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7 Mar 2003 : Column 1132—continued
2.46 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Eagle): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) both on obtaining this debate and on the clear way in which she has set out the issues. She asked me rather a lot of questions, so I apologise if I do not deal with them all this afternoon. However, I shall of course attempt to deal with them in correspondence after the debate.
My hon. Friend is well known in the House for the sharpness and assiduity with which she looks after the interests of her constituents. The children and parents of Regent's Park and Kensington, North have been well served by the way in which she has raised the issue of the national child care strategy in London. Unfortunately, they have not been well served by the plans for child care drawn up by Kensington and Chelsea council and Westminster council, to which she has drawn attention—quite the opposite, in fact. I am appalled by what Kensington and Chelsea council proposes to do. My hon. Friend set it out, but it bears repeating—it proposes to close two maintained nursery schools, Maxilla and Ainsworth. As my hon. Friend made clear, Maxilla nursery centre provides the kind of integrated service that the Government want to encourage and that
parents in the area wish to have. It offers a wide range of services, including nursery provision, education and drop-in crèche facilities, and has the capacity to provide baby care and wraparound care. My noble Friend Baroness Ashton, who has ministerial responsibility for sure start, intends to visit it soon.To close such a facility and replace it with nursery classes in schools will entail the loss of a range of services as well as integrated wraparound provision, which the national child care strategy sets out to encourage. Parents in the area rightly perceive the change as a cut in service levels. I am afraid that Kensington and Chelsea has form when it comes to the closure of maintained nursery provision because, as my hon. Friend mentioned, it closed Ladbroke day nursery two years ago. The Government recognise that maintained nurseries generally offer high-quality early education from experienced and able staff, and often have unrealised potential for providing more, so we do not want them to close. We are currently consulting on the revision of the existing regulations and guidance on school organisation plans as well as statutory proposals, about which my hon. Friend asked. The new guidance, which we intend to come into force by 1 June this year, emphasises the fact that nursery schools generally offer high quality provision and that
- "closure proposals should not generally be approved".
I also deplore the fact that the council plan to remove subsidy from three community nurseries Maxilla, Swinbrook and Colville. I take the opportunity to make it clear to my hon. Friend that the council has not contacted the sure start unit or any Minister to discuss any of the plans to close or remove subsidy from those nurseries.
The fact that the council argues that nurseries should be able to make up their shortfall from sources such as sure start, the neighbourhood nurseries initiative or children's centres flies in the face of the aim of the national child care strategy and goes directly against the undertaking that statutory authorities, including local authorities, give when they receive sure start funding. That undertaking must be agreed to before sure start local programmes are approved. The statutory agencies that are responsible within the catchment areas are required, among other things, to give a commitment to sure start principles. These principles include a commitment that money will be used to provide additional services. So they undertake to maintain existing spending on services for children under four to ensure that sure start funds are not used to replace funding which is then withdrawn. That appears to be—it is certainly what my hon. Friend is suggesting—what is happening in this instance.
Kensington and Chelsea has two sure start programmes, and it has signed up to the principles. My hon. Friend and her constituents may well want to ask it whether or not it thinks that it is honouring the commitment.
It seems that the arguments that are being used to justify these plans overtly admit that the council is in deliberate and flagrant breach of the promises which it made. If that is the case, that is reprehensible, and I hope that the council will reconsider its approach.
My hon. Friend made reference to a plan by Westminster council to reduce funding to its pre-school learning alliance. She asked me for the Government's view. She is of the view that it would result in the closure of playgroups and provide less money for holiday and after-school play services. These are the sort of services that are very valuable to parents when they are looking for child care. I emphasise that Westminster council is in receipt of sure start moneys in respect of three local programmes. It, too, has undertaken not to siphon money off but to use the resources to provide additional services. I fail to see how it can argue that it is meeting this commitment in view of what my hon. Friend has said, though I was pleased to hear her say that her representations and those of others may be leading to the council reconsidering its position. She mentioned that some offsetting moneys were being provided. I am glad to hear that.
The national child care strategy is there to ensure that every parent can access affordable, good quality child care. We know that this can help to tackle child poverty by enabling parents to choose work as the best route out of poverty. It can improve health, reduce crime and improve children's achievement levels at school. The child care review, which was conducted last year, found that children, parents and communities particularly gain when child care, early education, health and family support are offered together. There are significant pay-offs in offering these services to disadvantaged young children.
The review concluded that there was a strong case for the Government to invest in new, good quality child care. Existing services should be expanded and should place more emphasis on health and family support. New investment in child care services needed to be backed by strengthening the role of local authorities in ensuring delivery.
