Finance (No. 3) Bill

I am grateful, Mr Evans. I am mindful of the provisions in clause 35, which is specifically about taxation and tax breaks for child care. This is about redistribution, and I will say in passing—just one sentence, I promise—that I am proud of Labour's record on redistribution. We do not talk about it as loudly and proudly as we should in my view, but a set of redistributive policies since 1997 took 600,000 children out of poverty. To return to the meat of the clause, I am proud of the way in which we redistributed spending in favour of families and children, particularly the spending that we directed towards building significantly increased child care provision. That is a significant creation of child care provision. It is not perfect, as a number of families are still not provided for, but by any measure it was a step change in provision and a fundamental change in the child care landscape which resulted from Labour policies over the past 13 years. This is not a matter of contention across the House. We are all proud of Sure Start. Across the House I see hon. Members welcoming the Sure Start facilities in their local community, filled with admiration for the way they can support young parents and families, and filled with admiration for the way they can be a hub of children's and family services in the community. It is common ground across the House that Sure Start has been an incredibly valued addition to the landscape of support for families with children. That has assisted and will continue to assist, I hope, with so many of the Government's goals in relation to social mobility, improving attainment, raising aspiration and so on—a point to which I hope to return in the course of my remarks. I am also extremely proud of the free nursery provision that we introduced for three and four-year-olds, and pleased that the Government are extending that to two-year-olds. I certainly welcome that extension, but I have not been able to find very much else to welcome in the Government's investment in child care. That is why I say that clause 35 is a lost opportunity. It would have allowed more funding to be directed to child care provision and to extending child care provision. It is a regret and a shame that that is not happening. As a result, the challenges that we continue to face in providing good quality affordable and accessible child care to all parents and their children who want it have, regrettably, not been met.