Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life

Statement

My Lords, with permission I will now make a Statement to update the House on this Government’s vital work to change our country for good by giving every child the best start in life.

“The focus today is firmly on our youngest children, but the impact will be much broader. This Government are building a stronger, fairer society and will lay the foundations in the earliest years of our children’s lives. Because we are determined to tackle the root causes of problems, not just the symptoms, we begin at the start. The inequalities that stain our country, the way in which opportunity is heaped on some but hidden from others—those disparities do not suddenly spring up in adulthood. Our babies are born into an unequal world and the inequality grows with them, right from those very first days when we carry them home from hospital.

Those early differences in the support their families can get, in the early education and childcare their parents can access, in the opportunities they have to start exploring: these are the differences, these and many more, that we all know take hold early on. The winds of fortune are there already on the first day of school—a gale at the backs of some; a blizzard in the faces of others. These are the differences that mean that some children arrive in the classroom not yet ready to learn. These are the differences that mean that while two-thirds of children reach a good level of development by age five, a third do not. These are the differences that fuel the injustice that half of our children on free school meals miss that milestone.

A Labour Government will not tolerate our children being failed like this. Within months of taking office, we set out in our plan for change our ambition for a record share of children reaching a good level of development by the age of five, because it matters so much for those young lives. It goes further—it sets the tone. Forty per cent of the disadvantage gap at the age of 16 is already there at the age of five.

Next month, we know that many young people across our country will pick up their exam results. Some will do well, but sadly some others will be disappointed, and those results-day stories of smiles and frowns for our young people begin to be written in the first years of their lives, so if we want to build an education system where every child can achieve and thrive, if we want to grow a society where the opportunity to get on is open to all, and if we want to deliver the change that the country so desperately needs, we have to focus on the early years. We have to give every child the best start in life. That is where my priority as Secretary of State lies, and that is why, just 12 months after entering government, I am proud to be here today to set out our ‘best start in life’ strategy, which we are determined will change this country for good.

Giving every child the best start in life begins with families. Becoming a parent or carer is full of joy and wonder, but it can sometimes be hard, and it can feel isolating too, so parents and carers need to know that they can tap into a community of support. They need to know that they are not alone, but we are falling short. One in four families with children under five struggle to get trusted advice; for families on low incomes, it is one in three.

It was not always like this. There was a time when the Government cared deeply about children’s development. Members across this House will know all about Sure Start, the quiet revolution in the lives of our children carried out by the last Labour Government. Sure Start was one of the proudest achievements of that Labour Government, and I am proud to build on its legacy. We remember all the good it did for our children, for our communities and for our country. Sure Start raised exam results and reduced hospitalisations. It improved early identification and boosted physical health and mental health. It reached disadvantaged families and made a difference to their lives.

Sure Start was a triumph. Of course, it was not perfect—no programme ever is—but it worked in so many ways and for so many families, and never more so than when it stuck to its principles and brought together the excellent services that parents need. At the heart of its success were the children’s centres: one-stop shops where families knew where they could go for help; a comforting and consistent offer of support all in one place. There are many ways in which 14 years of Conservative Government damaged our country and society, but the vandalism they inflicted on the lives of our youngest children—tearing these services out of communities, deepening inequalities and abandoning families—should never be forgotten. Today, the Government will right that terrible wrong and restore hope to families.

Our Best Start service will honour the proud legacy of Sure Start. Today’s Labour Government stand on the shoulders of those who went before, but we do so to look forward to the better future our children deserve, not back to the past. That is how we will deliver for a new generation of families.

We will introduce a new Best Start family service delivered through Best Start family hubs: the first step to a national family service that ensures that families can easily get the right support for their children from conception to age five, giving parents the freedom to focus on loving their children. Today, we announce the National Year of Reading for 2026. We want to give parents more time to read with their children, to grow a love of learning that starts in the home and flows throughout a child’s life.

Best Start family hubs will be open to all, rooted in disadvantaged communities. They will work with nurseries, childminders, schools, health services, libraries and local voluntary groups—a whole community coming together around one goal: to give children the best possible start in life. Our Best Start digital service means we are ready for the future, linking families to their local Best Start family hubs and exploring how the power of AI can help parents to find the right information.

We will make early education and care more affordable and easier to access. From the day this Government won the backing of the British people, we have set about delivering the entitlement of 30 hours of government-funded childcare a week for working families, backed by funding reaching £9 billion next year. Last July, we inherited a pledge without a plan, but the Government are delivering on our promise to parents. I know how much it matters that promises made are promises kept—to the future of our country and to the trust between families and their Government. The cost of childcare will no longer price parents out of jobs they love; instead, they will have the choice and freedom to work the hours they want, and an average of £7,500 a year back in their pockets.

