My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity to debate this very important area of government policy, and I would like to ask the Minister about the impact on early years provision. As we all know, high-quality early years provision is vital to improve social mobility and to help many more families into employment. In principle, this policy should increase the pay to those working in early years settings, which are, notoriously, very poorly paid, so in principle this is very welcome. The Government have recently doubled the amount of free hours for families using childcare for two and three year-olds, so that puts a big burden on providers, and the new national living wage will exacerbate that. If the Minister could provide some reassurance about the impact of the national living wage on early years providers, I would be grateful.
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