Child Care for Working Parents

HC Deb 11 December 2003 vol 415 cc1225-56

[ Relevant documents: The Fifth Report from the Work and Pensions Committee, Session 2002–03, on Childcare for Working Parents, HC 564–I, and the Government's response thereto, HC 1184; and the Department for Work and Pensions Departmental Report 2003, Cm 5921.]

Motion made, and Question proposed, That resources, not exceeding £22,505,326,000, be authorised, on account, for use during the year ending on 31st March 2005, and that a sum, not exceeding £22,418,785,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund, on account, for the year ending on 31st March 2005, for expenditure by the Department for Work and Pensions.—[Ms Bridget Prentice.]

[This Vote on Account is to be considered in so far as it relates to childcare for working parents (Resolution of 2 December).]

2.5 pm

Sir Archy Kirkwood (Roxburgh and Berwickshire)

It is a very great pleasure to have the opportunity open this short debate. I perfectly well understand that there are pressures on time, as has just been demonstrated, and that an important debate on people, pensions and post offices will follow this debate, so I shall seek to make a few brief introductory remarks, after which I shall allow colleagues to make some comments on this important subject.

Estimates days are big parliamentary occasions. The vote on account that we are discussing allows the Minister a mere £22.5 billion on account. I hope that he spends it wisely and that he might think of spending some more of it on child care to allow parents to get into education. I am pleased that my hon. Friend—if I may so call the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond)—is manning the Treasury Bench. He is a friend in many senses, but in particular he was a distinguished member of the Select Committee in his time and has an important professional track record on this subject. We are pleased to see him in his place.

I should like to say a brief word of thanks to all those who contributed to the Select Committee report, and not only the Committee members themselves, who were assiduous as always. I like to think that the valuable work that we did had at least something to do with the little Christmas bonus that the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave us yesterday, for which I give much thanks. I shall return to that point later. Perhaps he should have more children more often, because it concentrates his mind. It is almost Christmas, and all these things help.

The Committee had a very interesting time in the course of its inquiry. We received 44 high-quality written submissions and had four very good oral sessions. In particular, I pay tribute to Baroness Ashton of Upholland, who was kind enough to come before us and help us to understand the departmental view of things. We always get very good help from the Department and the ministerial team.

I should like to describe the report, in terms of the totality of the work of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, as a clear and earnest declaration of interest in what we believe to be a very important subject. In the fifth report of this year, that subject is limited to the part of child care that relates directly to employment, as that aspect is closely tied to our departmental duties and responsibilities as a Committee monitoring the work of the Department for Work and Pensions.

If we had had time to do so, we would have explored some of the more philosophical and far-reaching elements of child care as a policy, which I think is an intrinsically important part of Government policy, and not only in the sphere of employment and work. Indeed, the evidence that Professor Peter Moss gave us in seeking to establish child care almost as a public good and a human right, and therefore something that should be made available on a universal basis, was compelling. It was not directly in tune with the more restricted remit of the Committee, but I would like to explore it in further detail at a later stage. In particular, the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), if I may refer to him as a member of the Committee, argued a very cogent case, which I found illuminating, about the need to focus on how child care affects families and on whether we should ensure that parents who want to stay at home and foster and nurture people are not left out of the Government's drive—I do not use that word pejoratively—to get people back into the labour market. It was an interesting and useful inquiry and report that demonstrated the fact that since the last election, when the Committee acquired the world of employment—we used to be the Social Security Committee; we are now the Work and Pensions Committee—it has been clear that the subject of work has had a whole new dimension. Wherever one looks in considering the pursuit of employment policy and how better to refine the facilities and provisions offered by central Government, the issue of child care is not far round the corner as an integral and essential part of Government policy in terms of meeting people's problems in their everyday lives.

I do not read newspapers much at the weekend, but last weekend I stumbled across an article in the weekend supplement of The Guardian that told the heart-rending story of a lady called Charlotte Armstrong, who lives in Basildon. She is doing everything right by trying to study for a university degree, but everywhere she turns she fails against a barrier of child care or housing benefit. The tragedy is that that is not unusual. No matter how much support Governments try to give, it is difficult to get all the bits of the jigsaw right. People try to help themselves, as we all want them to, but they still manage to fail. The lady I mentioned is not a constituent of mine, but I would like to try to find her and send her a note, because I was captured by her dilemma. It is not unusual—we see similar examples in our constituencies nearly every week. For me, her story sums up the difficulties of people who are trying their hardest to help their families: we need to do everything that we can to make life easier for her and for people like her.

Before I turn to the report's specific recommendations, I want to remind the House of the background against which this debate takes place. In 1997, when we really began to tackle the problem, the United Kingdom started from a very low base—we were a long way behind our sister European nations—and there is still a long way to go. The debate is timely because it allows us to review progress to date and to see where we stand in the Government's scheme of things. The provenance of the policy dates back to the May 1998 national child care strategy—the Green Paper. That was a worthwhile and sensible document in its day, but it was not until the pre-Budget review of October 2001, which included the significant announcement of the child care review, that practical things started to happen on the ground. In July 2002, that was followed by the comprehensive spending review that directed the first significant resources—£1.5 billion—into the policy area. Yesterday, of course, we had this year's pre-Budget review.

We began to see the policy build up, followed by resources—a welcome recognition of the high priority attached to the policy at a high level of Government. I am sure that the Minister was clever enough to contrive the PBR announcement being made the day before this debate to make matters easy for him. We all know that his decision really made the difference, but it was good to hear from the lips of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the issue is a priority for him, too. He did not say much in the way of new announcements, apart from on the increased element of the child tax credit, but his comments were welcome as a kind of payment on account.

We have in prospect the Treasury interdepartmental review of the subject—an essential piece of work that will, I hope, inform the comprehensive spending review programme for the three years following July 2004. I hope that the Committee's report and this debate will strengthen the hand of Ministers at the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions—indeed, the Government as a whole, as it is an interdepartmental problem—in making the difficult choices required in finding the resources to maintain momentum.

Having been a Member in a rural area for 20 years, I encounter pressures that are difficult when they bear down on individual families, but I do not have the volume and weight of casework of some of my colleagues—especially London Members such as the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck). I admire and acknowledge her work—she is an expert on the subject and was largely responsible for the Committee's inquiry. She persuaded me that child care is far from being a second-order issue, but is in fact a core issue. Until 1997, I thought that dealing with poverty was about getting more benefits to families, but it is not as simple as that. She, more than anyone else, led me to conclude that the Government cannot abide by their own targets—I accept that they are ambitious, as is right and proper—unless they deal seriously and meaningfully with child care. That is axiomatic and central to the Government's anti-poverty programme. The targets on child poverty—to cut it by a quarter by 2004, to cut it further by 2010 and, most ambitiously of all, to abolish it by 2020—cannot be achieved without more extensive child care provision. Indeed, to abolish child poverty, provision would need to be almost universal.

The Government also have ambitious targets on reducing children in workless households as a percentage of the population and getting 70 per cent. of lone parents back into the labour market. Those are all important aims that cannot be properly achieved without child care being central to everything that the Government do across Departments.

The debate is not just about targets, however. Ambitious and welcome as they are, and I hope that the Government meet them, the more intractable and indefinable problems of persistent long-term poverty—chronic, grinding, deep-seated poverty—can be addressed only if families have access to quality, affordable child care. I know the Chancellor of the Exchequer well enough to be aware that he is focused on dealing with intergenerational poverty, which will not be eradicated by a target or an objective alone, but which requires a consistent, long-term policy.

Chronic health problems can be addressed by children's centres that provide a package of support for families. Obesity is becoming a much bigger problem in all our constituencies. Consistent, accessible, timely child care, with back-up support, is essential. That also applies to illiteracy.

I attend international social security conferences where experts say that we should be encouraging more people—not only the Chancellor of the Exchequer—to have children. I had better be careful—a safer way of putting it might be to say that the country needs a population policy. People of child-bearing age should be encouraged to become involved in parenthood, because the demographic trends are against us as a nation. If we do not have enough high-skilled, well-educated members of the population in 2050 and beyond, the country will have all sorts of other problems.

We need to move to a position whereby children are healthy and confident and go to school ready to learn. The frightening fact is that children learn to be poor by the time they are raised, so early years education and the child care provision that supports it is quintessentially important to a successful Government policy in future. The remedy is at hand, and we quote it in our report. It is a piece of evidence from the Department for Education and Skills, which found that 63 per cent., or two in three, of non-working mothers and 78 per cent., or three in four, of non-working lone mothers said that they would prefer to go to work or to study if they had access to good-quality, convenient, reliable and affordable child care.

