Finance (No. 3) Bill

We are aware of the difficulty in planning the paying for child care. Parents are often required to pay a lump sum at the beginning of term or for a group of sessions. They are often required to pay for sessions that they subsequently cannot use for various reasons, but there is no money-back guarantee. Parents will often pay for sessions for more than one child, but there is no financial advantage to them; there is regrettably no bulk discount when buying child care. Removing money from parents that they could have used to meet some of the burden and the lumpiness in the structure of the way that child care charges are often levied will be a real financial burden on family budgets. Some families will take on debt to meet those commitments, because parents will always try to put their children's best interests first. If they are happy with their current child care setting, they will do all that they can to keep their child in that stable child care place. Even if parents are worried that they might be unable to afford that place because of the loss of the tax advantage but can see a time coming when they could resume paying for that place, they will none the less not want to give up that child care place. If they think that they can afford the place again in six or 12 months' time because their economic prospects might improve, they will stagger on through those six or 12 months, desperate to keep their child in that child care place for two reasons. First, they know that child care places are like gold dust and that, if they give one up, they might not get one back again very easily. That is certainly the case in some parts of the country. Secondly, they know that it will be good for the child. If a child is thriving, doing well and prospering in a settled, high-quality child care place, a parent will make all sorts of sacrifices elsewhere to sustain that child in that place.