Clause 35 - Applications for registration: early years childminders
Childcare Bill
9:00 am
Julie Kirkbride (Bromsgrove, Conservative)
These are probing amendments to check whether the Government have got the right balance when it comes to the registration requirements for child minding. We clearly see the need for an inspector, a registration process and a central register. Conditions might well need to be set in certain circumstances to ensure that children are kept safely and properly while absent from their parents. However, we also want to see a light and transparent touch, which is why we would like the Government to reassure us that the right balance has been achieved.
Amendments Nos. 19, 22, 31, 34, 44 and 47 relate to the applicant being required to give information by the chief inspector. They would specify that the information should directly relate to prescribed matters. In seeking to include the extra phrase in the clause, we are trying to ensure that those who make an application will be aware that there is some limit to the information that the inspector can request. They will know exactly what pond the inspector will be fishing in. The amendments would mean that there was a rational and transparent limitation to the way in which the inspector could go about his business.
The change would apply to clauses 35, 36, 53, 54, 61 and 62, which deal respectively with applications to the chief inspector to register as early years child minders, early years providers and later years child minders, for children under eight; with other later years providers making an application in respect of premises; with child minders making voluntary applications to register; and with child care providers making voluntary applications to register. We have tried to cover the clauses under which, quite rightly, the inspector plays a role in the registration. As I have said, we would like to be reassured that that role is limited to what is relevant as opposed to covering a wider perspective. If the Minister has examples of when the inspector might wish to take a wider perspective into account, I would be grateful to hear from her.
We are keen that there should not be a fishing expedition for no good reason. A reasonable test is that the information should relate to prescribed matters. That seems to get the right balance and would mean that the information was relevant to registering as a child minder, but was not overly bureaucratic because of the broadness of the test. In other words, there would be a boundary to the questions that could be asked.
Amendments Nos. 204, 207, 209 and 210 would ensure that the provisions in clauses 35, 53, 61 and 62 would be subject to a statutory instrument and that they would return to the House before the Secretary of State could make changes to the regulations on registration. We want the affirmative resolution procedure to apply to ensure that the House has some control over the way in which such processes might be changed in the future.
This is a probing amendment. We are not concerned about any obvious issues at the moment, given that what the Government propose is reasonable, largely speaking. However, as a brake on making future changes we hope that the process might be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure in the House. That would mean that the Secretary of State would not wish to go through the process unless it was felt that there was a need to change the existing regulations.
The amendment would mean changes to the way applications have to be made to the chief inspector to register as an early years child minder or a later years child minder. Changes to the voluntary registration of child minders and other child care providers would have to be determined by statutory instrument rather than the stroke of a pen on the Secretary of State’s desk. That is part of the light-touch approach we would like to see and dealing with the matter in this way would mean that such changes would be less likely to happen. On the whole, the way in which the Government have set out the case is perfectly reasonable, so we would like to know why they want the power to change it in the future. If they want that power, why should it not be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure in a statutory instrument Committee? On that basis, I am interested to hear the Government’s view of the amendments.