So there is a willingness to liberate a cohort of the work force not only to work but to study. Work is important but so is studying. In the article in The Guardian, which I shall send to the Minister, the young woman wanted a university degree, not just any job. That caught my imagination. One could perhaps accuse the Government of wanting to get people into work, but being indifferent about their doing anything beyond that. Some American states are much more ambitious and talk of "A B C—any job, better job, career." There are young women who wish to get university degrees, which will enhance their labour market value, but whose attempts founder on the obstacle of absence of access to proper child care.

Hywel Williams (Caernarfon) (PC)

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there are specific structural problems in providing child care in rural areas? As a rural Member of Parliament, can he suggest some remedies?

Sir Archy Kirkwood

That is absolutely right. There is a problem, and the Government's response to that aspect of the report was a little weak. They mentioned trying to give local authorities a little more flexibility but I agree with the hon. Gentleman. In rural areas, there is often no critical mass to get child-care providers or run groups such as pre-school playgroups or after-school clubs. There are often not enough children in a geographically discrete area to make that easy.

It is hard to fault the Government on their overall application. However, as part of the inquiry and report, we visited a couple of nurseries in north Kensington on the recommendation of my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North. I remember that clearly because, although we knew about the policy and the Government's direction, which we supported, we found much confusion about funding operations. The difficulties and uncertainty that the nurseries encountered about the security of the funding were worrying. Above all, an acute shortage of places remains. The Daycare Trust estimates that there is only one place for every five children who are under eight. That is a genuine supply problem.

During the visit, it was also driven home to us that families in the United Kingdom pay a much higher proportion of the cost of places than our European counterparts do. The Daycare Trust estimates that UK parents pay 75 per cent. of costs whereas parents on the continent pay some 30 per cent. That information was reinforced last week when the Committee visited Denmark and France, where we were told about the importance of the provision and its extent in sister European countries.

Let me briefly consider targeting resources. Focusing 20 per cent. on the most disadvantaged postcode areas is probably inevitable because one cannot do everything at once. However, I hope that, between now and the next comprehensive spending review next July, the Government will consider expanding the provision not only from 20 per cent. to the 30 per cent. that the Committee recommended, but to deal with the point that the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) made about rural areas. More flexibility is needed so that people in rural areas can tackle the issues more thoroughly.

I want to underscore the question of pay for child minders. It is a worrying trend that they are not being paid enough and that there is insufficient career development to keep them in the service of the families for whom they provide child care.

The Government's record is hard to criticise but many problems remain. The Committee made some guarded comments about using employers in the way in which the Chancellor implied yesterday. I hope that the Government will reconsider the matter carefully. If I had the money for tax breaks for employers, I should put it into child centres. I would not have chosen an open-ended commitment for employers because that entails problems, which the report tackles in more depth. As I said earlier. other Ministers mentioned the pledge of 1,000 centres by 2008, but it was useful to hear the Chancellor put it on the record.

I hope that the report and the debate will support and encourage the work of the Treasury interdepartmental review. We need approximately another £1 billion or £2 billion. That sounds an enormous sum, but it would be for three years. The Daycare Trust estimates that £2.5 billion over 10 years would yield almost universal child centre provision, although some problems in rural areas would probably remain. There is much work to do but the Government's direction is generally right. Opposition parties, Select Committees and those outside the Treasury will always want to move further faster, and I recommend that we do that.

I hope that hon. Members understand that the subject is important and that the Committee has made the best fist of what is for us a short report. We reserve the right to return to the subject, but we want to leave Treasury Ministers with the message that, by their own lights, they cannot succeed unless they do more to develop child care provision in the middle to long term. It is in their interests to put in more resources and establish more child care centres as soon as they can.

Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal)

I remind hon. Members that Mr. Speaker has imposed a 10-minute limit on contributions from Back Benchers.

2.26 pm

Ms Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington, North) (Lab)

I am delighted that we are conducting a debate on child care. I thank the Chairman of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Sir Archy Kirkwood) for his warm words. I congratulate him on his leadership and his commitment to the subject, which, as he rightly says, is a passion of mine.

Let me begin by citing two figures that provide some context for our debate. According to the Department's research, 1.3 million households are currently looking for child care that they cannot provide. That gives a human aspect to the Daycare Trust's figures of a place for only one in five children. PricewaterhouseCoopers conducted an analysis of the economic benefits of child care. It found that, in the long term—admittedly, in the long term, we are all dead and figures are subject to all sorts of different pressures—provision of comprehensive, affordable child care would lead to a £40 billion benefit to the economy. There is therefore a lot to play for.

Although the report rightly deals with child care for working parents, it can be viewed only in the larger context of child poverty. The provision of high quality child care for young children is essential to any effort to create a fairer and more equitable society and to close the appalling gap in all sorts of achievements between economically disadvantaged families and others. The chief inspector of schools, David Bell, recently flagged that up when he drew attention to growing inequalities in primary school children's abilities. He said: The gap between children arriving at school who do well, and those who do badly, is increasing, and that is very worrying". Economic and social disadvantage and the variations in access to a quality early-years experience is part of that problem.

As the Chairman of the Select Committee said, from a standing start in 1997, the achievement has been awesome. The Chancellor added to that yesterday, especially for London, where costs are particularly high. I welcome the achievements and my comments must be viewed in that context. They constitute not criticism, but a desire to close some of the gaps and drive forward.

Our report considered the fact that the emphasis so far has been on the significant and welcome investment in increasing early-years education placements and part-time provision. Again, this is not a criticism; we have to start somewhere, and there are supply-side constraints, particularly in relation to carers and teachers. We are talking here about part-time places, mainly for three and four-year-olds and provision through the Sure Start programmes and the neighbourhood nurseries initiative—NNI—for people living in the 20 per cent. of wards that are the most deprived. Our report makes it clear that, even in the most disadvantaged areas, the Sure Start programmes and NNI do not add up to comprehensive, affordable child care. The provision is, however, concentrated on those areas; we have to start somewhere.

That means that the gap between what is required and what is available is still very large. One point that flows from the Chancellor's statement yesterday is that we must remember the importance of assisting low-income working parents who are not among the most acutely disadvantaged or living in the most acutely disadvantaged areas, because of the phenomenal cost of providing care. A family with an income of between £20,000 and £25,000 who are outside the range of financial support for child care and outside the 20 per cent. of areas that are the most disadvantaged could easily find themselves paying £200 a week for one childcare place. It is right and proper that something should be done to assist them with those costs, both to allow the lone parent or two-parent family to participate in the labour market—part time or full time—and to give the child some experience of early-years education, assuming that the quality is good, as that is usually a positive experience for them.

In driving forward the expansion of child care, to which there is a commitment, and in tackling the huge task of eliminating child poverty by 2020, we must recognise the fundamental limitation in the approach that has so far served us well, which is to use the market mechanism of providing individual subsidies to parents to purchase child care. I believe that this method has several weaknesses. First, it has not been able to drive forward the supply of child care, particularly in isolated rural communities and high-cost urban communities. We can place subsidies in parents' hands, but if the child care is not available, they will not serve their purpose. Although there is a logical argument that the subsidy itself will make the care available, in practice that is extremely hard to achieve when dealing with the very high capital costs involved in developing nurseries, for example.

Smilarly, the financial support given through the child care tax credit does not meet the whole cost of child care, particularly in high-cost areas, wherever they might be. Child care costs in London regularly exceed £11,000 a year, for example. Because of the relatively low threshold for families to qualify for the child care tax credit, it reaches only a relatively small number of parents. According to the most recent figures, only 285,000 households in the UK, and only 30,000 families in the whole of London, receive the tax credit, involving an average of £63 a week, and a n average cost of £7,000 a year. This is not a churlish criticism. That help was not there before, and it is very welcome. It is helping some people a great deal, but in terms of what has to be achieved, it is severely constrained.

When the provision of child care is so dependent on individual purchasing, whether subsidised by the tax credit or not, it becomes very vulnerable to changes in economic circumstances. Speaking as a parent, I must tell the House that I would not want my child to be in child care in a way that was vulnerable to changes in my working circumstances. That is the big weakness of too much dependence on a labour-market-related subsidy or of being too closely connected to employer-based child care.

This brings us back to the evidence of Professor Moss and to the case for children's centres. There will continue to be a case for individual subsidy, because the child minder service needs to be provided for and some people need financial assistance for their home-based care. There is not a case for doing away with the child care tax credit, for precisely that reason, but the next big steps that have to be taken must involve investment in the supply side. We must provide services that will allow non-working parents access to crèches and drop-in facilities as well as early-years education and child care, and that cannot be achieved through the tax credit system. That is the next move forward. I hope that the comprehensive spending review and the manifesto process will pick it up, because I see it as the big idea to help not only working parents, but those on very low incomes and the most disadvantaged, along with middle-income Britain. We must bring children together so as to provide an opportunity for people to enter the workplace and, possibly more importantly, to provide a high-quality early-years experience for our children.

