Clause 19 - Meaning of “young child”
Childcare Bill
5:45 pm
Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing and Shoreham, Conservative)
Again, we are setting out our stall for later debates. We take the view that children beneath the age of four should be treated differently from other children, and children from nought to two should be treated differently as well. I will not go into great detail but will elaborate more when we reach the foundation years definition, particularly in clause 41.
I will take the first five amendments together, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton will speak to amendment No. 248, which is slightly different.
The first five amendments would split the definitions in clause 19. The lead amendment has been helpfully supplied by the Clerk, I think, because it does not appear a very dramatic amendment on which to hang our arguments, simply involving inserting the figure “(1)”. I am told that for mechanical reasons it is necessary to group the other amendments under it. If we push the amendment to a vote, it may seem rather finicky, but the amendments—the first five—need to be taken holistically as a group.
It would be useful to have advice from the Government on the terms that they use. All sorts of phrases can be tossed around, but it is useful to make a distinction, as we have by referring to children between the ages of nought and two as babies and those aged between two and four as young children. We could have used a host of other definitions, but I am advised by child care experts that the two terms we use would be generally acceptable in referring to those age groups. We could use infants, we could use young children and very young children, or we could use very, very young children and very young children, but I think that babies and young children are simple enough for the age groups that we are considering. That will become important in later clauses, when the Bill tries to define the developmental requirements for babies and young children of those age groups, which we believe are different from those for older children.
The amendments are self-explanatory. We are simply elaborating on the clause, the bottom line being the definition of baby—nought to two—and of young child—two to four.