should be given credit for building on current public service agreement targets in giving local authorities a new duty to improve the well-being of young children in their areas, and in particular for introducing the requirement for gaps to be closed between the most deprived groups and the better off. That emphasis on tackling inequality is hugely welcome. I urge the Secretary of State to use the powers conferred by the Bill to set targets for the reduction of inequality if they prove necessary.
The new duty imposed on local authorities to secure sufficient child care for working parents is welcome. I explained earlier why that is so necessary. The extended duty to ensure that parents have access to information about services and facilities for children and young people is also a positive step. Moreover, a more robust and appropriate inspection regime is being introduced. Many Opposition Members have spoken of the need to provide quality child care, but we cannot be sure that we are delivering quality child care without a sound inspection regime. That is what the Bill aims to provide.
Local authorities will have a duty to assess all child care provision within a year, and subsequently once every three years. That will be necessary to ensure that provision is adequate, and to test the role of the public sector in the delivery of child care.
A number of measures in the Bill are welcome. There is substance on which local partnerships can build—and, as many of my hon. Friends have said today, there is much on which to build: 525,000 new child care places, nearly 1,300 more neighbourhood nurseries, and nearly 600 children’s centres have been provided since the Government came to power.
Let me end by describing a visit I made some weeks ago to a nursery facility at Witton Gilbert school in my constituency. It is a partnership between the school, voluntary sector and local parents, delivering nursery provision at its best, with excellent and committed staff, extremely well resourced facilities and a sound mixture of structured and free play. I had a truly wonderful experience, and I had not realised that I would need skills in sand and water play and storytelling as an MP. It was really pleasant to sit down with the three-year-olds and have free milk and fruit—restored by this Government and disgracefully removed by the previous, Conservative Government, who obviously put the needs of very young children to the bottom of their agenda. That excellent facility also complements two new Sure Start centres in my constituency. If the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) and the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries), who is not in her place, are really not certain about the benefits of Sure Start, I invite them to come to see what is being achieved in my constituency. Those centres are not only giving valuable opportunities to disadvantaged children but helping their parents with parenting skills, training and routes to employment. Importantly, they are also giving essential support to grandparents who provide care for their grandchildren.
As a young student some time ago—I will not say how long—I carried out a comparative study of pre-school provision and the quality of pre-school provision in a range of European and western industrialised countries. Much to my dismay, Britain came bottom of the league table on almost every indicator of child care provision. We had pretty good child care facilities in this country during the second world war and shortly afterwards, but successive Governments failed to invest in child care, so we ended up at the bottom of the league. Thanks to this Government, who have invested in child care, we are now nearly at the top. This Bill should help us to build on the excellent record of the Government so far. We all want excellent child care, such as that in Witton Gilbert in my constituency, to be available to all young children. I therefore urge Members to support the Bill.
Childcare Bill
Proceeding contribution from
Roberta Blackman-Woods
(Labour)
in the House of Commons on Monday, 28 November 2005.
It occurred during Debate on bills on Childcare Bill.
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2005-06
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