2.35 pm

Andrew Selous (South-West Bedfordshire)

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (M s Buck). I acknowledge her great interest in and knowledge of these issues, and it has been a pleasure to serve with her on the Select Committee.

My party and I support the principle that work is the best way for people to come out and stay out of poverty, and the best route to ending child poverty, on which the Government are particularly focused. There is no disagreement on that. I approach this subject with the belief that we should provide working parents—indeed, all parents—with a real choice when it comes to looking after their children. We know from several polls undertaken by a popular magazine, Top Santé, that when young parents are asked what they would ideally like in their children's very early years, large numbers of them say that they would like to be able to afford to look after them themselves, at least up to the age of three. We should try to provide that choice.

High-quality child care has been mentioned several times in this debate, and no one would disagree with the need for that. We all want the very best child care for our children. I am particularly interested in recent research from a number of different groups of researchers in north America, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Finland—the Select Committee visited Denmark only last week—which clearly suggests that certain types of group child care, especially for children under two, but sometimes up to the age of three, if not established in the right setting, is not in the best interests of the children and can have detrimental effects. That is not my research; as I have said, it comes from a number of organisations. Indeed, the Government's own study into the subject, the effective provision of pre-school education—EPPE—research project, refers to those findings.

I drafted an amendment—it was not accepted—which can be found on page 48 of the Select Committee report, asking that, before the Government provide large amounts of public money for early years child care, they take note of the findings of the EPPE report in this regard. I was surprised that the amendment was not passed, as I felt that it was quite mild in nature and merely asked the Government to take note of that matter. However, for those who are interested, it can be found in the Select Committee report.

When we were in Denmark last week, we spoke to the chairman of our sister committee. I learned from her that an important study had just been undertaken, analysing the performances of Danish and Finnish schoolchildren. In Finland, as in Norway, a Government scheme has allowed parents—mainly women—receiving 40 per cent. of the average national wage to look after their own children until they are three years old, if they wish to do so. Women did not have to take advantage of the experiment—they could have gone straight into the labour market if they wished—but 75 per cent. of Finnish women have done so, and the scheme has proved similarly popular in Norway.

The study also found that Finnish schoolchildren scored better than their Danish counterparts in a number of respects. The researchers concluded that that was because Finnish children were involved with just one adult—a parent or a child minder—in their early years, whereas in Denmark the emphasis was on group nursery provision rather than one-to-one contact. When we asked about the ratio of staff to children in Danish nurseries, we learned that they were worsening—that just one adult might be dealing with eight or 10 children. There is evidence that that is not the best kind of care for very young children, aged 18 months or so.

Ms Buck

There are a number of variables in comparisons such as this. In a country where parents with very young children do not participate much in the labour market, they are likely to be providing one-to-one care for their children at home. Why does that not happen here?

Andrew Selous

I agree that more child-care options should be available, but I also think that all this research should be made available to parents. They should be able to choose whether to send their children to nurseries, to employ child minders or, if they can afford it, to look after the children themselves.

The study also told us that after 18 months or so many working parents who had initially chosen a nursery setting for their children decided to employ child minders instead. As the hon. Lady knows, the problem in this country is that the supply of child minders has fallen considerably.

I recently received a letter from a constituent, which I thought so significant that I drew it to the attention of the Under Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Lady Ashton, who appeared before the Select Committee—as can be seen on page 132 of volume 2 of the report. My constituent wrote out of extreme frustration: she was about to lose her job because she was about to lose her child minder. She was an intelligent, educated woman, working at a further education centre near my constituency. The thrust of her letter was that "quality" child care did not necessarily mean "qualified" child care. After all, the state does not prevent us from having children because we do not have certain qualifications, but most children are looked after by their parents. Surely it is a parent's right to choose who looks after his or her child, and surely it is acceptable for any state subsidies that are available to be spent on those whom parents consider most suitable to perform that task.

My constituent wrote: It is interesting to note that both my child and I were happier with the service provided by the unregistered child minder…Unregistered minders have more time to actually give to the children as compared to registered, who have to devote copious amounts of time building an NVQ portfolio, running around the house to check no toys are lying about and so on. Much of her frustration arose from the fact that those who had been doing the child minding in her village did not want to devote the necessary time and effort to the courses that were required for them to gain the qualifications that would lead to registration.

I realise that the Government often adopt a cautious approach because of alarming things that sometimes happen, but they should be aware of the problem when the supply of child minders is being adversely affected.

2.46 pm

Mr. John Battle (Leeds, West) (Lab)

As one who is not a member of the Select Committee, I thank its Chairman and members for their excellent report, which focuses on a vital issue. I also support the Government's spending of public funds on child care.

I want to make two points. First, child care provision makes a positive contribution to the establishment of a dynamic economy. The hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Sir Archy Kirkwood) said that it should be seen as a public good, and I agree, but it should also be seen as an economic good.

Secondly, while local initiatives are welcome, they will bed down better at local level if there is a better relationship between top-down and base-up developments. Investment in child care constitutes investment in the future, and that means that we must have a long-term, sustainable structure.

I am delighted to see the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond), who is a friend of mine, on the Front Bench. We go back a number of years, to when he was the champion of the Low Pay Unit and I worked for Church Action on Poverty. At that time, our shared aim was to tackle poverty generated by lack of work, low pay and grossly inadequate benefits for the poor and their families. I am proud to have been, since 1997, a member of a governing party that has introduced a minimum wage and improved supportive benefits, and has made real inroads in the reduction of child poverty. Given that 3.1 million children are still in poverty, much remains to be done, but I welcome the Government's commitment of resources to child care in particular.

Yesterday, the Chancellor announced an increase in resources dedicated to helping mothers and low earners. That will go a long way. The £50 a week tax incentive for employers to provide back-up child care will help many mothers who are in work, and many others too. It will mean more dynamism and more opportunities, rather than a contraction of the economy. The provision of help with approved child care at home is another useful innovation.

In 1997, only 47,000 parents received help with child care costs; the figure is now more than 300,000. The report spells out what we are up against if we are to provide child care for the 1.3 million people who currently want it. There is massive need in that regard. Helping parents to balance work and family life, rather than leaving them alone to struggle, is key to supporting their role in the work force, and to ensuring that they enjoy work and are productive. It is also key to ensuring that they can enhance their training and skills, and their capacity to contribute throughout their lives.

It is sometimes said that this is the age of globalisation. Such globalisation is characterised by increasing urbanisation, and by the increasing reality of personal mobility, which in turn stretches extended family back-up systems well beyond the clusters of local communities. In other words, in practice, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters do not now live alongside each other in local neighbourhoods; they are not there to provide personal family back-up. That is why care of the young, sick and elderly at home ought now to be regarded as part of a positive economic shift on the part of a progressive society that blends social justice and economic efficiency.

The provision of personal services—the often unacknowledged and unpaid work that is usually done by mothers, grandmothers and daughters—ought now to be recognised as part of the growth of our overall economy. It is an economic function, and we should emphasise it more. Such care contributes jobs in new and expanding services. Moreover, serving each other will be the source of new jobs, new training, new income and economic growth. In other words, providing child care contributes to economic growth, and we should see it in that context.

Let me cite the example of a young mother who grew up in and went to school in an area in my constituency that had more than 8,000 unemployed people in the 1980s; thankfully, that figure is now down to 1,500. She left school and, through the Government's new deal, got a place at the council-supported West Leeds Family Learning Centre, which specialises in training adults for work. She trained in basic qualifications, and then took a course in specialist child care training. She passed the test, got the qualifications, applied for a job with our new local Sure Start nursery project, and got it. She now works as a trained nursery nurse, providing child care back-up for other young mothers who are themselves on training courses or already in work. That is a tremendous success story, which should not be denigrated or sneered at. Some commentators suggest that such jobs are just public sector jobs that are not really worth while, yet they themselves are often paid directly from public funds. The opposite is true: such jobs contribute to the growth of the economy, and that shift to services provision should be recognised as an economic asset.

Andrew Selous

I accept the economic point that the hon. Gentleman is making, but does he agree that it is important that we have some form of dialogue about the effect on children and the differences between various settings, so that, in terms of the environment in which they are cared for, we can ensure that they have the best start?

Mr. Battle

Yes, and I hope to say a word or two about Sure Start, which is precisely the context in which some of that work can be done.

