Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

I beg to move amendment No. 111, in page 9, line 25, leave out from ‘child’ to end of line 28.

David Amess (Southend West, Conservative)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 280, in page 9, line 32, at end insert—

‘(c)unregulated crèche provision.’.

No. 109, in page 9, line 40, at end insert ‘and is registered’.

No. 281, in page 9, line 40, at end insert—

‘(g)any person not registered under sections 33 and 34 below.’.

No. 110, in page 10, line 5, after ‘hospital’, insert

‘or other medical establishment providing clinical treatment or long term care’.

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

As the clause deals with the meaning of child care, it is fundamental to what we have been and will be debating. Again, the Conservative amendments are probing amendments.

Amendment No. 111 would leave out the part of subsection (2) that refers to “education for a child”. This might be more relevant to the debate that we will have about the clauses around clause 41, which relate to the early years foundation stage and the criteria on which that will be drawn up. Education should not be referred to as child care and we want to remove that part of the definition. Perhaps the Minister can tell us why education should be considered as part of the wider definition of child care.

Amendment No. 109 is again a probing amendment relating to foster carers. We have had many debates in Committee on previous children’s legislation relating to the registration of private foster carers. Many Conservative Members have argued long and hard that the Government should take the matter more seriously in legislation. We have a fundamental problem with an underground industry of private foster arrangements, the scale of which is unknown, but it has been estimated to involve in excess of 10,000 children. Many of those originate from west Africa and are subjected to conditions akin to that which led to the death of Victoria Climbié, which gave rise to Herbert Laming’s report and the 2004 Act.

Many of us think that the Government should go further and make it a punishable offence for those who choose not to register private fostering arrangements. We should not rely on local authorities to seek out private fostering arrangements and to investigate whether the welfare of the child or children involved is sufficiently taken into account. By their very nature, those people—they are often extended relatives or family contacts, particularly with overseas families, especially those from Nigeria and Sierra Leone, where it has been an particular problem—try to be invisible to the authorities. That is often to the detriment of the children’s health, welfare, education and so on. The Government need to go further. The 2004 Act holds out the possibility—a slim possibility, given its wording—of tougher legislation if the sort of voluntary approach taken in that Act does not bear fruit, as many fear it will not.

Subsection (4)(f) recognises private fostering. If an authority locates private foster arrangements made by people who have not registered their existence, it needs to take a closer interest in the welfare of the child than if the child were with those who have legitimate private   fostering arrangements. It is an exploratory amendment, to see exactly what the Government mean when they refer to private fostering. Hence, we say in the amendment that foster carers must be registered.

Amendment No. 110 defines the establishments where child care is not deemed to be taking place—that is, they would be exempt. Appropriate children’s homes should clearly be exempted, as should care homes, whether local authority homes or independently privately run children’s homes, and residential family centres. However, subsection (5)(a)(iii) refers only to

“a hospital in which the child is a patient”.

I am curious as to why it is limited to “a hospital”, which is why we seek to add

“or other medical establishment providing clinical treatment or long term care”.

From my reading of this part of the Bill, certain medical establishments should be included. For example, Mr. Amess, it should include hospices, a subject about which you and I were talking only this morning in Westminster Hall. It should also include other centres where children with long-term chronic conditions go to have forms of treatment—to be attached to machinery or whatever other therapy is necessary. Surely we do not expect those premises to be treated as if they provide child care. They primarily provide medical care and, in some cases, especially in hospices, respite care.

It is a probing amendment to see why the provision is so tightly defined as to exempt only hospitals. Again, the Minister may say that the definition will be widened in regulations, but it would be helpful to include it in the Bill. I see no downside in adding the words suggested.

Annette Brooke (Shadow Minister, Education & Skills; Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

The hon. Gentleman has made some interesting points on his probing amendments, and I look forward to hearing the responses.

The Liberal Democrat amendments come back to my obsession about the crèche example, but I do not need to repeat the argument. I was allowed to use the word crèche in amendment No. 280. That is part of the problem—I was told that the amendment might not be accepted if I used a word that was not in the Bill. That is how I got tangled up in trying to make similar proposals in various places. Amendments Nos. 280 and 281 have much the same purpose in that they try to point out that if something is not regulated, it should perhaps not be considered as child care so that parents will understand that it is unregulated.

The Minister kindly provided us with a copy of the exemptions power, which I have skimmed through but have not had time to read fully. It mentions the crèche and my point about being open for less than two hours, as well as a number of other circumstances in which some form of looking after children will not be regulated. I accept that we do not want to create over-burdensome regulation when there are bound to be   instances in which the temporary looking after of children will be required. However, the conclusion of the exemptions power says:

“Exemptions are important in ensuring a proportionate approach to registration and inspection. However, in every case, providers that are exempted will be able to join the Ofsted Childcare Register and enjoy the benefits that it brings. In particular, we will ask Ofsted to encourage those providers for whom registration ceases to be compulsory to join the new register and continue to be tax creditable.”

