Parenting and Childcare- Westminster Hall Debate

Speech by Annette Brooke, Member of Parliament for Mid Dorset and North Poole on Thu 12th Jul 2007

3rd July 2007

Annette Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD): I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) on securing this debate and on his contribution, which was very interesting, particularly given the Welsh dimension; that was new information for many of us. I also congratulate the Minister on her enhanced role, and the Government on putting the word "Children" first in the name of the new Department. That has to be good. With great regret, I was unable to take part in the recent visit to Sweden, but fortunately I had been on an earlier visit and had at least visited one nursery school there.

As we reflect on the debate today, we can think about the recent UNICEF report that ranked the United Kingdom 21st out of that number of industrialised countries for children's general well-being. We cannot escape the fact that the countries that were ranked much higher included the Scandinavian countries. I suggest that the excellent child care provision and very good provision for maternity and paternity leave in those countries must have made some contribution to that ranking. I agree with the hon. Member for Battersea (Martin Linton) that we ought to be thinking seriously in this country about the education of children up to the age of seven. Are we putting them in that hothouse too soon, turning them off education and alienating them? There are some good questions to be answered in that regard.

Without a doubt, I congratulate the current Government on their commitment and the enormous increase in public expenditure on early years services. It has to be a cause for celebration when we look back to 1997 and look at the situation now, but oh how we wish we could have the Scandinavian situation. Even with the massive increase in investment by the Government, we are spending 0.5 per cent. of our gross domestic product on early years provision, whereas in Scandinavian countries the figure is more than 2 per cent. That means that we must have a long-term policy, because it would require an enormous switch in resources to achieve that figure. That is why, having started with all my congratulations to the Government, I shall now be slightly challenging. As we are spending a lot of money and we need to spend a lot more, it is very important that we are spending that money well.

We face conflicting challenges with child care provision: sustainability, quality, quantity and affordability. Those issues are very difficult to juggle within our budgetary framework. We also have to think of the different motivations. Good child care provision provides an opportunity for early identification of some of the issues that have been mentioned. That has to be good. Early years support and a choice of provision has to give many children a very good start in life. There should be an element of choice-we must not be too prescriptive-but it is a way of breaking the vicious spiral of poverty if we can give children a good start in their early years. Rather more directly, we can lift families out of poverty by making it easier for parents to return to work.

The National Audit Office report published at the end of 2006, "Sure Start Children's Centres", questioned whether there was value for money throughout children's centres. The point was made that much more monitoring had to be done and that local authorities needed better information to determine their priorities. We must bear this in mind. Huge sums of money are being invested, but are we getting it right? More recently, the same issue was raised in the June 2007 Sure Start evaluation; that, too, questioned whether we were getting value for money.

We must also think about whether we are reaching disadvantaged families. Again, the NAO report clearly picks up the fact that there are difficulties, and that was strongly reinforced by the Sure Start report in June 2007, which said:

"Providers found barriers to attracting 'hard to reach' families difficult to overcome."

The challenges ahead are enormous.

We must consider how complex the child care element of the working tax credit is for families to claim and how inflexible it is in terms of support. That is another reason why it is difficult for the disadvantaged to access good child care, and I hope that the Minister, with her wider brief and portfolio, will look at how the situation can be improved. I am also particularly concerned that children from workless families, as well as those from families where the parents are seeking work, should be given the same important early opportunities.

Given where we started, it is inevitable that we have mixed child care provision. In my area, it was important to achieve a good partnership with the voluntary and private sectors because there was so little state provision. More recently, however, there have been questions about how well some local partnerships are working. There is certainly great anxiety, particularly in the private sector, about whether there is enough money in the system to enable providers not only to offer the entitlement, which is important to all children, but to maintain quality and, indeed, to survive. Inevitably, when we use a market-based system, we will have surplus places from time to time, but we need a level playing field, as outlined in the Childcare Act 2006. However, the NAO report suggests that children's centres have been providing child care in areas where there were private providers. Given that we are so dependent on a mix of providers, we must ensure that there is enough money in the system and that there is a genuinely even playing field.

I have met my local private providers, who said that the partnership has diminished since early years partnerships disappeared and were replaced by children's trusts. They do not feel that they have the voice that they used to have in the local authority, and that is giving rise to some of the problems. The Minister recently issued the response to the consultation, which mentions sitting around the table more in the context of the school forum. It will be really important to get that right for all child care providers, who feel that they have been left out in the cold. As a result, we have a big conflict, which is not good for the situation generally.

Quality is all important, because poor quality child care can be damaging in certain circumstances. We must get quality right, and it will be essential to put even more money into the pot to train the work force. Skimming through the briefing provided by the Library, I noticed that the average wage of a child care worker is £6.40 an hour. We are talking about the most important years of a child's life, and we really have to professionalise and to raise esteem. How does that affect affordability? That is a difficult conundrum.

We have mentioned the generous maternity and paternity leave in Scandinavia, and we must move to a more Scandinavian model over time, because parents need to have a choice. I visited a playgroup yesterday and sat having coffee with the mums. One mother was near to tears when she said, "I've just got to go back to work, but I don't want to. I want to stay at home with my child for longer, but the mortgage is such that I can't." I really want parents to have the choice of a longer period, but the question is how we build up the investment over time. My party has made a proposal that would at least provide the minimum wage over a longer period, which would benefit those on a low salary-it would not particularly benefit those on a high salary-and give them more choice.

I would like very quickly-in one minute-to mention parenting. I am particularly concerned about the future role of health visitors. We have had the survey from the Family and Parenting Institute, and I have read "Facing the Future", which suggests that there are two ways for health visitors to go: the universal service or the concentrated service. The early Sure Start centres that I have visited have really good health visitors and many of them, but the numbers of health visitors are declining. I therefore make a special plea to the Minister to bear it in mind, as the current review is being looked at, that health visitors are crucial in all the things that Members have mentioned this morning.

Finally-I will keep to my time-we need choices as regards child care and choices for mum and dad. We also need early intervention, although there is a balance to be achieved between the nanny state and early intervention. Overall, the nature of society today means that we must put back in place structures that are no longer where they used to be.