Yesterday, Westminster positively fizzed with passionate speeches from MPs on the many issues posed by our under-funded childcare system. It was the debate we have been waiting for since our joint petition with Grazia and The Juggle was signed by 112,000 of you, demanding an independent review into its cost and affordability. With the Parliamentary galleries closed due to Covid, we watched the live stream, which offered the added advantage of being able to audibly cheer and heckle while munching on a chocolate digestive.
First up was Catherine McKinnell, a Labour MP who is chair of the petitions committee and a passionate advocate for parents. Catherine introduced the debate and asked what we thought was a very simple question: 'Childcare is as necessary for parents to get to work as the roads and the rail network, so why do we not approach and fund it as the vital infrastructure investment that it clearly is?'
Theresa Villiers MP for the Conservative Party was next to vouch for the review, while also appealing for a simpler system of Government support. Theresa warned: 'If the Government are to realise their ambition to level up the country, and if they are to make further progress on gender equality and tackle the health inequalities exposed by the pandemic, it is essential to get childcare and early years provision right and to give the sector the support it needs.' We hear you Theresa! Time for another biscuit to calm down.
Then it was Labour MP for Walthamstow Stella Creasy’s turn to speak, and our WhatsApp chat lit up as she stood with her three week old baby strapped to her chest and passionately proclaimed: 'There’s an army of mums out there, mad as hell that they’re being ignored and expected to take on childcare at short notice… We have to get this right because we owe it to every child and every mum.' Stella made so many excellent points that we were tempted to just print her entire speech instead of writing this article, but that wouldn’t have given you the full picture so we carried on.
Steve Brine MP, a member of the Conservatives who you could call an expert in this field given that he is both chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Childcare and Early Education, and he is married to a speech and language therapist, followed by stressing that the APPG 'has spoken for some time about what I would describe as a market failure in this sector, and the need for a meaningful review of it'. He went on to say that, while he was proud of the Conservatives' 30 hours free childcare commitment, 'it has become clear to me that systemic reforms are needed to make this flagship policy work better'. We couldn’t agree more Steve.
Wera Hobhouse MP for the Liberal Democrats raised concerns about how 'in a country where parents pay the third-highest childcare costs in the world, one in 10 childcare workers are officially living in poverty', before adding her name to the list of supporters of a review. It doesn’t matter how many times you hear those shocking statistics, we’re not sure they’ll ever make sense.
Siobhan Baillie, Conservative MP for Stroud, followed by saying that 'if anyone has ever seen what a working mum fits into an hour of “free” time before legging it back to the school or nursery gates, they will know that mums could single-handedly fix the economy’s problem with productivity if they were freed up to do so'. She said she was open to the call for an independent review, but was concerned that 'such reviews cost the taxpayer tens of millions and — frankly — if that money is available, I would prefer it to go to the childcare sector. We couldn’t help but wonder a) how a review could cost upwards of £10 million, or b) why a government would choose to throw money at a problem without first understanding what the problem even is.
Siobhan did however call for cross-party working on the issue, and it was truly promising to see that MPs from the Conservatives, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the DUP had all come out to speak in favour of doing something to help understand where the current system is failing.
As expected, the debate ended with the Minister for Children and Families, Vicky Ford, agreeing that good quality, affordable childcare is critical to our economic and social infrastructure.
'Access to high quality, early childcare has such positive benefits to a child’s educational and life outcomes. Childcare, as we know, is also really important for helping parents to be able to work,' she said, but disagreed with some of the data and stats shared during the debate about the number of childcare providers closing as a result of the underfunding and how the standard of childcare is deteriorating due to low funding rates. As Stella Creasy pointed out, perhaps this disagreement on which data is accurate could be part of an independent review so that Parliamentarians can have an informed debate and make informed decisions.
The Minister also said that they are in the middle of negotiating a multi year spending review and she therefore felt that an independent review of childcare wouldn’t make sense. 'Given that we are right now in the middle of spending review negotiations, it would not be appropriate to launch a separate independent review of childcare at this time because the outcomes of such a review would not be able to feed into the review that is happening right now.'
But as Catherine McKinnell pointed out: '’the petition is very reasonable. It’s not asking for a specific amount of funding, it’s not even diagnosing what should happen. It is asking the Government to hand this to experts to give a full assessment of what we want our early years sector to be and to provide. I appreciate the Minister has stated it doesn't fit with the current budget and spending review schedules. However, I implore again, they are not asking for a specific amount of money, they are asking for a wholescale review, because we can keep going on sticking plasters over the cracks, pumping some money here and there, putting a funding pot in place, but in reality we have a postcode lottery, we have a family lottery, we have parents crying out for more help and support, we have many people silently falling out of the workforce, we have a productivity problem, and we have a crisis point for many families and we have many in the most deprived families who are not being heard or supported by this.’
What’s next, you may be wondering? Well first, we want you to tweet your MP, and Ministers Rishi Sunak and Vicky Ford, to demand an independent review. This isn’t the time to be taking our foot off the gas. We’ve even set it all up for you here: https://tymp.uk/3liilb9 so go, go, go. We are working with MPs who support the idea of an independent review to ensure this is raised in Parliament at every opportunity, and we are in the process of recruiting celebrities and other influential people to support this campaign. The number of MPs backing our campaign from every political party was hugely positive and we have hope that, if we all work together to keep banging our collective drums, our demands will eventually be met. So come on team, let’s paradiddle on our tom toms (I am reliably informed that this is a genuine drumming term) and show Ministers that we won’t accept no for an answer.
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