| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Pickles: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way and, especially, for her questioning in the
Select Committee, which was useful on this point. If there is a dispute between partners as to who should get the money, who ultimately should decide?
Ms Buck: Personally, as in the Select Committee, I favour the default option. As far as I remember--I may be proved wrong--Opposition Members on the Select Committee accused Labour Members of making heavy weather of the proposal, effectively saying that we were accusing men of being difficult and playing down the fact that, in the majority of families, it is perfectly possible to come to an amicable agreement over the division of resources; but in fact we pressed for and achieved a significant recognition of the wallet-purse issue. I, along with the Child Poverty Action Group, which dealt with the matter in the briefing that it published in response to the working families tax credit, am largely reassured that the issue will not be a great problem, although I do not consider the system absolutely perfect.
Mr. Webb: The hon. Lady stressed the psychological benefits of payment through the pay packet and said that means-tested benefits carry a stigma. Why, then, would any woman in a couple choose the means-tested option?
Ms Buck: Families on low incomes may make the decision that it helps them with budgeting; others may not feel that they need to organise their budgets in that way. It is perfectly possible for people to opt for either method, and we are giving them a choice.
In my remaining remarks I will deal with the operation of the child care tax credit, which is the flagship of working families tax credit. It has been said that child care costs are the single most significant barrier to single parents entering the workplace and I agree. Although having said that, housing costs are probably running a pretty close second in London and it is important that the Government deal with housing benefit later.
A large number of single parents live in my constituency and I have made it a priority to talk to parents in nurseries and play groups and to their representative organisations. There is no question that child care costs are the principal barrier. Women and single parents want to get back into the workplace. First and foremost, they want to do so through education and training so that they get not so much a job as a career. The availability and cost of child care is the most significant barrier that they face.
The child care tax proposals set out by the Government exceeded my wildest expectations. They are very generous and an innovative, and radical response to that most serious barrier to work. The child care tax credit will replace the child care disregard within family credit, which was paid to only 40,000 families throughout Britain--it took a rocket scientist to understand that system and two rocket scientists to explain how it operated. The Chancellor was right to give it a short-term boost in the first few months of this Government as an indicator of our support in dealing with child care, but we have rightly and properly moved swiftly on after only 19 months in government to replace it as part of the review of tax credits.
Child care costs vary dramatically throughout the country, but in London it is not uncommon for child minders to cost £120 a week and for nursery places to
cost £170. I do not begrudge child minders a single penny--a child minder is the principal source of my child care--because they are grossly underpaid for the demanding job that we expect of them. However the costs, particularly in London and the south-east, make child care a pipe dream for the overwhelming majority of parents.
Another aspect of the Bill that is pleasing--and here I am picking up on some of the comments of the hon. Member for Beckenham--is that the operation of the child care tax credit will deal with another significant worry, which is the quality of child care. Much child care is undertaken not merely by mums and grandmums--thank God it is, and wonderful it is too--but in other wider and more informal networks of friends. To all intents and purposes those people are doing the job of child minding, but they are doing it without the benefits of registration and inspection, or of being connected into the education and social services networks that provide support mechanisms, drop-in facilities, education, and the national voluntary qualification in child care, which helps to lever up standards.
I hope and expect the child care tax credit to encourage a significant proportion of unregistered child minders to register. That will be good news all round. It will raise the income of women who are unregistered child minders, which is a good thing, and encourage registration, also a good thing. The hon. Member for Beckenham mentioned the pressure on local authorities because of the additional costs that might accrue from such registration. That is a reasonable argument and it deserves to be tackled. However, the chronic shortage of registered child minders is one of the most serious problems facing local authorities. Those with statutory child care responsibilities need a supply of child minders to help them with the daytime care of children who are being assisted under the Children Act 1989. It is a chronic problem and it leads to additional costs. The Bill will also help local authorities out of that bind.
I envisage the money that will be made available through the child care tax credit--I am evangelising with this message in my local community--being used not only to encourage women to register, but to provide the opportunity for them to come together to organise child minder support groups and drop-in facilities, which are woefully inadequate. Child minding is an isolating job at times and people need support. I also envisage the resources that will become available to groups of parents being used to help to finance after-school facilities and homework clubs.
The Government have made a welcome commitment to the extension of after-school clubs through the sixth good cause of the lottery. Evidence of that is now all around us. However, that will not be enough, for example in isolated rural communities where, under present circumstances, it will be impossible for every village primary school to have an after-school club. The measure will provide an opportunity for parents to band together.
