---

Childcare Bill

Conservative Members welcome the Bill’s return. It began its progress quite a while ago, in November 2005. We have supported it throughout, because we are in favour of many of its aims, but obviously there has been a great deal of discussion during its various stages. Because the Bill will give more people the chance of access to quality child care, we believe that it will help to improve children’s start in life. The Lords amendments reflect the fact that some of our earlier discussions that were not heeded at the time have now been heeded by the Government, and we are pleased about that. I am sure that the Minister has followed the debate in the other place closely, and has noted the growing concern about how to bridge the gap between the money that nurseries receive from Government to fund free provision for three to four-year-olds and the real cost of provision that is borne by the private and voluntary sectors. If small voluntary and private nurseries lose the ability to cover the true costs of provision, they may be pushed out of business. We should consider those important issues, although they are not dealt with in the amendments before us today. Lords amendment No. 1 gives local authorities a duty to take reasonable steps to take account of the views of young children in the design, delivery and evaluation of services. In recent weeks we have considered three Bills relating to children in some way. The welfare of children is at the heart of all those Bills, and we feel that the amendment expresses the same sentiments. We will support it. We congratulate the many children’s organisations on their work, particularly the National Children’s Bureau. It has fought hard to persuade the Government to accept an amendment of this kind. It feels strongly that the new duty will help local authorities to deliver high-quality services to young children and families. But—there is a but here—we need to make sure that care is taken, so that when we consult children we in no way burden them. That point was powerfully made by noble Friend Baroness Morris on Report in the other place. With that in mind, we need to consider how the data will be collected. Let us briefly address that. Ofsted collects the views of school-age children as a regular part of its inspection process. It uses a web-based technology, which is entirely appropriate for children of that age but would not be appropriate for under-fives—even though under-fives perhaps have more IT literacy than some. We need to look for other methods. None of us would argue against the ability of some under-fives to put across their views, and if we can take them into account, it is important that we do so. Those of us with under-fives in our own households know that in some cases they can be all too vociferous in putting forward their views. However, under-fives clearly cannot have a true grasp of complex ideas such as well-being and inequality, so we would need to ensure that highly qualified personnel are used to tease such information out of that group of children, who are particularly difficult to engage. We also need to keep a careful eye on the usefulness of the data, which will doubtless be expensive to collect. A great deal of research has been done on the ability to collect data from that age group, and it is compelling, but we still need to look at its usefulness in terms of both policy formulation and evaluation. We support the spirit of the amendment, as it attempts to ensure that the child is at the heart of everything we do and that what we are doing is beneficial to them, but we must make sure that it provides a tangible addition to both policy formulation and evaluation.