At the moment, 14 people are participating in this term's child care course at the West Leeds Family Learning Centre, eight of whom have already got job places. Anyone who wants to work in nursery child care and is prepared to train will get a job; indeed, that is an indication of the level of demand. The Economic Secretary visited the centre last year, and he discovered that when we say to employers such as the Elite Group, "These women are training to work in your company. Will you look at your shift patterns to see whether they fit their child care needs and school hours?", the answer is yes. Therefore, we can achieve a better, more progressive and practical working arrangement. That is exactly the template that other employers could use.

Currently, some 750 people are enrolled on 50 courses at the centre. Some go on to get university degrees, but we need to provide proper child care back-up. There is a nursery with reserved places, but it is over-subscribed and needs to be expanded.

Another beacon project is the Sure Start programme. The programme in Bramley, which was one of the first in the country, employs 16 people, including qualified midwives, nursery nurses and speech therapists. They provide one-on-one family support, and the kind of context in the locality that the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) referred to in his intervention. Such support helps to rebuild communities and neighbourhoods, and the networks that extended families can no longer provide.

I must stress that such work needs to be long term. The excellent work of the Bramley Sure Start—and, indeed, of the new project in Burley—needs to be put on a long-term footing to ensure that it is consistent, and that people can have confidence in it. A brand new nursery and children's centre, run by the early years service, provides 52 new nursery places. That is welcome, but we need much more, and I hope that we can get assistance through the Chancellor's initiatives to extend provision nationally, as well as locally.

I want to make one practical point about health. The Bramley Sure Start organised a birthday party for all local two-year-olds, but they used that occasion discreetly and sensitively as a means to check for early signs of delayed development in those children. Such an approach enables it to give practical support, and to intervene during the early years—the kind of idea that the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire referred to. Similarly, the Burley Sure Start has begun home visiting. Improving family support, and providing early health and learning checks and good quality child care will be absolutely vital in tack ling poverty. That is what we have learned in the past few years, and it is the route to go down.

I hope that the Government learn from the experience on the ground, in order to make sure that the local experience can be knitted in with the top-down money and initiatives. There are new ideas and experiences in the localities that can be shared and exchanged, and which the Government can also learn from. Doing so will enable us thoroughly to eradicate poverty, in ways that we perhaps had not thought of when the Minister and I were campaigning in the 1970s and 1980.

2.56 pm

Mr. Peter Luff (Mid-Worcestershire) (Con)

Like the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle), I am not a member of the Committee. I congratulate it on this report, and I congratulate its Chairman on the way in which he opened today's debate.

I agree with a great deal of what the hon. Member for Leeds, West has just said, but I was slightly uncomfortable with his emphasis on the economic impact of child care. For me, raising children is more about love, nurture and education than about crude economics. I felt that that aspect was rather lacking from his contribution; it was also perhaps lacking from the debate in general.

Mr. Battle

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Luff

If the hon. Gentleman wishes to intervene, I shall happily allow him to correct the record.

Mr. Battle

I do not want to diminish the role of nurture. However, I should point out that, although current commentary often says that all new jobs created are public sector jobs, some of them are damn good quality jobs in precisely the right areas, such as child care. Consideration of the economic impact ought therefore to be taken more seriously, not least by some of the hon. Gentleman's Front-Bench colleagues.

Mr. Luff

I rather regret having given way, as the hon. Gentleman seems to have compounded my concern, rather than seizing the opportunity to say that mothers who work full-time caring for their children are performing a very valuable service, even if it does not feature in the nation's gross national product. But never mind—I do not want to get too confrontational in a debate that has been characterised by its good nature so far.

Like the hon. Gentleman, I am an amateur in this debate, as I am not a member of the Committee. However, I am a father with a working wife, and I was brought up in a one-parent family, because my father died when I was only eight. I therefore have some experience of the issues relating to child care, and of the challenges posed to children.

In addition to the need for love and nurture to which I have just referred, I want to inject three elements into this debate: the need for choice for parents, the need for opportunity for children, and the need for play. Technically speaking, the issue of play is not closely related to the work of the Work and Pensions Committee, but I am concerned that much pre-school provision is being driven in an increasingly academic direction. As a result, it is providing a different kind of environment for children from the one that they enjoy at home. Children do need to play before they go to school. My concern is that child care provision for the children of working parents should enable such play to develop. It is through play that children learn. [Interruption] I sense that the House is with me on this point, and I am glad to see nods around the Chamber; indeed, this is not the first time that we have agreed today. Such support is welcome, because Ofsted in particular is pursuing a rather worrying agenda through the creation of an increasingly academic pre-school experience.

I am delighted that my own constituents are to get more choice. In paragraph 46 of the report, the Committee expressed its concern that pockets of deprivation in towns and cities outside the 20 per cent. most deprived wards are not benefiting sufficiently from expanded child care provision. I am sure that it is right to express that concern. Tomorrow, I shall open a Pre-School Learning Alliance neighbourhood nursery in a very deprived ward in my constituency. I am privileged and delighted to do so. It will give children a chance to learn through play, on which the alliance puts great value. Also, it will provide a facility where parents can get to know each other and drop in for advice and social opportunities. That is hugely important, as it provides the network to which the hon. Member for Leeds, West referred.

The ward about which I am speaking suffers from severe economic and social need. The new neighbourhood nursery will provide a safe, warm place where parents can meet, and where children—from six weeks to school age—can be cared for. It is an ambitious new programme.

The Pre-School Learning Alliance is seeking to involve parents very much in the care of their children. It is running a campaign called "Changing Lives, Changing Life". The alliance has stated:

The Campaign is seeking, via its Charter for Parents and the Early Years, to obtain a childcare or nursery place for every child that needs one. The Campaign is also calling for the involvement and full consultation of parents in their child's early education; continuation of care for children; and a commitment to ensure a better deal for the voluntary sector as a major contributor to universal childcare. Two expressions in that quotation are worth picking out— every child that needs one and "voluntary". It is really important that we fully embrace the voluntary sector in the provision of child care. We want diversity of choice, and that means having a wide range of different facilities on offer. The voluntary sector has a big contribution to make. I hope that we do not over-professionalise the sector, and allow local education authorities, in particular, to take over too much responsibility. Voluntary organisations such as the Pre-School Learning Alliance have a huge role to play.

My other point refers to the phrase every child that needs one". Not every child needs child care. Neither women nor men should be defined by their working existence. Sometimes. I get a sense that the Government think that full-time mothers are bad and not to be encouraged. I am sure that that is not what they mean, but that is the sense that one gets from the Chancellor's pronouncements on the matter. Strangely, however, the impression is that the Government consider that working mothers who look after other people's children are good.

That worries me. Parents should be free to decide, on the basis of well-informed choice, how to raise their children, but that is not the impression that I get. I get a sense of compelling urgency on the Government's part to force every woman out to work. I do not share that agenda. The amendments that were tabled to the report—all of them sadly rejected—reflect some of those concerns. I recommend that people read the amendments, as well as the report itself.

The 2001 Rowntree report found evidence that children of full-time working mothers do less well academically. That is a difficult and worrying finding, but it has to be taken into account. We must not sweep what is a rather awkward thought under the carpet.

The hon. Member for Leeds, West seemed to celebrate the world of work, and I agree that work can be very fulfilling. However, the House should celebrate those mothers—and fathers—who choose to make a full-time commitment to their children.

For many children, though, child care is not only inevitable but the best option. It is crucial that children have access to the appropriate level of care. Children need to learn to learn. They also need to learn to respect others, such as their teachers and peers, and to communicate. Those skills can be learned in appropriate child care, before children go to school. I welcome the great success of many nurseries and pre school experiences in my constituency.

My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) highlighted the problem of the decline in the number of child minders. That is a matter of great concern. Child minders provide very valuable and useful experience, but their numbers have fallen by about 20,000 over the past three years. Like my hon. Friend, I suspect that it is the red tape and bureaucracy with which they are confronted that has led to that decline. However, I do not think that we should be complacent about that. We need to find ways to boost the numbers of child minders; we must not force everyone into nurseries or formal institutions. A home is often the best place to care for a child.

I worry very much that we are moving towards a cult of the professional in child care. Amateurs and natural parents are being squeezed out of the process. It is right that alarm bells should be sounded. There is room for diversity in this sector, as opposed to uniformity of state provision of nursery facilities.

In addition, I sometimes think that we get wrong the balance of risks in relation to child care. It is true that there have been instances in which children have been abused or have suffered, but how many more children are suffering from the decline in child minder numbers? The work of the Criminal Records Bureau has posed many challenges to voluntary organisations in my constituency. Resolving the small problems that they encounter has imposed huge costs and burdens on them.

