Childcare Bill

I am delighted to be addressing such a packed House at this time of the evening. I feel that the general consensus that was breaking out at one stage has shortened this debate, which has been a good one with well-informed and weighty contributions from both sides of the House. We started with the Secretary of State, who I am sure has been scuppered by the time adjustment this evening, talking about the £17 billion extra that has gone into child care. She was being a little disingenuous. It would be interesting to know how that figure extrapolates, because a large part of that money is wound up in the additional funding going into Sure Start, which we have supported. We said on numerous occasions before the election that we would ring-fence that money. Contrary to what the hon. Member for Doncaster, North (Edward Miliband) said, we are the only party since 1997 that has held debates on children’s matters in this Chamber. The Government have never held a debate on children’s issues in their own time. In those debates and at questions we said that we supported Sure Start and would protect its funding, although we had ambitions to change some of its emphasis. It is rather disingenuous for the Secretary of State to claim that there are no new unfunded costs attached to the Bill. The Bill contains a large number of directives to local authorities to ensure the sufficient provision of child care, to carry out assessments, to facilitate training in order to bring about the big increase in staff that is needed and to provide information. All of that will have costs attached to it. As the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) rightly said, one of the big issues will be providing the child care work force required to make this Bill a reality. The transformation fund allocation of £125 million will just scratch the surface of what is required to provide training and encourage people into that line of work, as well as giving them the sustainable and decent wages that are all too often lacking now. If we do not get the staff, many of the aspirations within the Bill will not be achieved. The hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble), the chairman of the all-party childcare group, made a well informed speech, as usual. She mentioned the child care element of child tax credits and their relatively low take-up at the moment. She also emphasised the social care input that is so vital for children in early years. She raised many of the questions that many hon. Members wanted to raise in terms of some of the definitions in the Bill and what is involved in the ““sufficiency”” description in parts of the Bill. She also talked, rightly, as did many other hon. Members, about the problems of children with disabilities and how a relatively small number of their parents and carers are working parents and carers, with all the difficulties attached to that. The hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), who is in her place, made a good point; we need to see some of the regulations as soon as possible because a lot of the detail is not included in the Bill. It is vital that we have sight of at least draft regulations so that, in the discussions in Committee—as well as in another place—we can talk about the realities and the detail. My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman), who is also in his place, rightly mentioned the many stresses on parents struggling to bring up children in difficult circumstances and with financial pressures, and said that parental child care does not feature in the Bill, very important though it is. He also mentioned the word ““discovery””, which is useful in terms of how children develop in the early years and is different from the terminology of ““taught””, which features in the notorious clause 41, to which we will return on many occasions. My hon. Friend also mentioned the costs that will be imposed on local authorities and the potential increases in council tax that may result from that. He also talked about the need to simplify the funding streams attached to certain aspects of child care. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) said that the Bill was a real transformation and mentioned that we needed to double the number of child care places. She said that she would be setting up the all-party group of play, which is such an important element of the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading, East (Mr. Wilson) mentioned the importance of the family and added that this was a prescriptive Bill in many respects. To give him his due, he gave credit to Sure Start and said that his constituency had benefited from Sure Start projects. Mine has not, because we have no Sure Start project in my constituency even though I have areas of real deprivation. My hon. Friend also said that we needed a level playing field between existing and future providers and cited the issue of differential VAT treatment between private, independent providers and those working through Sure Start. The hon. Member for Doncaster, North, who is back in his place, spoke in dramatic terms about crossing the rubicon and about the state extending its role. I think he is right and it was very good of him to admit it up front. Some of us have concerns about the state extending its role as a parent when the state’s record as a parent is a lousy one, has been for too many years and still is for those looked-after children for whom it has direct responsibility. The hon. Member for Doncaster, North also mentioned spending. If we analyse the costs attached to the Bill, we see that it is right that we need to spend more, but that spending must be cost-effective and well targeted. The average capital cost of a new nursery place is about £15,000. At the moment, the occupancy rate among the private and voluntary independent providers is about 76 per cent. On the face of it, there are a lot of available places, most of which are described as good quality places that could be used without the considerable capital start-up costs that will be involved in the way envisaged by the hon. Gentleman. We need to have a proper debate about whether the money is being used properly. Much of the criticism of Sure Start projects in the past was that they could not be scrutinised in isolation but must be scrutinised holistically in terms of their effect on other existing providers in those areas where they have been set up. We want to return to that.