Clause 6 - Duty to secure sufficient childcare for working parents
Childcare Bill
1:45 pm
Annette Brooke (Shadow Minister, Education & Skills; Mid Dorset and North Poole, Liberal Democrat)
I shall endeavour to organise my remarks so that I do not continue for too long. I wish to identify the key issues and then to refer specifically to the Liberal Democrat amendments.
The key points are the meaning of “as far as is reasonably practicable”, the meaning of “sufficiency”, the related matter of quality, and whether all children in disadvantaged groups are included. There is also the issue, which were picked up on this morning, of those parents who might not be in work, but might be in great need of child care. I appreciate the title of the clause, but, nevertheless, those are important points that need to be made.
I am fairly optimistic that, if we apply the law of averages, the Minister might accept one of the 31 proposed changes. I shall start by going through our amendments in the hope that I might be the lucky person this afternoon.
Amendment No. 224 would leave out
“so far as is reasonably practicable”.
It is a probing amendment. I know that that was an important insertion as far as the Local Government Association was concerned. What concerns me is the lack of definition and how measuring and monitoring would take place.
I also have a concern related to the local area that I represent. When some areas are so far ahead of the game in providing child care, an authority that is not so far down the road might provide a great deal less. If we are not careful, we will end up with something approaching a postcode lottery. At the very least, we are looking for guidance on how local authorities are meant to interpret the phrase. I accept that we will not achieve the ideal provision of quality child care overnight. I understand that it is important to have some caveats, but the phrase is unclear and different local authorities will respond to it in different ways.
Amendment No. 232 is compatible with Conservative amendment No. 76. It strays into the subject of parents who might not be at work. They may be at home because their caring responsibilities for the family, or perhaps for one child in that family, are so great that it would be impossible for them to be in full-time work. However, those parents, of all parents, need good quality child care to help them. That is an important principle.
We need to give support to families before the real crisis occurs. We spend a lot of money sorting out problems when there has been a breakdown in a family. For all sorts of conditions that parents or their children might have, that preventive aspect— providing good quality child care—is all important. I am enthusiastic about straying outside the title of the clause to ensure that we pick up that special group. We have had representations from the National Autistic Society, which were similar to those from Mencap, about the pressures that such families face.
Amendment No. 230 picks up on an intervention made this morning. I do not think that any Opposition Member is suggesting that the Bill should apply to the whole of child care provision, but amendment No. 230 tries to go beyond parents receiving the child care element of the working tax credit and to pick up on the 1.2 million families who are not in work. It also touched on the issues raised by the hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) about black and minority ethnic communities, which, equally, will need specialist child care. I am really pleased that we are mentioning disabled children, but we must accept that other disadvantaged groups need to be covered as well.
Amendment No. 195 duplicates that point, but says it differently. We keep trying to phrase the amendments in an acceptable way, and this amendment deals with diversity of provision. It is important that the local authority has a duty to provide a choice for parents. In the same way that there is a choice agenda to drive up quality, there are many different types of nursery provision with different philosophies, and parents have a right to choose along those lines.
Among amendments Nos. 125, 126 and 127, I regard amendment No. 125 as the most important. When we talk about sufficiency, we must ensure that we make it clear that we mean not only quantity but quality. Given the amount of time we are taking without making rapid progress, I hope to talk at a later stage about quality assurance, because along with quality in this clause, we need in guidance references about quality assurance schemes and how we address the issue of quality.
Amendment No. 126 rephrases the same point and relates to households without work. Amendment No. 127 is important because it gives objectivity to “sufficiency” and “reasonably practicable”, setting out the factors that local authorities could consider when making an assessment.
That concludes the Liberal Democrat amendments. My hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) will deal with the amendments to clause 22, as they apply to Wales.
Some of the Conservative amendments are similar. I have a slight problem with including the duty that relates to good quality, accessibility and affordability. Although I agree with that duty, local government’s response would be, “How can we do that?” in whatever timeframe was given to achieve it, and it would need a time frame. However, we must have ideals.
On how the private and voluntary sectors and the local authorities work together, it is important to have a level playing field. There were several references to that in the Conservatives’ amendments. I live in an area where the expansion that was propelled by the Labour Government from 1997 onwards could not have happened without close work between the private and voluntary sectors. Nevertheless, as chairman of education, I pushed for a nursery on a maintained-school site when there was a local playgroup nearby. It was a difficult decision, but in those circumstances, it happened to be right.
I am with the Conservatives on the need for a level playing field, but my mind is not set in any particular direction. I want to be sure that the local authority does not go down an extreme route, becoming more of a provider than the Bill intends. However, there will be circumstances in which a local authority has to step in. We need safety checks to ensure that good partnership works consistently throughout the country.
I said that I would be brief and will let my hon. Friend mop up any further points.