I return to my basic theme, which is that there are three crucial propositions that we need to think about: choice for the parent, opportunity for the children, and play.

3.4 pm

Sandra Gidley (Romsey)

I welcome the opportunity to debate this subject. My only regret is that the Chamber is not fuller today, as I think that the Select Committee has chosen a very important subject.

As someone who has had to wrestle with the problems of securing child care when I wanted to return to work—part-time at first, then full-time—I am all too aware of the hurdles that can be encountered. However, I want to say right at the outset that this is not an easy problem to solve, as no single solution will fit all working women's lives. Although I do not feel quite as strongly about this matter as the previous speaker, the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff)., I also wonder whether the Government are just a little too keen to encourage women to work.

Not so long ago, child care was incredibly difficult to come by, and it was difficult for women to work outside the home. However, I think that we are now in danger of allowing the pendulum to swing too far in the other direction. We must not make women feel guilty if they make a positive decision to stay at home and raise their children. Many women choose to make that very positive contribution to society, and we belittle it at our peril.

I hesitate to disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Sir Archy Kirkwood), but he welcomed the target of having 70 per cent. of lone parents in work by 2010, which I have some reservations about. The target appears to take no consideration of whether those parents want to be in work. It sends the damaging signal that only paid work is important. Choice does not appear to enter the equation.

We have heard some statistics about women who want to go back to work, but a couple of recent surveys are worth noting. The first was compiled in May 2002 by the magazine Pregnancy and Birth. It found that 75 per cent. of mothers-to-be would not return to employment if finances allowed. In October 2002, the national birth and motherhood survey found that 85 per cent. of women would choose to be stay-at-home mothers.

I suspect that the difference between the figures arises from the fact that some relate to new mothers, who very much want to be with their babies. They may feel almost forced back into the workplace by financial considerations. As families get older, women feel more able to return to the workplace.

However, I have already fallen into the first elephant trap in this debate, as I keep referring to "parents" as "women". To get real for a moment, it may be politically correct to refer to "parents", but the reality is that it is predominantly the women who take over responsibility for arranging child care. There are many exceptions to that, and once the arrangements are in place, couples very often work as a team and co-ordinate child care arrangements. Therefore, it is right that we should regard child care as the responsibility of a couple. Although for many of us females it may go slightly against the grain to be lumped in with a spouse for taxation purposes, I suggest that there are great advantages in treating the family as a unit when it comes to children.

The most obvious reason for that is the simple fact that child care is hard to come by, especially work-based child care. We should not assume that the child will be placed in a nursery at the mother's workplace. The reality may be that there is no provision there, while there may be at the father's place of work. However, the most likely scenario is that neither workplace will have a nursery, as only 5 per cent. of employers offer such facilities. Child care is especially difficult to find for people who live in rural areas. It may be that a work-based option is the most convenient solution, but it simply is not available.

In many rural areas, the planning system actively blocks new provision. There are often very strong countryside policies on change of use. Also, neighbours in more urban areas will vehemently oppose the provision of nurseries. Those are matters to which the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister should pay greater attention.

The Minister for Women has stated previously that child care provision in the workplace is not the favoured option. However, we need a variety of provision, as for some people the workplace option is the best.

When I first started work, it was very difficult to find a nursery that was open outside the hours of 9 am to 5.30 pm, and it was impossible to find nannies willing to work a part-time week, so I had to use a child minder. She was absolutely great, and it is worrying that the number of child minders should be falling.

Making and rearranging such arrangements is always a nightmare. A whole new set of problems emerges when children start school, as different arrangements have to be made for term time and the holidays. It was then that I nearly gave up work completely, as the whole thing had become a logistical nightmare. I thought that I was alone in that, but I was struck by the Department for Work and Pensions report that found that in the majority of two parent families one or both parents frequently worked before 8.30 am, after 5.30 pm or at weekends. Just over half of employed lone parents also fell into this category. The issue of the school holidays is also a thorny issue for working parents who may also be juggling several sources of childcare. Things are a little better now, with nurseries being available for longer hours, but much child care provision does not reflect working lives. Many people have to rely on a combination of formal and informal child care.

I mentioned the fall in the number of child minders, which may be a feature of regulation, but we should not forget that many of the women who used to be child minders were probably professional women in their own right who did not seek to go back to work 10, 15 or 20 years ago, because it was not as acceptable. Those women have now returned to work and diminished the pool of women who are willing to become child minders.

When people find child care provision, it has to be affordable. Too many women carry on working only to find that practically all their wages are eaten up in child care costs. The Daycare Trust has shown that for a child under two the typical cost of a nursery place is now £128 a week, or £118 for a child minder. More worryingly, the trust has also highlighted the fact that British parents pay three quarters of the cost of child care, compared with 30 per cent. for parents in most other European countries. We need a fairy godmother, and I thought that one had arrived yesterday in the unlikely shape of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I do not know whether the number of Labour women Members have had an effect or the motivation was pure self-interest, but the pre-Budget report contained a very welcome announcement.

However, the picture is not entirely clear and I seek some clarification. The Chancellor said: I can announce as a first step that for every employee, whatever their income level, employers will be able—as long as the offer is made to every employee—to provide free of both employee national insurance and income tax and free of employer national insurance £50 a week for approved childcare. I can also announce that we will respond to two other long-standing concerns: help with child care costs will now be available when approved child care is provided in the child's own home; and, after consultation, we will widen the definition and therefore the number of approved child carers for whom the £50 a week or tax credits can be offered."—[Official Report, 10 December 2003; Vol. 415, c. 1069.] That sounds like good news, and I congratulate the Chancellor, but there is a tiny cloud hanging over those proposals in the form of the word "approved".

I am in favour of a certain amount of regulation in the child care industry, but the House needs a definition of the word "approved".It is important to know whether some child care arrangements will instantly fall into that category or whether some bureaucratic assault course will have to be tackled prior to the doling out of the £50 per week. Will existing child minders be covered? Nannies are currently not registered, so will they be covered? How will more informal family arrangements be covered, if at all? It is also not clear whether the £50 is an amount from existing wages that will effectively become tax-free or whether employers will have to effectively make a top-up offer to all employees that will mean that employees with children are £50 a week better off. Neither is it clear whether there is an age cut-off. Child minding costs do not stop when children go to school, but child care for the under-fives is more expensive. Support may be needed for over-fives and during school holidays, and perhaps we will receive further enlightenment when the Minister winds up.

I welcome the Government's ambition to create more child care places, but the demand for provision continues to outstrip supply. The study for the Department for Education and Skills, carried out by Woodland, showed that a quarter of all families—some 1.3 million—had reported not being able to find a child care place when they needed it. That was a particular problem for lone parents.

One of the adverse effects of that problem is that an increasing number of families are turning to the au pair sector for help with child care. That sector was completely ignored by the report, much to my surprise. Strictly speaking, the au pair scheme is aimed at young people, male or female, who are single and aged between 17 and 27. They can stay for a maximum of two years and should expect to help in the home for five hours a day with at least two full days off a week. That is in return for a reasonable allowance—the suggested amount is £45—and their own room. However, the term "au pair plus" is now often used and that sets out a different range of working conditions for the au pair, which merge with those of a mother's help. The allowance for an au pair plus is expected to be in the range of £65, but the individual is likely to have full-time care of the children throughout the day in addition to other duties.

Currently, beyond visa requirements, no regulations govern the checks and training requirements for a potential au pair who will have child care responsibilities. The au pair does not even have to sign a contract because the arrangement is an informal one. The au pair is supposed to be treated as a family member and not an employee, which is increasingly not the case. Of course, there are no police checks either.

The au pair industry in the UK is virtually unregulated, despite the fact that families increasingly rely on that child care option. There has been an increase in the number of rogue agencies that exist simply to cash in on the system. In most cases, the agencies are not members of any professional body, have little or no knowledge of the rules that govern the industry and demonstrate no interest in the au pair when they arrive in this country. Often, there is no further contact.

I contend that a disaster is waiting to happen, and the challenge that faces us is to ensure that the host family, the au pair and the agency are protected by mechanisms that prevent unmet expectations and demands and minimise the likelihood, for both the au pair and the family, of any potentially damaging situations. The Home Office is strict about which countries participate in the scheme but, alarmingly, Britain refused to sign a European agreement on au pairs placements that was drawn up in 1979. So the current situation remains and unknown young people can arrive in a family home, without police checks, relevant child care training or knowledge of legislation governing care of children and be given sole responsibility of care for young children while parents work.