I thank all those who are working with us to drive that change, from private to school-based nurseries, group-based providers, childminders, dedicated professionals and early years educators who are transforming life chances. With almost £370 million provided by the Chancellor at the spending review, we are building and expanding more nurseries in primary schools, with the first of the 6,000 extra places from September this year. Soon enough, 80% of childcare in this country will be government-backed.

The message is clear: this Labour Government are on the side of families. The Labour Party is the party of the family. That means that childcare must be better linked to educational priorities, better geared to closing attainment gaps, and better focused on all our children succeeding at school. Our early years educators are too often the hidden heroes of our communities. It is past time that we backed them, so we will raise the status of our workforce. There will be a new professional register, because working in early years is just that: a profession. There will be more high-quality training for staff, guided by a golden thread of the best evidence, and we will train more early years teachers, because we know the difference they make to our young ones.

Stronger practice hubs will double in number, and we will offer new financial incentives to attract and keep great early years teachers in nurseries that serve the most disadvantaged communities. Every child deserves a great education and a great early start in life, and that includes children with SEND. Early intervention can work wonders to lower barriers to learning, so under this Government, inclusive practice will become standard practice.

This Government are driving a decade of national renewal, but there can be no decade of renewal for our country without a decade of renewal for our children. This is urgent, because children only get one chance. If opportunities are missed, parents do not get what they need. If the great nursery down the road has not been built yet, that is it—there is no going back. For 14 years, children’s lives marched on as services were ripped away. I will not stand by and watch as more and more children are let down. Through this strategy, I am bringing change—change for all our families, all our communities, and, above all, change for our children. It is for them that our strategy was written, and it is for them that we will see it through, so that we give each and every child, from their first day in this world, the best start in life. I commend this Statement to the House”.

I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement made by her right honourable friend earlier today. Of course, we welcome the Government’s focus on early intervention and support for children in their early years before they go to school. Clearly, some key elements of the Government’s strategy formed part of the previous Conservative Government’s approach, including the major expansion of free childcare and the development of family hubs. That is why, although I appreciate that the tone in the other place is a bit different from here, and I do not know whether or not the Minister felt uncomfortable at the tone of the Statement, but I thought it jarred slightly. This is an area where long term-policy is hugely important, so the continuity is welcome. I think it was Ronald Reagan who said there is nothing you cannot achieve if you do not mind who takes the credit.

We acknowledge that the Government plan to go further and, if they are successful, it will improve the start that many children get in life. That is something that we want to see across all Benches in this House. So my questions will focus on some of the detail and aim to get clarity from the Government on how they plan to deliver on their ambition.

The strategy document talks about a best start family hub in every local authority. The Minister talked about her pride in the Sure Start children’s centres, but I am not clear whether the hubs will be a physical location in every local authority and how they will differ from the current family hubs and Start for Life teams. Obviously, one of the key ingredients—supported by the evidence, which the Minister rightly referenced as a driver in the Government’s approach—is that they offered support to a much wider age range of children. The Minister referred to the joy mixed with a little fear in bringing home one’s child from hospital; in my experience, that joy mixed with a little fear can continue for some time. So it would be good to know what will happen to the support that was offered to older children, including those in care, under the Government’s new plans.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Secretary of State’s Statement. We welcome any measures to tackle child poverty and improve the early years support which families receive. Early years have for so long been seen as just an add-on, but they are actually the most crucial part of education, including the early identification of any problems or issues and early support for any problems that are identified.

The ambitious aims of the strategy must be matched with sufficient funding to ensure its effective implementation. The additional funding for early years specialists is welcome. But with schools currently finding efficiency savings from existing budgets—mention was made of national insurance rises—and the Government’s new early years funding contract, which has led to nurseries refusing new children, there is a real risk that the investment will simply paper over the cracks rather than deliver lasting improvements. Without a comprehensive review of funding across the entire early years system, many settings will continue to struggle to meet demand or retain experienced staff. My colleague in the other place, Tom Morrison, has campaigned tirelessly following the heartbreaking death of Gigi Meehan, who lost her life in the care of a nursery that failed to follow correct procedures. We welcome the announcement that Ofsted inspections will become more frequent in early years settings and nurseries.

