Clause 9 - Arrangements between local authority and childcare providers
Childcare Bill
12:45 pm
Maria Eagle (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Children and Families), Department for Education and Skills; Liverpool, Garston, Labour)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reading out chunks of the 10-year strategy, and not even opposing any of them. That is good because it means that we are all together on the Committee in our aspiration to improve child care provision across England for our youngest children, which the Government greatly welcome.
Clause 9 relates to the funding arrangements that local authorities make with child care providers. Authorities may make payments to providers in two ways: first, for those who supply the free entitlement for three and four-year-olds under clause 7; secondly, under the powers to grant financial assistance under clause 8. We have debated those, but the hon. Gentleman asks now for detail about the power in clause 9 that allows local authorities to place conditions on funding. He asked a number of questions about whether it is demand-side, supply-side, revenue or capital. It is many of those things; it could be revenue or capital. The hon. Gentleman asked earlier today what the proposed extension to access to early years provision is—the free entitlement, if we might call it that. The Committee will recall that we set out our aspirations. We have definite funded plans to increase it from 33 to 38 weeks per year, and from 12.5 to 15 hours per week in maintained and non-maintained settings from next April. That will then go up from 15 hours per week with an aspiration to go further, perhaps up to 20 hours per week, the funding for which we have not yet sorted out in the spending review.
The hon. Gentleman will also be aware that we have plans to extend the provision of children’s centres. Perhaps he will think of those as Sure Start centres, but they will in future be children’s centres. We expect to have 2,500 by 2008 and 3,500 by 2010. The extra funding that will go to local authorities to establish and run children’s centres will be capital and revenue, through various spending grant streams. On the demand-side and supply-side subsidy, he referred to the child care element of the working tax credit. He was right to quote the Government: that is how we envisage making it affordable for those at the lower end of the income scale. We might call it progressive universalism. I do not know who invented that term, but it seems to be a good way of ensuring that those who did not have access to child care in the past have such access, hopefully with the laudable and—across the Committee—welcome consequence of giving every child a great start in life. That, after all, is what child care is mainly about.
In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s questions, there will be financial support, in the form of both revenue and capital, for the establishment and running of the children’s centres. Through tax credits, we are already seeing £2 million a day going into the tax credit subsidy for those at the lowest end of the income scale, to ensure access for those who would not otherwise have it. It is a combination of all the matters that he raised. The power to make all that available is contained in clause 9. I hope that members of the Committee will agree that it is important that it stand part of the Bill.