Perhaps we should consider the example of the United States, which developed an au pair programme under the control of the US Information Agency. Unlike the system here, their system allows young men and women, with child care experience and who are proficient in English, to stay and work with an American family for a year. The system is not cheap but it is regulated. In the US, an au pair can work for up to 45 hours a week, with no more than 10 hours in any one day, and they must take accredited educational classes and also attend monthly meetings with a co-ordinator so that any problems can be ironed out. The au pairs are not allowed to take care of children under the age of two unless they have 200 hours of documented infant experience, and must not take care of a child under the age of three months unless a parent or other responsible adult is present. Before being allowed to enter the family home, au pairs must also receive at least eight hours of child safety instruction and 24 hours of child development instruction. Sadly, it took a high-profile tragedy before the Americans decided on that system and we must ensure that it will not take a similar event to prompt action in the UK.

The report contains some excellent recommendations. I endorse the recommendations on flexibility of early years education places, expanding out-of-school care and tackling the huge regional variations in provision, which are a real problem. I especially welcome recommendation 7, that sub-ward data be analysed to target pockets of deprivation within wards. I represent an affluent and leafy area, but it contains pockets that, if they were part of a larger similar area, would qualify for all sorts of benefits. Those areas are deprived of those benefits because they are not part of a Sure Start area or any sort of action zone, and it is time that we started to tackle those problems.

Much has been said about the benefit to families and the workplace, but we must not lose sight of the most important question—whether children are benefiting from the system. We must increase the number of places, but not through a low-cost option, provided by women in low-paid jobs. It cannot be done on the cheap. It must be properly funded and properly respected.

3.19 pm

Mr. Paul Goodman (Wycombe)

I signed the report that we are debating wearing my hat as a member of the Select Committee. If I may wear that hat for a moment longer, I congratulate the Chairman of the Committee, the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Sir Archy Kirkwood), on his skilled chairmanship. Like him, I found the subject more and more intriguing as the Committee proceedings continued.

I speak today from the Front Bench, wearing another hat. I am sure that all hon. Members will agree that this has been a good debate and I want to pick up some points. I congratulate the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond), who has recently taken over some new ministerial responsibilities for child care. As the Chairman of the Select Committee said, the Minister, as a former member of the Select Committee, knows the territory well and I am sure that he will find child care as challenging and enthralling as we all did when we undertook our inquiry.

I am sure that the Minister agrees that, as the report emphasised, decisions about child care are deeply emotionally charged for any working parent of young children. The hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) was keen to emphasise that point in her strong contribution to the compilation of the report. There are few more emotionally charged decisions for any parent—especially perhaps for lone mothers, who are, by definition., without a partner—than the decision to trust their child to someone else, particularly a stranger or strangers. That emotional charge is intensified by the pressure of modern life on the work-life balance of women and families. In that context, I shall quote the evidence of a nurse, which the GMB quoted to the Committee. The nurse said: Child care is a hideous stressful nightmare. My daughter is exhausted as she is up at 5.30 some days. She is woken early (I have no transport), walked to a childminder which takes half an hour. She's been up for 3 hours before she's at school. Some days it is awful, it really is. I cite that evidence to remind the House, if it needed reminding, of the stressful nature of the decisions that parents have to make about child care.

In a very fine speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) picked up the key point: the degree to which parents love and care for their children and to which they have to make some difficult decisions. Those pressures on parents are exacerbated by the inevitable debate about the effects on the development of children of child care outside the home. In a very good speech, my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) developed, as I expected him to do, some of the points that he made to the Select Committee. Those points were also made by other Members during the debate.

Members of the Committee will remember that there was some discussion about the degree to which our report should flag up the debate about the effects of formal child care on very young children. I have no intention of revisiting that discussion in depth today, not least because of the time constraints, but the report is extremely circumspect about those effects. It says of pre-school children that there is strong evidence that pre-school provision—between 3 and 5 years results in higher educational attainment, both at primary school and long-term. However, the report comes to no conclusion about the effects of formal child care on the development of children younger than three and the House may care to take note of that.

I must confess that I believe that the debate about the effects of child care on very young children, although important, may be beside the main point: given the emotionally charged nature of child care and despite the extremely complex ways in which it is provided, the key principle for working and non-working parents should surely be choice. The Select Committee report broadly reflects that view. Perhaps inevitably, the Committee found that there were different views about the choices that working parents want to make. Although working parents may sometimes disagree about the choices that they want, the House will agree that child care choice is what they want. That choice may be to stay at home when their children are very young—a point made by some of my hon. Friends. It may be informal care by relatives, friends or neighbours, more formal care, such as a child minder or high-quality formal care outside the home at a day nursery or children's centre. The key question raised by the report and the Government's response is whether the Government's child care strategy is firmly based on the principle of choice.

The official Opposition want to study with care the announcements made yesterday, because we have learned from experience that when spending announcements are made it is vital to study not just the big headlines but also the small print. For example, the Chancellor said that over the next five years there will be 1,000 children's centres."—[Official Report, 10 December 2003; Vol. 415, c. 1069.] When the Minister replies to the debate, will he confirm whether that figure represents an increase compared with the number that has already been announced? Will he also tell us what estimate, if any, has been made of the number of employers who will no longer provide child care vouchers as a result of the capping announced yesterday both of the present national insurance contribution exemption for vouchers and of the new tax exemption? He might also care to comment on the assessment made by Deloitte Touche:

The introduction of a NIC charge of amounts above the proposed limit…may not encourage employers to provide vouchers". I shall comment later on some of the other announcements made yesterday, but first I pay tribute to the commitment of Ministers in general and the Chancellor in particular to child care. There can be no doubt of the Government's commitment—

Mr. George Osborne (Tatton) (Con)

Steady on.

Mr. Goodman

I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that it does politicians no good to be too adversarial, even if we necessarily have to be adversarial sometimes. He will also share my fear that despite yesterday's announcements, the evident good will of Ministers and the ever-rolling stream of initiatives and announcements, the answer to the question, "Do the Government have a coherent child care strategy based on choice?" is, sadly, "No". I shall explain why.

As the Select Committee's report makes clear, the Government's child care policy for working parents is inextricably linked to their anti-poverty strategy. There was some discussion in Committee about whether the anti-poverty strategy was the foundation of their policy. The Government have set themselves two main targets and the hon. Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley), in a very good speech, picked up one: reducing the number of children in workless households by 2006. The second target is that 70 per cent. of lone parents should be in paid work by 2010.

Like the Chairman of the Select Committee, I was extremely impressed by the oral evidence that we heard from Professor Moss, on which I shall read out part of the Committee's conclusions. The report states: Childcare should not just be about freeing parents so that they are able to work. In his view"— that is, Professor Moss childcare is a public good which is the right of all children, regardless of whether their parents work or not. That point was alluded to by other speakers in the debate. The report continued: The questions raised by Professor Moss suggested that the Government may be placing too much emphasis on a labour market-driven strategy as the basis for childcare policy. His evidence opened up an alternative vision of childcare, based upon the choices made by parents and families themselves. It seems that not only Government Back Benchers, but Front Benchers and indeed Cabinet Ministers agree. Let me cite the comments of one of them: If I look back over the last six years I do think that we have given the impression that we think all mothers should be out to work, preferably full-time as soon as their children are a few months old…It's not our job to preach to people one way or the other, it's about providing choices. Those are the words of no less a person than the Minister for Women, published in The Daily Telegraph under the lurid headline,

We've failed mothers who stay at home admits Hewitt". The Opposition agree. However, as the hon. Member for Romsey acutely observed, it is hard for the Government to say that they want to provide choice for all parents while setting targets that would put 70 per cent. of a group of those parents in the labour market. There is certainly a tension, if not a contradiction, between those aims. That is why the report is critical of the main instrument of that labour market-driven strategy: the child care tax credit. It makes a series of suggestions for improving the credit, but it also says that the credit, though valuable to many parents, poses complex and interlocking problems about take-up, eligibility, qualifying hours, the proportion of costs which should be covered, regional disparities and the funding of informal as well as formal care…The CCTC is certainly not consistent…with a childcare vision based on the choices made by parents and families themselves, since it is only available to some of them. It concludes:

We therefore believe that in the longer term, the CCTC may have a less central role It is significant that most, although I grant not all, of yesterday's child care announcements will assist parents who work in the labour market only. A parent who does not work in the labour market will not be able, obviously, to take advantage of the new tax exemption for workplace nurseries announced yesterday. That point was picked up by the Chairman of the Committee and the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North. Nor can it be claimed that this announcement was a response to the Select Committee recommending an enhanced role for employers—which is, in the words of the report, "small but useful". Moreover, a parent who does not work in the labour market would not, I think, be able to take advantage of any extension of the CCTC to cover informal carers—a possible consequence of the consultation announced yesterday to streamline this process and widen home caring". It cannot be claimed that this announcement was a response to the Select Committee recommending such an extension, because the report fairly bluntly said: We do not believe that funding informal care through the CCTC is the best way forward". The Government may want to take note of that. A lone parent who is not about to work in the labour market will not be able to take advantage of the help with child care costs for lone parents announced yesterday in the week before starting work.