Giving children the best start in life also means giving parents the flexibility and support to make the right decisions for themselves and their childcare arrangements. Currently, low rates of statutory maternity and paternity pay are not high enough to give parents a real choice, while the UK’s two-week statutory paternity leave lags behind far more advanced economies.

High-quality early years education is the best possible investment in the future and the most effective way of narrowing the gap between rich and poor children. As we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, the Early Years Alliance reported that one-third of providers are at risk of permanent closure in the next year, and four in 10 said they would reduce the number of funded places for three and four year-olds. Early years education provision is so important. It needs to have high-quality provision with well-trained staff. They need to see a career strategy, training and all staff having or working towards an early years qualification.

I thank the noble Lords for their response to and broad welcome of the Statement. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, that I did not feel uncomfortable at all. It took me back, I have to say, but nevertheless the challenge and contrast that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State set out in her Statement in the other place was wholly fair.

On the funding of family hubs, the difference that this Government are making is a trebling of investment in those hubs over his spending review period. While currently only 88 local authorities have access to the funding to support a hub, that trebling of investment will ensure that all local authorities will be able to develop the best start family hubs. As I suggested in the Statement, we will develop that further through the digital offer, giving parents access to the information that they—I agree with the noble Baroness here—most certainly need from the very earliest stages, not only of their children being alive but in pregnancy, to be able to support them.

Although there is a focus in this Statement on the very early ages, because that is the right place to start to make a difference, children’s hubs will continue to respond to children from nought to 19. I think the noble Baroness identified some areas in which we would expect that support to continue.

Noble Lords asked about funding of the early years entitlement and its delivery. To be clear, in delivering the 30 hours entitlement from this September, this Government will provide over £8 billion, as well as delivering a 45% uplift in the early years pupil premium and providing £75 million for the early years expansion grant to help providers meet their local demand. We have responded to concerns around funding in the way we have increased investment.

The phrase “pledge without a plan” related to the early years entitlement. While the noble Baroness is right that it was announced by the previous Government, it did not have funding allocated to it to enable it to be delivered. It is the hard work of the sector and the investment this Government have been willing to put into it, as I have just outlined, which means we stand a chance of being able to meet that entitlement this September. However, noble Lords are right that, without sufficient recruitment, we cannot deliver that.

Before the Minister sits down, could she commit to writing to me on the points I raised about the registration of child minders and ensuring that we get disadvantaged children to actually use the facilities?

Yes, I will write to the noble Lord about that.

My Lords, I welcome this Statement, and I positively want to declare an interest. Two weeks ago today, my first granddaughter was born, and since then I have spent many hours holding her and talking to her. I could not agree more with my noble friend when she talks about the importance of early years and early years education. What timetable does my noble friend have in mind for raising the status of early years educators? Does, for example, she have a deadline in mind for the adoption of the professional register?

May I start by congratulating my noble friend on his grandfatherly duties. He makes an important point about the contribution that parents and indeed grandparents can make to children’s earliest development. That is why, as part of the best start family hubs, we are providing support for parents. We are supporting them to read with their children and grandchildren and helping them with behaviour issues—which I am sure my noble friend’s grandchild definitely will not have. All these things are very helpful. We will move as quickly as possible on the action to improve the recruitment of early years workers with the £4,500 financial incentive and the professional register, both of which recognise the urgency of ensuring that we have the right people in place to deliver the quality of care and education that our youngest children deserve.

My Lords, I very much welcome this Statement; I think it is fantastic. Like the noble Viscount, I have become a grandparent reasonably recently, but I am very struck by the difference from when I had my daughter, which is now 41 years ago. First, I got three nights in hospital, and, secondly, the moment I got back, the health visitor was at the door. I did not have to ask for the health visitor; she was there. She came two to three times a week for what seemed like most of a year, and she was absolutely wonderful.

My daughter had twins; they went to term but were a bit early and were jolly small. The moment the little ones could survive without their heated blanket, we were out; no health visitor turned up, until finally one did, and there was very little help with breastfeeding. That is the thing I really want to ask the Minister about: under this, will you have to go and search for the help, or will the help come to you? I ended up with my daughter getting her people on the phone and there were lots of panics—people are scared when they have little ones around. Everything I have heard from the Minister is simply amazing, but it misses that first crucial week or two when you are back home with your bundle of joy.

