Early Years Childcare

Before I call the mover of the motion, I should say that we will have a maiden speech, and we have a very short time for this debate. I warn those who are participating that there could be a maximum time limit of five minutes, but it might be a bit less. We will see how it goes—I just wanted to warn Members, because, obviously, there will not be a time limit on the maiden speech.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered support for childcare and the early years.

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate early in this parliamentary sitting period and for allowing the Education Committee to continue its work on this vital area of policy. I am also grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), recognising the pressure on parliamentary time today, for having withdrawn her equally important debate. I hope that she secures another one on that subject.

When I ran to be Chairman of the Education Committee, I proposed an inquiry into early education and childcare, and I was very glad to get the support of a substantial majority across the whole House, as well as from individual members of the Committee in pursuing that. As the parent of a five-year-old and two-year-old, I should perhaps declare a special personal interest in this area, but there is probably no single subject more vital to the future success of our children than their earliest experiences of education, and the stimulation, engagement and support they can receive through high-quality early years education and childcare.

As many others have argued, there is enormous economic benefit from investment in this space. However, the last time I troubled the Backbench Business Committee for time to debate it was in advance of the last Budget, when I was very glad that the Treasury accepted the case for major new financial commitments in this area. I said then that investment in childcare and early education would benefit multiple groups: parents who wish to work; schools to have properly socialised children ready to learn; children who benefit from better stimulation; and those with special educational needs with earlier identification. It is a win to the power of four.

Our inquiry was launched before the very significant expansion in the Government’s childcare offer and their plans for substantially increasing investment in the funded hours. It is important to note, however, that our oral evidence was taken both before and after the detail of the announcements became known. We heard both the relief of the sector at the scale of the commitment being made and also many of its ongoing concerns about the complexity of the many schemes of funding, the overall level of funding going into childcare, particularly for three and four-year-olds, and the many serious and ongoing pressures facing providers.

I am enormously grateful to the many expert witnesses, parents, providers, academics, campaigners, childminders and nursery practitioners who gave evidence to us. Indeed, it is worth noting that this inquiry received more written submissions than any other in the life of my Committee and, in so far as my Clerks recall, any other inquiry in the history of the Education Committee. I put on record my thanks to the Clerks of the Committee and their apprentice, who had to handle an unprecedented quantity of material with calm determination and expertise.

I remind Members that this is a maiden speech and there will be no interruptions.

I thank the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) for securing this important debate on support for childcare and the early years.

In my constituency of Selby and Ainsty enormous challenges exist for children who have additional needs and who sit at that critical juncture between the early years and key stage 1. One reason for that is the failure to build a special educational needs and disabilities school for the Selby area of my constituency, despite Department for Education funding having been allocated since 2019. That forces parents to make an impossible choice: they can place their children in mainstream schools that do not suit their needs, educate them at home with little support or have them travel for hours a day to attend schools in Harrogate or Scarborough. This outrageous situation cannot continue and, as Selby and Ainsty’s Member of Parliament, I will fight tirelessly for spades in the ground to provide the SEND school those children so desperately need.

If you will permit me, Mr Speaker, I would like in my maiden speech to tell hon. Members about my beautiful constituency of Selby and Ainsty, but before I do so I too condemn the barbaric attack by Hamas terrorists on Israel last week and send my profound condolences and personal solidarity to all innocent civilians caught in the terrible violence that has engulfed Israel and Palestine.

I would also like to take a moment to welcome another new Member to their place: my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Michael Shanks). He is a person of integrity and intelligence, who I greatly look forward to working alongside, as we learn to navigate this formidable place together and show our constituents the difference that a hard-working Labour MP can make.

People in my constituency of Selby and Ainsty represent the best of Yorkshire. They are community-orientated, but personally resilient; hopeful and proud, but grounded and pragmatic; willing to give people a fair hearing, but never afraid to speak truth to power. It is that independent-minded outlook that I believe explains the most exciting political moments in our area’s past, because I am not the first by-election candidate to cause a national upset in our part of the world.

I am now putting a four-minute limit on speeches.

