Clause 6 - Duty to secure sufficient childcare for working parents
Childcare Bill
2:45 pm
Beverley Hughes (Minister of State (Children, Young People and Families), Department for Education and Skills; Stretford and Urmston, Labour)
As I said earlier, we have consulted local authorities on their work, which they have been doing for a considerable time, to fulfil national objectives on increasing child care places. We can be confident about the scale of work involved in the duty because of what local authorities have told us about how they have already assessed need, given business support to people who want to start up child care businesses and got involved in training and in establishing child minder networks.
I had not anticipated going into this level of detail at this point, but I want to give the hon. Lady some idea of the activities that we are talking about. Largely, they are activities that local authorities have already been undertaking that have enabled us to get to our current achievement of nearly 600,000 additional places.