---

Childcare Bill

A couple of matters have been raised in the debate on these amendments. First, I read with interest the documentation that the Minister sent me, especially about profiles. It seemed to me that, if poor-quality childcare is affecting the emotional development of children, this might be a method of detecting whether that is happening and then rectifying the problem. Perhaps this is not the right time to raise this concern, so please tell me whether it is not. In the past, local authorities have had responsibilities for looked-after children—children in children’s homes and foster care. I sense that they have not had the capacity to meet the demands that these very resource-intensive services have required. That is one of the reasons why we have underperformed for these children over many years. The Government, very laudably, ring-fenced funds for quality-protected programmes and intervened to boost services but, although there has been improvement, there is still a long way to go. I am concerned that, when the Government are passing down responsibility for children to local authorities—and this may be more relevant when we come to childcare per se—local authorities may not be able to deliver on the responsibilities that they are given or meet targets that have been set. Perhaps I can be reassured about that. At Second Reading, the Minister referred to the importance of local government, government and other partners working together to improve outcomes for children. I am a little concerned that we do not get to the position where, actually, the responsibility gets siphoned out to local authorities and they are not supported adequately to meet those resource-intensive demands.