I warmly welcome the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather) to his place. I am sure that he is going to be an absolute asset to his area. Not many people may know that, although I am a Member of Parliament in Cornwall, I was born and raised in North Yorkshire. I therefore wonder why none of the children in his constituency wants to go to school in Scarborough, because I thought it was a fabulous place to go to school. I understand his campaign, however, and I admire his confidence and desire to stop older people and younger people being pitted against each other. He made me feel incredibly old, because I left Scarborough to move south before he was even born, and I had thought that I would live my whole life there. I genuinely welcome him to his place.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) for securing this debate, and I also thank the whole of the Education Committee. This is a truly important debate and I agree with most of his recommendations today. This Government have made strides in improving the quality of childcare. As a parent with a young child at home—she is nine now—it was not that long ago that I also took an interest in these matters. It is important for all working parents and all parents who need to go into training to improve their lives that we take this sector very seriously and see what we can do to make things better.

During the spring Budget statement, I was incredibly proud to sit on these green Benches as part of a Government who were supporting childcare and early years, putting them at the heart of their long-term economic strategy. It is something that I have long campaigned for. With the Chancellor pledging to double the Government’s support from £4 billion to £8 billion by 2027-28, there is no doubt that we are serious about getting to grips with this issue. I feel that I can hold my head up high at my daughter’s school gates, in the knowledge that working parents in Truro and Falmouth will save, on average, up to £6,500 a year on their childcare bills. This really matters to all the people in my constituency.

It is never going to be straightforward to expand on that scale in what is a predominantly private sector-led service. That is why I also appreciate the pragmatic steps that the Government are taking to ensure the deliverability of promises and to try to take the sector with them. The necessary changes being made to the staff-to-child ratios, which can be controversial, are actually bringing them in line with those in Scotland and other countries. I believe that gives childcare providers the freedom necessary to deliver 30 hours of free childcare in the short term, while knowing that perhaps we need a longer-term solution. That is combined with the Government’s work to encourage people back into the childcare sector. I am excited by that expansion, which will have a positive effect on the people of Truro and Falmouth.

I warmly welcome this debate. There may well be a few speakers from Northern Ireland today, which illustrates the fact that there is a real crisis in Northern Ireland, where we are being left behind. The Government talk a lot about so-called super-parity measures in Northern Ireland, but this is an example of a super-disparity that urgently needs to be addressed. We do not have a devolved Assembly functioning in Northern Ireland. That is an ongoing crisis, but this is a crisis for households and families, and it needs to be addressed urgently by someone with Government authority of some kind.

Parents are really struggling with childcare costs—in many cases, they are greater than their mortgage costs, which we know are challenging. That puts into context the sheer scale of the problem that families face. Childcare is vital infrastructure, both social and economic. It is a form of early intervention, early education, an anti-poverty measure and a means to improve economic activity, long-term productivity and gender equality. The Government have rightly addressed those things, but we need an affordable and high-quality childcare policy.

We have concerns about the 30 free hours scheme that is in place in England. We do not feel that it is appropriate—it is certainly not the measure we want in Northern Ireland. Last week, my party published a paper on childcare and what we could do differently in our region. We have listened to expert evidence—some of which is reflected in the Select Committee’s report and recommendations—that the free hours approach fails children in low-income households; distorts the market for childcare, creating issues in the sustainability of supply; and centres on parental employment rather than on the child. We need to do things differently around universal benefits, which will help to stabilise and enhance the sector and provision.

The sustainability of the sector is an important factor. We should not be in denial about the fact that a lot of labour from other parts of the world, including the European Union, was vital in sustaining the childcare sector. That is also a pressure point under the new dispensation. This is a key investment that we want to make in our future, and one that the Government have to make—preferably through a restored Assembly. In the absence of that, I call on the UK Government to intervene, because the parents and children of Northern Ireland cannot wait any longer for a properly resourced childcare scheme.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) on securing this important debate. At the outset, I should declare that two of my three children are below school age. We are very lucky that we have found an exceptional childminder and a superb pre-school that my two sons enjoy every day of the school week. However, from talking to many mums and dads around my constituency, I know it is not always easy to find the right childminder, nursery, pre-school or whichever setting they want and is right for their child. When they do find it, it is even more difficult to pay for it and to meet the high costs of childcare.

I warmly congratulate the Government on the massive increase in spending on subsidised childcare that will apply from 2025 to children as young as nine months old, and when the Chancellor announced it, I welcomed it. However, whenever there is a great announcement such as that, there needs to be significant scrutiny of the detail. We need to iron out any of the gremlins that might be in there. In the limited time we have, I want principally to outline two points through the lens of a wonderful childcare setting in my constituency, Big Top Nursery in the village of Waddesdon, which I visited earlier this year.