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which is not known for its radical support of Government initiatives on such matters, is holding fire on its nursery proposals in the expectation that opportunities will arise out of the implementation of the working families tax credit, which will allow it to revamp and restructure its nursery and after-school facilities. That is a welcome development indeed.
There is an opportunity for a virtuous circle here and for the £200 million or so--I am greedy for more of a good thing, but I will take it for what it is at the moment--to start to cascade down to some of our poor communities and estates.
Mr. Gibb:
The Institute for Fiscal Studies states that if many more people register as child minders, which is what the hon. Lady says that she wants to happen, the £200 million could escalate to £1 billion, £2 billion or even up to £4 billion. Does she accept that figure?
Ms Buck:
I do not. The figure is based on the assumption that everyone who provides any sort of child care will register, which is fanciful. That will not happen, primarily because there is no reason why relatives who care for their children and grandchildren should be brought into the scheme. It is most unlikely that that will be the case.
Mr. Gibb:
The hon. Lady said that she wanted more informal child minders to register. Those registrations would not have been taken into account by the Government when they calculated the £200 million cost. Therefore, she must envisage that her hopes are that the scheme will cost significantly more than that. How much does she envisage her hopes costing the Government?
Ms Buck:
As I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows, there is a paucity of information on both current provision and the likely demand for child care. Therefore, it is fanciful to put a figure on it. Again, it is to the Government's credit that the Department for Education and Employment has made money available to local authorities so that they can carry out the first serious audit of child care requirements. The £200 million is a significant increase on the family credit child care disregard, which was payable to 40,000 families--I cannot remember the exact figure for that. The increase is certainly welcome and it will create huge additional opportunities.
Two other issues are worthy of attention and flow from the report of the Social Security Select Committee. First, and in this instance I share the opinions of the hon. Member for Beckenham, the application of the child care tax credit must continually be reviewed to find out to whom it applies. I share with my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) the belief that one cannot use the child care tax credit to pay for unregistered child care. It would be wholly inappropriate for public money to be spent to support child care if there were no guarantee as to the quality, the basic soundness of the premises and so forth and to safety. I have not the slightest doubt that the moment that something unfortunate happened to a child in care that was partly paid for through the working families tax credit we would all pay dearly for it. Clearly, registration must be the bedrock. The reliance on after-school clubs, child minders and other categories of care currently registered under the Children Act 1989 does not necessarily reflect the realities of today's labour market.
My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North talked about her constituency experience of the sort of jobs that are becoming available. I can echo that from my experience of the inner city. The jobs that are becoming available, especially to younger women entering the job
market, are not amenable to the nine-to-three or nine-to-five working day. That is not always a bad thing because it can fit parental preferences. I am talking about service-driven, 24-hour jobs such as those with the Heathrow express coming up at Paddington, call centres, supermarkets and The Gap in Covent Garden. It is not reasonable to make the child care tax credit available only for care provided outside the home.
Even if child care is available and the parent desperately wants to take a good job, the option will collapse if the only care available means that the parent has to ferry a seven-year-old about at 9 pm. No parent wants to do that. Similarly, people do not want to have to shuffle children from a homework club--perhaps in another school--to a child minder and then to some other care. The Government must revisit the idea of making the child care tax credit available for care in a person's home. There is no easy solution, but I hope that the Government will give godspeed to the private Member's Bill on registration of nannies and consider the matter when that becomes law.
The second issue, which is dear to my heart, that I draw to the Minister's attention from the Social Security Committee's report is free school dinners. The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux report on the working families tax credit noted that most people entering work have unrealistic expectations of how much better off they will be. In a citizens advice bureau or benefits office, they get a better calculation and we start to break through the problem. When people consider applying for a job or look at adverts or the job centre, they do calculations in their heads that do not work out. I am supported by several organisations that deal with such issues in saying that free school dinners are central to the problem. A parent with two children in a school finds that the bill can add up to £11 or £12 a week. It is a real barrier.
In practice, once people are in work they are likely to be significantly better off and to start to increase their earnings, so school dinners become less significant. The Social Security Committee recommended that free school dinners should at least be rolled over for the period of the initial claim for working families tax credit. It comes back to psychology, which is not to be underestimated. Such a provision would provide a cushion of security for claimants whom we want to enter the workplace because of the advantages of self-esteem and earning potential that it will give them but who are put off by a barrier in their heads.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |