Government’s Childcare Expansion

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Thursday 17 October.

“With permission, I will make a Statement on the Government’s plans to deliver additional places in school-based nurseries, and a clarification on Government action on so-called top-up fees for funded childcare hours. I will also update the House on the Government’s response to the consultation on safeguarding requirements in the early years foundation stage framework.

The Secretary of State has promised a new era of child-centred government, working alongside the sector to deliver meaningful long-term reform of the early years system. The Government believe that all children deserve access to a brilliant early education, regardless of who they are, where they come from or their parents’ income. Today marks a significant step for thousands of families, as we begin the first stage of the Government’s plan to deliver 3,000 new or expanded school-based nurseries. From today, primary schools can apply for a grant of up to £150,000 from a £15 million capital funding pot to make the changes needed for their site to accommodate a nursery.

The new or expanded nurseries are set to open across England from the start of the next school year. We have chosen to expand school-based nurseries because schools are at the heart of our communities. School-based nurseries cater for a higher proportion of children with special educational needs and disabilities, and offer a higher share of nursery places in the most deprived areas. To support our most vulnerable children and build on the existing market, the funding will be available for projects that are either school-run or delivered on the school’s site by private and voluntary providers or childminders. Schools will be asked to work with local authorities to demonstrate local parental demand for places. If there are primary schools that are interested in this programme but are not currently ready or eligible to host new nursery places, we encourage them to register an interest for the future. We expect funding to be allocated to successful schools in spring 2025 to support delivery of the first nursery places from September 2025.

As we expand the childcare system, it is crucial that early education and childcare remains fair and accessible to all parents. That is why we are taking action to address situations where parents are facing high and additional charges on top of the funded entitlement hours. Those charges, which may include mandatory fees for nappies, lunch, or additional hours, should not be a condition for accessing a funded place. The vast majority of providers are working hard to make sure that parents can access their entitlements, but any sort of mandatory additional charging or preferential treatment towards parents who purchase optional extras is not acceptable. Over the next few months, my department will engage with local authorities, providers and parents to develop and clarify guidance on this issue, including on so-called ‘top-up fees’. We will support local authorities to protect parents from overcharging.

I turn to new childcare entitlements. In September, working parents of children aged nine months and above were able to access 15 hours per week of Government-funded early education for the first time. I can confirm that over 320,000 additional children are now accessing the new entitlement. Delivering the scheme has not been without difficulty and owes much to the collaboration between local authorities, providers and the work of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, who has made ensuring the rollout a priority. At the same time, we are helping the sector to deliver the necessary places for September 2025. This final, more challenging phase of the rollout will increase the funded childcare entitlement of working parents to 30 hours per week.

Trust matters in politics, which is why I want to reiterate this Government’s commitment to honouring the promise made by the last Government to deliver these entitlements, but the House should be in no doubt that this will be an extremely difficult task. There remains a significant shortage of staff and places. The Government’s spending watchdog has said that, in order to deliver the rollout, in some parts of the country we will need to double or even triple capacity in order to provide the additional hours. There are substantial gaps to fill, left behind knowingly by the Conservative Party. We must be honest with families about the fact that in some parts of England, while parents may receive the hours they were promised, they may not get their first choice of nursery or childminder.

I assure the House that we will continue to work tirelessly to bridge the gaps in time for next September, and our plans to expand primary school-based nurseries will help us to deliver these entitlements. Our priority is to provide high-quality education and care for children while ensuring their safety, in order to give every child the best start in life.

Today the department published its official response to the consultation on proposals to strengthen safeguarding requirements in the statutory early years foundation stage framework. These reforms are set to be implemented from September 2025. The changes to be made to the framework are based on lessons learned from tragic past events, responses to our consultation, and feedback from safeguarding experts and the sector. The consultation received 1,470 responses, with strong support for all the proposals. The department will therefore implement all the proposals, including those on safer recruitment, child absences, safer eating, safeguarding training, and paediatric first aid training. There will also be new proposals on providing employment references and supporting whistleblowing. These changes will formalise existing best practices, and will ensure that all early years educators have the knowledge and support that they need to deliver safe, high-quality early education and childcare.

As many parents know, childminders are a key part of the early education and childcare market, providing choice and flexibility. We are already delivering childminder start-up grants to help new childminders with the costs of registering, and on 1 November we will introduce new flexibilities for childminders to help them join and stay in the profession. These changes will create a new category of childminder who can work entirely from non-domestic premises. The total number of people who can work together under a childminder’s registration will increase from three to four. Childminders will also have more flexibility to operate for more time outside domestic premises, for instance from a community hall or school. These new flexibilities will further support the Government’s commitment to rolling out expanded childcare entitlements and giving children the best start in life.

Parents’ need for childcare does not stop when their children reach primary school age. Since July, we have allocated more than £130 million to local authorities to begin delivering these new places to parents of primary school age children as part of the national wraparound childcare programme. Initial delivery plans indicate that this programme will deliver up to 200,000 new childcare places, at either end of the school day, available in over 50% of all primary schools. However, we want to go further to support hard-working families and tackle disadvantage, which is why we committed ourselves in our manifesto to introducing free breakfast clubs in every primary school.

