Clause 7 - Duty to secure prescribed early years provision free of charge
Childcare Bill
10:30 am
Maria Eagle (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Children and Families), Department for Education and Skills; Liverpool, Garston, Labour)
I am pleased to deal with that point. I have some sympathy with the intention behind the amendments of the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb), as the Government issue a great deal of guidance on child care and education, and the amendments seek to make it clear when and where such guidance is available.
Amendments Nos. 7, 10, 12, 13 and 14 relate to clauses 7, 8, 11, 12 and 13 respectively, but they are the same in their effect. They would require that certain statutory guidance is placed in the House of Commons Library and that an announcement is made to MPs through a written ministerial statement. There are four other guidance-making powers in the Bill for which similar amendments could have been tabled if the hon. Gentleman had not, as he freely admitted, become a bit fed up with ploughing through the Bill trying to spot them while he wrote his amendments. I shall not discuss them, as he did not, but a similar idea applies.
I agree that there is absolutely no point in the Government producing guidance that people do not know about. It must be taken note of by the people whom it is intended to assist. I therefore fully agree with the idea that documents should be placed in the Library, but it has been for some time a matter of custom and practice for Departments, irrespective of the party in power, to ensure that that happens. Guidance already exists in the ministerial code and in the deposited papers guidelines for Departments that the House uses. The guidelines state:
“Ministers have undertaken to deposit all framework documents in the Library and departments should ensure that this is done.”
So there is custom, practice and the determination set out in various documents that Ministers take notice of, such as the ministerial code, that that ought to be done.
I shall not stand here and say that all guidance is placed in the Library at exactly the moment it ought to be, but it certainly is all placed there. I asked my parliamentary clerk to have a good look at recent practice, but I have not been made aware of any instances when guidance and other framework documents have not been placed in the Library.
It certainly is not to anyone’s benefit that guidance is hidden in the Library. I heard what the hon. Gentleman said about the annual report, but it is difficult to argue that such a document could be hidden for long. Members of all parties check departmental annual reports regularly to find out what they say, and I doubt very much, were we to attempt such a thing, that we could sneak them into the Library without anybody knowing about it in pretty quick order, not least because such documents tend to be produced at certain times of the year. Therefore, I do not accept that guidance can be hidden—it is usually too bulky.