The House may now begin to appreciate why the Government do not seem to have a clear and coherent strategy for child care based on parental choice. That lack of clarity, combined with the bewildering proliferation of funding streams and the administrative burdens that some providers report—my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire mentioned this in the context of playgroups, in his reference to the difference between quality and qualified staff—may help to explain why demand for child care continues to outstrip supply. The number of day nurseries is certainly up. But the number of child minders is, as the report puts it, "decreasing in number". In 1997, there were almost 100,000. By this year, that figure had fallen to almost 72,000 and the number of places in playgroups—my hon. Friend will have noticed this in his perusal of the report—has fallen from more than 350,000 in 1997 to roughly 300,000.

Ms Buck

On that point, perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to comment on the fact that the principal driver for the closure of playgroups across Britain from 1996 onwards was the introduction of the nursery voucher.

Mr. Goodman

I am extremely concerned, in picking up the hon. Lady's point, to point to the administrative burden that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire mentioned. As the hon. Lady raised the point, I note that it is a weakness of the Committee's report—I blame no one but myself, in retrospect—that it does not concentrate more on precisely those burdens, not all of which by any means came about before 1997.

On the proliferation of the funding streams, I want to quote Anne Longfield of Kids' Clubs Network, who complained to the Committee:

At the moment you have got crime prevention strategies running up against regeneration strategies running up against child care strategies and the like…locally, too, but frankly, there are so many different initiatives that it is a full-time job for people in partnerships to even know those things exist…never mind join them up. If someone trying to make sense of the system stood back from what the report calls the funding jigsaw, he or she might also find a ministerial jigsaw, because there is, by my count: the Minister; the Minister for Children, who is in charge of the national child care strategy; the Minister for Women, who does not seem to have full confidence in the Government's strategy to date; the Minister for Social Exclusion; and a Minister for tax credits, as well as the Chancellor. All of them presumably have some claim to ownership of the Government's policy on child care for working parents. I will not inquire how often the Minister has bilateral meetings about child care with the Minister for Children, or how often they both have trilateral meetings with the Minister for Women, or how often they all meet with the Minister for Social Exclusion and the Minister for tax credits—

Mr. George Osborne

And the Chancellor.

Mr. Goodman

Not forgetting the Chancellor. I am not sure that we can have complete confidence that this is joined-up government. The key word here is mainstreaming. We need a child care strategy that mainstreams child care for working parents with child care for all, based on choice for all, as the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry has said. On the supply side, that involves combining services directly provided by the state or by the state in partnership with the private and voluntary sectors, such as children's centres and Sure Start, with reviewing the administrative burdens on playgroups and child minders. On the demand side, it involves a less central role for the CCTC and a more central role for benefits and tax credits that permit choice for parents, such as child benefit and the child tax credit.

I visited France and Denmark with the Select Committee on Work and Pensions last week, and I was struck, as every other member of the Committee will have been, by the thought that one reason why child poverty may be lower in France and Denmark is that families may be stronger there. That may be because for some 50 years those countries have put more money into families than we have. That is why the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) was correct in saying that he wanted to consider all this in the context of child poverty.

In summary, the key word is choice. All parents—including, of course, working parents—must be allowed to make the child care choices that they want for their children, who are our future.

3.35 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr. Chris Pond)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Sir Archy Kirkwood) on securing this debate on the Select Committee on Work and Pensions report, "Childcare for Working Parents". I thank him for the kind comments that he made in his opening remarks. It was an honour to serve as a member of the Committee under his chairmanship some years ago, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond to the report and the issues raised in the debate. This has been perhaps an unusually good and good-natured debate on an important subject, and the debate has done justice to an important report.

The Select Committee is right in emphasising the importance of child care to the Government's anti-poverty strategy. Ensuring that people of working age who want to work can do so is key to our meeting our targets of reducing child poverty by a quarter by 2004, reducing the number of children in workless households by 2006, and getting 70 per cent. of lone parents into paid work by 2010.

The hon. Members for Romsey (Sandra Gidley) and for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) suggested that the 70 per cent. target for lone parents was established irrespective of whether lone parents wanted to work. The target is based on the aspirations of lone parents themselves, 70 per cent. of whom say that they would like to work if they had the opportunity and support to do so, as well as on the needs of the whole economy.

Andrew Selous

In the inquiry to which the Minister refers, was any reference made to what age children should be when lone parents would like to start work? That could make quite a big difference.

Mr. Pond

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention because he makes an important point about choice to which I shall return because it runs throughout the contributions made by a number of hon. Members.

For the reasons that I have outlined, the Chancellor highlighted in presenting the pre-Budget report yesterday the Government's belief that Nothing is more important to the future of our whole country than the best schooling, services and financial support, ensuring for every child the chance to develop their potential to the full."—[Official Report, 10 December 2003; Vol. 415, c. 1068.] That is why he announced the package of measures to provide increased support for children and families to which many hon. Members have referred: the tax and national insurance incentives to employers to provide extra support with employees' child care—I confirm to the hon. Member for Romsey that that is available for all registered child care, including out-of-school child care—and the target of new child care places for 2.2 million children by 2006, as well as free child care for all those on the new deal for lone parents in the week before they start work and for those lone parents who undertake work-search activity in 12 pilot areas. Perhaps most importantly, the extra £3.50 a week for each of 7 million children through increased child tax credits is a major contribution to meeting our targets on child poverty.

The Government's commitment to do everything that we can to improve the quality and quantity of child care for working parents was underlined forcefully in the statements by my right hon. Friends the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions yesterday, which was generously acknowledged by the hon. Member for Wycombe, who has spoken in two roles this afternoon. He has spoken from the Front Bench—if I have not already congratulated him on that position, I do so happily now—and as a member of the Select Committee. I noted from the body language of his colleagues on the Front Bench, many of whom have now left him, that the Opposition Whips may speak to him later about that generous acknowledgement of our commitment, and we trust that his shaky voice in his presentation was no indication of a previous attempt to stop him saying such things.

The Government considered the 21 recommendations in the Select Committee's report carefully, and responded to them on 12 September. I am pleased that the report acknowledged the substantial growth in child care provision since we introduced the national child care strategy in 1998, and that the report welcomed our commitment to further child care expansion even before yesterday's announcements. It is also encouraging that the Committee agreed that the Government were heading in the right direction with children's centres. Members have this afternoon welcomed the commitment to 1,000 children's centres by 2008 announced by the Chancellor yesterday, with the longterm aim of a children's centre in every community. I confirm to the hon. Member for Wycombe that that figure has not been announced previously—it is a new figure.

We readily accept, as many Members rightly pointed out, that we have not yet reached the position that we want: accessible, affordable, good-quality child care in every locality. We understand fully the Committee's desire, and that of Members who have contributed to this afternoon's debate, to see us go further and more quickly. Our response to the report sets out some of the steps that we are taking towards making a reality of our vision. It is worth spending a few moments reviewing how far we have come in the past five years.

By April next year, every three and four-year-old child will have access to a free part-time place in an early years setting, thanks to our investment of £2.6 billion a year in free universal nursery education. By 2004, we will have created new child care places for 1.6 million children. By 2006, that will have risen to 2.2 million children. When we came into government, there was one child care place for every nine children. Now we have one place for every five children. All but two of our 524 Sure Start local programmes are up and running, including, I am pleased to say, one in my community in Gravesham. I know from working with that programme the impact that it can have on children and families, in my constituency as around the country. That new Sure Start service is now touching the lives of 400,000 children under the age of four, and reaching about a third of the children under four living in poverty. By the end of this spending review period we will be investing around £1.5 billion a year in the services that we provide under the Sure Start umbrella.

From April 2004, we will also introduce an extended school child care pilot in Bradford and the London boroughs of Haringey and Lewisham. The pilot is designed to maximise the use of existing local child care vacancies to identify quickly any areas where child care supply does not meet demand, and to create new school-based child care where that is necessary. The object is to ensure that lack of appropriate child care is not a barrier to the return to work of those within workless households. That will entail close working in particular between local authorities and Jobcentre Plus, which will be facilitated by the recently introduced Jobcentre Plus child care partnership managers.