The first point relates to the funding rates that we have as of this academic year. I would really appreciate it if the Minister could meet me at some point to go through the detail further. However, I inform the House that, on the current rate the Government will pay, compared with what it costs Big Top Nursery to provide childcare, it is currently losing £1.40 an hour on a three-year-old, which equates to £14 a day. For a child who goes to Big Top for 22 hours a week, which is a standard placement for that setting, the nursery is making a loss of £30.80 per week, which across those 22 hours-a-week children adds up to a loss of £1,500 every single year. That amount of money is not sustainable if that private nursery is going to remain in business and provide the excellent childcare that it does in the long term. Either we need to find a way to ensure that nurseries can charge a top-up, with the “free hours”, as they are badged, actually rebadged as subsidised childcare—not creating the expectation that everything is free, welcome though the funding is—or there needs to be another model that recognises that such a gap exists across thousands of settings across the country.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather) on a full political speech delivered with real energy, style and passion, though I could have done without the age joke.

I sat on the last Childcare Bill Committee seven years ago, and I warned then that the plans would not fly because of lack of investment. We have just heard an example of that from the hon. Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith). The Minister all those years ago said that the market would create itself. It did not, and costs remain high while the number of places available is restricted. The spring Budget was an opportunity to get that right, and I welcomed the announcement of a funding package as well as the extension of the subsidised 30 hours entitlement—it was a step towards helping parents and providers with affordability and sustainability concerns—but this investment was too long overdue, and more will be needed to address the structural problems in the early childhood education and care system if the funding increases are to be implemented effectively.

Years and years of underfunding early years entitlements has left providers unable to invest in development and straining to survive. Children and families in my constituency and across the country deserve equal opportunities to thrive and fulfil their potential. The new clauses I moved all those years ago in that Bill Committee are still relevant today, but they are not on the statute book. One would have mandated the Government to ensure that all three and four-year-olds had access to high-quality, flexible and accessible early education and childcare provision, delivered by well-qualified, confident and experienced practitioners and led by an early years graduate. Sadly, that did not happen.

Childcare settings in disadvantaged areas are the least likely to be of high quality, which is why I argued during that Bill Committee for the Government to have the power and the responsibility to ensure that all our children are cared for and taught by highly qualified professionals. Instead, we have a situation in which nurseries are unable to pay the wages needed to attract early years teachers because of the chronic underfunding of the free education entitlement by the Government. At the same time, universities are withdrawing their early years teacher training courses because they cannot attract applicants.

I join in the praise of my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) and his Committee’s comprehensive report. We have 30 to 40 years’ worth of evidence about the benefits of early intervention and improving the first 1,001 days of a child’s life. The report adds to that evidence base.

All too often, we have a debate focused on getting mums and dads back into work, when actually the early years should always be about families. We should never forget that for some children, good early years care—being able to go to a nursery—is a lifeline. It is a chance to escape a violent home, to learn, to have some routine and to eat regularly. I had quite a chaotic home life myself and know all too well how that can affect people. The report’s focus on the quality of early years and childhood care is imperative, as is the focus on making sure that parents have parental choice, which is something we should all strive to achieve.

On parents, let us be honest: we love our kids but they are hard graft. This morning, I said to my daughter that she needed to drink her water like mummy, and she looked me square in the eyes and said, “But I don’t want to be like you.” Then my baby threw her Weetabix at me and snotted down my top—and that is before I came to this mad place to deal with thousands of emails.

Parents are quite literally on the edge because having little children is hard work, but add in mortgage-level childcare costs, the daily juggle, things going wrong—my mother-in-law has broken both her ankles—and finding childcare and it all adds up to quite a lot of pressure. The transition to parenthood is excruciatingly tough on relationships. We should not forget that it is one of the few life stages in which relationships are likely to break down, causing family breakdown.

I did a comprehensive report with Onward, which gave evidence to the Select Committee, and in our recommendations we focused on families and talked about reducing complexity, as there are currently eight childcare schemes; front-loading child benefits; sharing parental leave; subsidising support in training; and really focusing on the whole family existence and what we know about the weird and wonderful lives of families.