The noble Baroness is right that the healthcare and support that families receive through the 1,001 critical days from conception to age two and beyond can have a lifelong impact. That is why our colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care are also focusing on ensuring that every child has the healthiest possible start in life, including by improving maternity care, strengthening health visiting services, increasing access to vaccinations and taking steps to reduce tooth decay in children. As the noble Baroness said, strengthening the health visiting services is particularly important for those parents bringing home their bundles of joy, with all the challenges that they bring with them.

My Lords, I declare that I am a councillor in central Bedfordshire. I too welcome this Statement; I think we all recognise how important it is to support families and the early start in life.

The Minister made reference to Sure Start. When I became a council leader, I had to deal with Sure Start. It was great because we had these shiny new buildings, but they lacked long-term funding, which put councils in a very difficult position when that funding ran out after three years. The second point I discovered was that they were very much stand-alone and did not integrate with other services such as schools, health, various support services and, as I think somebody else mentioned, the wider age range. When we took over Sure Start centres, we started doing more of that: we took them out of some of their shiny buildings and put them in places where they were much more accessible.

Given what the Government are now proposing and the real-term cuts that they are making to the local council funding that they provide, can the Minister assure the House that there will be long-term funding for family hubs into the future? Can she also assure the House that the Government will enable local councils and local partners to have the flexibility to tailor their approach to their local area and its needs, to deliver for their communities? As my noble friend Lady Barran said, will the Government build on the previous Government’s good work with family hubs and look at the wider age range? I do not want to be in a situation where you can bring your newly born baby along to the hub but not your three year-old or five year-old, which actually stops you going.

I am sorry that the noble Lord’s experience was that Sure Start funding was not guaranteed over a long enough period. It certainly was not guaranteed after 2010, was it? That was the problem in the last 14 years.

But to take up the noble Lord’s point about how you ensure that these centres bring together a whole range of services, we are establishing these best start family hubs, building on the lessons of Sure Start. But it will be very important that, in doing that, we bring together parenting, healthcare and education support services to ensure that all babies, children and families have access to both early intervention and the support that they need throughout children’s lives. Alongside that, it will be important to bring together professionals not only from health and education but also working with nurseries, childminders, schools, health services, libraries and local voluntary and community groups and connected to other local services such as relationship support, housing and job support. It is by bringing those services together in an easily accessible way—either in a physical building or through the development of the digital access to best start advice, which we are also working on—that we believe that our expansion could reach an estimated 500,000 children.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. It is good to have the whole thing read out; it gives you some context. As pages 4 and 6 of the Statement mention, we are talking about parents reading to children—and, before that, the Minister spoke about how good an advantage it is if you do all the right things. We then talk about SEN. To go back to nurse, in my case, I am dyslexic, and 70% of the dyslexics in the country are unidentified. It tends to have a downward spiral effect on your income and earnings. What are we doing to make sure that libraries and assistive technology are used to get children used to the idea that books are good things? You cannot rely on all parents doing this. Will we, for instance, make sure that libraries are available and that they have access to the new technology? Before I sit down, I had better remind the House that I am chairman of Microlink PC, which is an assisted tech company.

As well as the announcements that we have made around the best start family service—which will, as I suggested, link in to libraries, for example, and other important local facilities—we were able to announce today that 2026 will be a National Year of Reading. There will be a whole range of activities linking with local libraries, led by the National Literacy Trust, to encourage more reading, both at a very early age and with a focus on children who might not otherwise be able to access reading. Alongside what I talked about in terms of the additional support that we are providing to early years workers and training on identifying special educational needs—as well as the stronger practice hubs that help with advice about how to support children perhaps with particular needs and help to develop reading and maths understanding, for example—that begins to be, and is, a strong package to ensure that we are both picking up children with particular needs around reading and promoting a love of reading among all children and their parents.

My Lords, there is so much to welcome in this Statement, and I thank my noble friend for repeating it. I was going to ask about reading for pleasure, but she has just responded to that so brilliantly that I do not need to. I particularly welcome the raising of the status of the workforce. The presumption of inclusion is an absolutely excellent departure. It does of course mean that we have to be very clear that all these things need to be funded and that we need to have ongoing training—one-off training for people will not cut it. If we are going to have the expectation of inclusion, we need that to be part of everyone’s training all through. I am delighted to hear what she said about reading for pleasure.

My noble friend is right about the investment in special educational needs, and disabilities in particular. I know she will recognise the additional £1 billion into high-needs funding that this Government have invested already; the £740 million-worth of capital that is going into creating extra spaces, particularly in mainstream schools, for the inclusive resource centre provision that enables children to remain in those mainstream schools; and the investment in more training for teachers.