I agree with that, and I would see it as a positive if it meant that Ofsted would be respected because people had voluntarily signed up to the register. However, I am a little concerned that it might give even more credibility and strength to parents’ belief that a particular facility is regulated when it is not. I am not sure what that means, and I welcome the opportunity to ask the Minister to address my concerns, which come back to the point that a parent has to know when looking after children is unregulated. I prefer not use the term child care in such circumstances.

Beverley Hughes (Minister of State (Children, Young People and Families), Department for Education and Skills; Stretford & Urmston, Labour)

I am perplexed by amendment No. 111. It seems to strike at one of the main principles of the Bill, and one of our main objectives. It would exclude education and supervised activities from the definition of care, and, therefore, of child care. In practice, that would perpetuate the split between education and care for young children, which we are trying to remove. I thought that we wanted to remove that distinction because we all agreed that the way in which young children learn and develop—the way, therefore, in which many providers provide care—depends on the integration of education and care. For young children, those things happen together; they are indistinguishable. Care cannot be considered to be of good quality unless it provides young children with opportunities to develop. That is why I am perplexed: the amendment seems to seek to undo one of the central aims of the Bill.

In the case of school-age children, local authorities would be required only to deliver child care that did not have any educational content, which I am sure is not intended to be an outcome of the amendment. It would also allow providers to avoid registering by declaring that they were delivering education, not care. That would undermine the essential safeguard that registration gives parents and children. I hope that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham will agree to withdraw that amendment.

On amendment No. 109, I think it absolutely important that the welfare of children who are privately fostered is safeguarded and protected. The hon. Gentleman took part in the discussions when the 2004 Act was going through Parliament, and he acknowledges that we made provision in that Act by updating the law on private fostering arrangements, strengthening the private fostering notification scheme and providing additional safeguards. I accept that the notification scheme is not a registration scheme, but he is aware of why that was done. It is still soon since the 2004 Act was passed and all the debates that took place on it. We concluded then that we ought first to try a notification scheme that offers a robust framework of safeguards, and we should see how that works before   introducing a tighter system of registration. In the lifetime of the registration provisions of the 2004 Act, up to November 2008, the Government will report on the impact of the new measures, the regulations and the national minimum standards before deciding whether they are sufficient and whether we need to introduce a registration scheme.

Amendments Nos. 280 and 281 seek to exclude unregulated crèches and early-years providers not required to be registered under clauses 33 and 34 from the meaning of child care in clause 18. That would mean that early-years provision for three to five-year-olds in schools would not be included in the definition of child care either, because that is not required to be registered under clause 34. It would also have the presumably unintentional effect of excluding all child care for the over-fives from the meaning of child care, because that is not required to be registered under clause 34.

I share the desire of the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole to raise the quality of child care as high as possible, but we need to consider the matter from the perspective of parents. The reformed inspection and regulation regime in part 3 will ensure that the majority of child care used by parents is registered by Ofsted and tax creditable. All parents have a role to play by making responsible, informed choices about how they use child care. They will be supported in making those choices by the information provided by local authorities, including on the differences between registered and unregistered child care.

On amendment No. 110, I assure the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham that the definition of a hospital is the same in the Bill as in the Care Standards Act 2000. It covers all the examples he gave in relation to long-term and short-term health care treatment and palliative care and includes hospices for children, so there is no need to add other medical establishments. Everything we can think of is encompassed by the definition. With those explanations, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the amendment.

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

I am grateful to the Minister, but amendment No. 111 is intended to be preliminary to the group on foundation years around clause 41. We are concentrating on children under five, for whom education in the traditional sense of the word is not appropriate, so we have had some explanation and a bit of a setting out of the ground on which we will be manning the barricades when it comes to that later section.

Maria Eagle (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Children and Families), Department for Education and Skills; Liverpool, Garston, Labour)

Staffing?

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

Or even staffing the barricades, as the Minister says. I do not wish to be even more confrontational.

On amendment No. 109, I do not share the Minister’s assurance that everything will be made rosy by the weak notification provisions in the Children Act. Effectively, we have had a notification scheme for   a number of years, and all that is in the Bill is a slightly more formalised scheme. Many of us fear that that will not take us any further forward.

A further fear is about something we have never quite understood, which is why, all the way through the Children and Adoption Bill, the Children Bill and previous responses to reports such as that from Herbert Laming, the Government were not prepared to take the plunge and go for a formal private fostering registration scheme. I genuinely remain mystified as to why, despite a lot of advice to the contrary from their own Members with great experience of child social work, they have not been prepared to go all the way. The amendment was probing, and I shall not push it to a vote at this stage, but I remain perplexed by the Government’s stand on the issue.

Finally I come to amendment No. 110. If the definition of hospital under the Care Standards Act 2000 extends to all the facilities for long-term care hospices, that is precisely the point that I was trying to stress. Presumably that fact will accompany the Bill in guidance. It would have been useful to have had some reference or definition in the Bill. The Minister’s assurance is welcome, and on that basis I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.