The Government have taken a number of steps to help working parents with their child care. My hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck), who has long been an energetic campaigner on child care issues, reminded us that the costs of child care can be a barrier to work for lower and middle-income parents. That is why we have provided substantial financial help towards the costs of approved child care through tax credits. She will be pleased that yesterday the Chancellor announced extra help with child care costs for those parents receiving both housing benefit and working tax credit. She will also be pleased with the announcement made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions that acknowledged the additional costs that parents in London face for such things as child care and gave a commitment to try to address the issue.

More than 286,000 families receive help with child care costs through the working tax credit, and we are spending 90 per cent. more on child care through tax credits than before—almost £2 million a day. Since April, we have extended the tax credit to cover approved child care in the home, which is intended especially to help parents with child care needs who work unsocial hours or shifts and those with disabled children. The credit is now paid to the main carer. I can tell the hon. Member for Romsey that we are consulting on the proposed extension of such care early in 2004, and we would welcome her comments and those of other hon. Members on the appropriate form for that. Her point about au pairs is principally a matter for the Home Office, but I am sure that my colleagues in the Home Office are listening to the debate—[Laughter.] As, indeed, is much of the rest of the nation. I am sure that my colleagues in the Home Office will respond to the hon. Lady's point.

I must emphasise that working tax credit is a targeted work-incentive measure that is intended to help to make work pay for low and middle-income parents. The child care element is designed to help to remove the child care barrier that often prevents people from taking up, or returning to, work. It is not designed to be a universal child care subsidy for all families. However, some universal support is provided by means of free nursery education and Government funding for child care places. In addition to the undoubted direct benefit to children of free nursery education, its provision has the effect of substantially reducing the cost of full-time day care for the parents of three and four-year-olds. Since August, young parents aged 16 to 19 have been able to receive free child care up to the value of £5,000 per child per year so that they may continue their education or take part in work-based learning through our care to learn scheme.

Since April, we have provided a network of child care partnership managers in Jobcentre Plus districts to help advisers to assist parents seeking work. We have introduced support child-minding pathfinders in six key inner-city areas where child care is most needed to enable unemployed people to work. The aim is to engage existing child minders to attract new people into the profession and help them to set up in business. Funding will be provided to all local authorities for similar schemes from next April.

The hon. Members for Wycombe and for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) referred to the decline in the number of child minders, which shows the importance of the scheme. I reassure them that we have managed to stem that decline and I am advised that since last April the number has increased by 9,000, so we are going in the right direction. We need to ensure that we continue to encourage more people to enter child care as a professional and, hopefully, well rewarded form of employment. I take on board the point made by the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire about the need to ensure that such people are properly rewarded. He might remember that when I was at the Low Pay Unit, it published a report entitled "Who Minds About the Minders?", which pointed out that child minders need to be properly rewarded.

As was announced in the 2003 Budget, pilots of child care taster sessions will be available in specific locations for up to one week to help people on the new deal for lone parents to find out whether formal child care suits their needs. I know that the Select Committee was especially anxious for that to happen, so I hope that it welcomes the fact that we are moving forward with the scheme. Our intention is to establish the feasibility of the mechanism of taster sessions and to get a qualitative sense of their impact on parents' movement into work. The pilots will operate in the six metropolitan areas of London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester until March 2006 and will start in the first areas by April next year.

We have also taken account of the needs of parents who are already in work through new laws that were introduced in April to provide them with more choice about how to balance child care with work. Those include the new duty on employers to consider seriously requests to work flexibly from parents of young and disabled children. The Government believe that there is more that employers can do to help people to balance their home and work responsibilities. Not only is that the right thing for employers to do; it also makes business sense, bringing benefits through improved recruitment and retention, staff morale and organisational performance.

We consulted earlier in the year on proposals to encourage more employers to help their staff with the cost of good, safe child care. Yesterday, as hon. Members know, the Chancellor announced proposals to widen the tax and national insurance contribution exemptions for employer-supported child care.

My hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North expressed her anxiety about whether we were doing enough about the supply of child care. She will acknowledge, I think, that we are doing a considerable amount, particularly on children's centres and on the support, which I mentioned, to encourage more people to enter the child-minding profession. We have also made a substantial investment in the creation of new child care places.

We provide start-up funding for a wide range of child care settings: day-care nurseries, child minders and out-of-school child care clubs. In areas of disadvantage, that support can extend to up to three years, acknowledging that businesses can take longer to establish themselves at viable levels in such areas. We also plan next year to introduce short-term sustainability funding to protect good child care in disadvantaged areas, where those child care businesses are experiencing temporary viability problems.

A number of hon. Members have spoken about quality. I have referred to our vision of having good, affordable child care in every area and community. We need to be clear about what we are trying to achieve for the quality of child care provision. We have introduced a new national framework of standards for child care for children under eight, which will be regulated by Ofsted, because we know that children's behaviour, socialisation and later life are crucially influenced by their early experiences. Those standards allow parents to work, train or study, confident that their children are in a safe and stimulating environment.

The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire expressed concern about quality. The Government are clear that we are not in the business of saying that child care needs to be just "good enough" so that the parent can work. We know from our research that it is the quality of the early years experience that makes the difference to the child's outcomes. We know from much American research that poor child care for parents in low-paid jobs can damage the child's outcomes. That means that although we want to expand child care provision as fast as possible, we will not sacrifice standards to numbers. It means investing in creating a strong and well-qualified work force that is rigorously inspected. We are committed to the concept of registration, which is important as a foundation not only for quality but for child safety.

The Select Committee welcomed the fact that we were targeting resources, which are inevitably limited, to achieve the greatest impact. We understand the point made by a number of hon. Members that they would like us to extend provision further, especially, as the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) said, into rural areas. I point out to hon. Members, however, that there is considerable flexibility for local authorities to seek to extend provision in that way. We note the slight scepticism of the Select Committee and its Chairman about whether that goes far enough, and the child care review will consider that and a number of other issues.

The review will consider whether the long-term projection for child care and early years education is sufficient to meet the Government's aim for employment and educational attainment; whether the expansion is proceeding quickly enough; and whether there are areas where more remains to be done. The review will also look in detail at how we can ensure better integration between early years education and child care for pre-school children, because we know that, while working parents welcome the nursery education entitlement, they also need child care that wraps around it.

We also recognise that working parents need to know that their children are safe and cared for during non-school hours, so the review will look at child care provision both before and after normal school hours. We want to see more extended schools providing more services to their local communities. In conclusion, the child care review findings will in form the next spending review settlement for the Sure Start unit, as well as the allocation of resources for child care for the three years from 2005–06. I cannot, of course, anticipate the results, but it is fair to say that child care and children's issues generally are at the centre of the political agenda to an extent that would have seemed impossible 10 years ago. I can reassure the hon. Member for Wycombe that we have a structure in place to ensure that child care initiatives that emanate from different Departments are properly joined up. The child care review is led by a ministerial team representing my own Department—the Department for Work and Pensions—as well as the Department for Education and Skills, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Treasury and the Department of Health. The Sure Start unit, as Members will know, is jointly responsible to the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Education and Skills. The Minister with day-to-day responsibility for the work of the unit, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, is a Minister in both Departments. I am sure that she will be pleased to read about the well-deserved recognition of its work in the opening remarks of the Chairman of the Select Committee.

We have had a valuable debate, a theme of which has been the question of choice. The hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire made a point that was reiterated by the hon. Members for South-West Bedfordshire, for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff), for Romsey and for Wycombe: that choice for parents is an essential ingredient of child care. They should have choice about the type of child care that they use and the balance between work and family. They should have choice about whether their child is cared for in a voluntary, private or public setting. Some parents, especially those with very young children, may choose to care for them without using other forms of child care provision that are available. To provide that choice, we have given a great deal of extra support for families with children. The amount of support for the first child in child benefit and child tax credit has increased from £27 a week in 1997 to £58 following the Chancellor's announcements yesterday.

We want to give genuine choices to parents who want to work so that they have the opportunity to build on their achievements and fulfil their ambitions. As my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) made clear, the issue is about not just social justice but economic prosperity. Investment in child care makes good sense—not only do we want to ensure that we give choices to parents and children that enhance children's life chances but we want to make sure that we build on the strong economic foundations that the Chancellor of the Exchequer outlined yesterday. I thank the Committee for its report and hon. Members for their contributions to a good and, indeed, good-natured debate, which I am sure will enhance our determination that parents continue to have choice and that we continue to build a nation based on social justice and economic prosperity.

Debate concluded, pursuant to Resolution [2 December].

Question deferred, pursuant to Standing Order No. 54(4) and (5) and Order [29 October 2002] until 6 pm