Breakfast clubs can have a tremendously positive impact in helping children to arrive at school on time and ready to learn, while also helping working parents to have more choices in the workplace. From April 2025, free breakfast clubs will be available in up to 750 early adopter schools. That will be part of the test-and-learn phase, but new breakfast clubs, once rolled out nationally, will be available to every state-funded school with primary school age children, and will give parents more affordable childcare choices while also helping families with the cost of living. Children will be able to start the school day ready to learn, which will give them the best start in life and in their education.

This Government are determined to break down barriers to opportunity. That must start before school, with high-quality early education that is both available and affordable. We inherited a pledge without a plan, so this Labour Government must work to deliver the change that families need. We will deliver places in new nurseries, tackle unfair ‘top-up fees’, and ensure that every child can have the best start in life. I commend this Statement to the House”.

I welcome the Statement made in the other place last week on the Government’s childcare expansion, although I note that it might have been more constructive had the Minister acknowledged the transformation in childcare provision implemented by the previous Government and I hope the Minister can acknowledge that for the House today. I remind your Lordships that there were five major stages of that expansion. In 2010, we extended the entitlement for three and four year-olds, commonly taken as 15 hours a week for 38 weeks of the year. In 2013, we introduced 15 hours a week of free early education for disadvantaged two year-olds. In 2017, we built on that by doubling the entitlement for three and four year-olds to 30 hours a week and then in 2023 we announced measures to give working parents 30 hours a week of free childcare from nine months until the child starts school, building up over two years. This constituted the biggest expansion of childcare by any UK Government in history.

I would like to ask the Minister a few questions. First, the previous Government, now on this side of the House, are delighted that the Government have committed to continuing our expansion of childcare, but I was concerned that the tone of the noble Baroness’s comments when answering an earlier Question on this subject sounded like a pitch-rolling to cut the offer and I wonder whether she could just reassure the House that that is not in the Government’s plans and set out the Government’s commitment. Certainly, there was a sense that the communications around this September’s rollout were perhaps more muted than we had expected. It is obviously critical that parents are aware of their future entitlements.

If I may, I will try to ask the Minister again whether Sir David Bell did recommend in his review of early years to continue with the previous Government’s approach to childcare and whether she could confirm when the Government will publish the early years workforce strategy. Also covered in the Statement were the Government’s plans for implementing breakfast clubs and that the Government were taking a test-and-learn approach. I was puzzled by that, given that the previous Government already had a national school breakfast programme that was active in almost 2,700 schools and, as the Minister knows, many primary schools offer breakfast clubs already, I wonder what particular aspects the Government feel they need to test and learn from.

My Lords, we on these Benches welcome the proposals; they are very much in line with our manifesto at the last election. I believe that all three parties, in perhaps slightly different ways, have a real desire to develop childcare provision. I want to tease out from the Minister the most important thing for early years childcare provision: the quality of the staff and the staff feeling valued. That means not just the salary but the training opportunities they get.

Over the last decade or more, we have seen staff in nursery and early years settings feeling that they are there just as glorified helpers. One nursery nurse said to me, “I could get more stacking the shelves at Lidl than I get in my job in a nursery”. If we want brilliant early years education, we need staff who feel motivated and want a career in that line of work. I had a 100-place nursery in a primary school and I remember how the staff were absolutely devastated when their names were changed from “nursery nurse” to “NVQ level 4”. They hated that. There had been no consultation with them at all; it just happened as part of the skills agenda. That is my first point.

My second point is that, while we welcome the commitment on top-up charges, we have also to recognise that the income generated in private nurseries sometimes caused real problems for them; but doing away with top-up charges is absolutely correct.

I like the notion that we increasingly put nurseries in primary schools, where there is capacity. Why? Because the primary school can provide all the other things that are available there: advice on special educational needs, and a whole host of other opportunities.

I am pleased about childminders—although I do not actually like the title “childminder”. They do not just mind children; they develop children. They get them to play, to interact, to talk, to learn and to discover. They do more than just minding—but I suppose we are stuck with that title. Childminders were very concerned several years ago when there was a movement towards doing away with single childminders; they had to be part of a company or a group. I thought that was wrong. So I recognise and welcome the proposals on childminding. It should not be a sort of privatised provision. Anybody who has the qualifications and experience should be allowed to do it.

I thank the noble Baroness and the noble Lord. I am very happy to accept that there has been an enormous transformation in the country’s attitude to childcare and in the extent of childcare available. When I entered the other House in 1997, following a considerable period of Conservative rule, we in Worcestershire were infamous for having the worst childcare provision across the whole of Europe. I am glad that people have seen that childcare and early years provision is important for people’s ability to go to work and, at this moment in time, to support people with the cost of living, but I think that the additional area where we need to focus more attention is that good early years provision is absolutely fundamental for children’s development and giving them the very best possible start in life.

The noble Baroness suggested that the Government are pitch-rolling away from the pledge to entitle working parents to 30 hours of childcare a week from 2025; that is absolutely not the case. The Government are committed to providing that, but we are being transparent and honest about the challenge it will bring. As we said last week, it will mean another 75,000 childcare places and over 30,000 more staff will be necessary; that is a big challenge that needs a plan, not just an aspiration.

I am sorry that the noble Baroness thought that the comms at the beginning of the school year were a little on the quiet side; I did a whole morning media round on this and shouted it from the rooftops. I am pleased that we were able to celebrate 320,000 more parents getting their childcare entitlement this year, but there is certainly more that we need to do. That is why we will work to look more strategically at what we need to do to develop the early years sector and have undertaken to develop a strategy, which I expect us to publish and bring to this House next year.