Childcare Bill

I welcome the Bill, which, I believe, encapsulates the heart of our party’s values—to aim to break the link between people’s income and their opportunities. The Bill will benefit children through a more structured curriculum, better protection for the very young and extended hours proposals, but will also break the link between income and opportunity for those adults who wish to enter the work force but who have so far been prevented from doing so. It is heartbreaking to be told by someone that they want to work but cannot afford the child care, or, in extremis, as I once heard in my constituency, that they want to go to a job interview in order to work but cannot afford the child care to do so. As a result of the Bill, both those occurrences will be less likely. I am proud to follow my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr. Blackman-Woods), whose advocacy of the Bill was intelligent and wide-ranging. During the opening speeches, some Opposition Members—I apologise for not having been present for the entirety of this afternoon’s debate, due to my Select Committee commitments—tried to imply that the Government are introducing this Bill to force parents to work. That is not my understanding. The Government will support all parents as they make their own choices about how best to balance work and family commitments. They understand, as I do, that different people will want to work in different ways at different stages of their life. The Government’s job is to make those choices easier. Let us not beat about the bush. In the past, and unfortunately even now, choice in terms of child care has been a middle-class preserve. If one has a higher income, it is easier to pay to have one’s children looked after if one wishes to go back to work than if one has a lower income. Much of what the Government are trying to do is to extend that type of choice to all families. I believe that this Bill will do that. I welcome the new duty on local authorities to assess the type of child care available in their areas, and to provide more child care through whatever means they consider most appropriate. I note that the Bill is not the vehicle for discussing finance, and that the spending review is the best place for that, but I want to put it on record that the Government are already making a huge investment in various types of child care through free nursery places, funded Sure Start schemes expanding into children’s centres throughout the country, the child tax credit and child care tax credit. I would be interested to hear whether the Conservative party can confirm its commitment to both those tax credits in the wind-up to the debate. Once the supply of places is increased under the new duty on local authorities, the Government will, in effect, indirectly subsidise the demand for those places through our tax credit system, which aims to help precisely those people who have been unable to afford to go to work when they have wanted to do so previously. I notice that the duty on local authorities will be to increase child care supply as far as is reasonably practicable. Can the Minister give some more examples of what ““reasonably practicable”” will be interpreted to mean? Can a local authority say, for example, that it has other priorities or does not have the finance available? I hope that that is not the case. The Bill builds on Sure Start, which has been one of the most important programmes introduced by the Government. Constituents have said to me that they are surprised that politicians introduced such a programme, because it will be a long time before its effects are felt. To the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who implied that its effects have not yet been proven, I would say that that is the case almost by definition, because it will be a long time before there is an economic impact. My understanding, however, is that there is a great deal of evidence to show that young mothers who benefit from Sure Start are more likely to quit smoking, access training courses and go into education and then employment if that is what they want, and that both their mental and physical health have been improved. In my constituency, the same applies to some dads, too. I very much welcome the Government’s commitment to build on that and to expand the number of children’s centres. I want to share with the House one anecdote from my constituency. When I was campaigning and canvassing in the general election only six months ago, a person who is now my constituent said to me that they would not vote Labour because they could not access their Sure Start programme as they lived just outside the geographic boundary. I had to explain that Sure Start would not exist were it not for a Labour Government, and that our plans were to expand it sufficiently so that every community had a children’s centre. Let us make sure that we do not lose the fantastic reputation that Sure Start has, and that we keep the brand. Some people working in Sure Start centres seem to think that it will be replaced, whereas I understand that the opposite is true and that we will build on it. I welcome this Bill, which is overdue. It will be long-lasting and will have effects not only on our children, but, I hope, on our children’s children. I hope that it can be supported on both sides of the House.