So in the 2002 spending review, the Government committed themselves to just such an investment—doubling the money available for child care by 2005-06. Children's centres, which join up education, care, family support and health, will provide a better service for children, parents and communities. They will reach at least 650,000 children in the 20 per cent. most disadvantage wards in England by 2006. That is the aim.
The idea that the Government are somehow switching their resources to tax credits is nonsense. We are investing resources of £1.5 billion by 2005–06 direct to the providers of such provision, and that included local authorities. This should mean that there will be an additional 250,000 new child care places by March 2006, on top of the earlier target of creating new places for 1.6 million children by March 2004. We shall increase that through measures such as targeting assistance to a wide range of providers in disadvantaged areas, and a greater
use of schools as bases for wider and family services, including child care. To the extent that local providers remove provision that is already in place, it is more difficult to achieve these goals.The Government are not only interested in more places, however. We know that we need better places, too. Quality is important. That is why we introduced the new national framework of quality standards for child care, regulated by Ofsted. We shall continue to work with Ofsted to improve the quality of child care, so that parents can work, learn and study, confident in the knowledge that their children are in a safe and stimulating environment. We also know that child care needs to be more affordable. Some £370 million is available per year through the working families tax credit to help parents with child care costs. The new tax credits that come into effect next month will improve on the current system in a number of ways.
My hon. Friend asked me some specific questions and I shall try to deal with some of them in the remaining time available. She quoted from a letter to her from Mr. Lightfoot, who is the cabinet member for social services and health in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. He stated in that letter that
- "the direction of travel of Government policy on subsidy to child care is for this to be channelled directly to parents either in the form of vouchers or tax credits rather than through local authorities".
My hon. Friend asked whether it was the Government's intention that local authorities' investment in child care should decrease as parents draw upon the child care tax credit. The short answer is no. Any local authority that uses that as an excuse to withdraw funding does not understand our policy. The child care element in the working families tax credit is a carefully targeted means of support. It does not cover all parents who use child care, and it was never intended to do so.
So, although the Government provide financial assistance to some parents to meet the costs of child care, and also offer pump-priming and sustainability funding to some providers, local authority investment is still central to providing child care services more generally. It is wrong of the council to represent such a position as Mr. Lightfoot does in his letter.
The new tax credits being introduced next month represent the latest step in the Government's strategy to reduce child poverty. The child care element of the new working tax credit will build on the child care tax credit, providing support for working parents using eligible child care. The child care element retains many of the characteristics of the child care tax credit, but improves on it by being more flexible when a family's circumstances change, and by it being paid direct to the person in the household who is mainly responsible for child care.
By extending the range of eligible child care to include approved or registered home child carers in the parents' own home, the new arrangements will be particularly
beneficial to families with disabled children, and parents who work shifts when conventional forms of child care may not be available. The Government are currently considering how to extend this arrangement so that more working parents can benefit from Government support for this highly flexible form of child care. Given the difficulties that many central London boroughs are having with child minder provision, linked to housing costs, supporting the availability and affordability of child care in the parents' own home may be particularly beneficial.I know that my hon. Friend is concerned about levels of take-up of the child care tax credit. I can assure her that, since the introduction of the working families tax credit in 1999, the Government have been committed to maximising awareness of tax credits, and ensuring that all those who are eligible can make a claim. The child care tax credit has consistently been publicised by us as a key component of the working families tax credit. There has been a considerable amount of publicity for the new credits that begin next month, including a campaign with four distinct phases that began last September. This publicity campaign is backed up by a dedicated telephone help line and guidance on the Inland Revenue website. There is also a series of information leaflets, including one dedicated to the child care element of the working tax credit, aimed at parents and child care providers. So far, the response to the awareness campaign has been very encouraging.
Publicising the availability of the child care tax credit is not the job just of the Inland Revenue. As my hon. Friend made clear in her remarks, it is also the job of other statutory agencies such as local authorities. They, too, should play their part in encouraging take-up, and should not be withdrawing subsidies from nursery provision in circumstances where take-up of the child care tax credit is low.
My hon. Friend also has concerns about the extent to which the national child care strategy is concerned with helping parents who are not in work and not seeking work. As I have indicated, the Government want accessible, affordable and good-quality child care to be available to all parents who want it. We are putting in unprecedented resources to help us to get to that position, but we recognise that there have been problems with the availability of child care. There are shortages in most child care markets, and they are particularly acute in deprived areas, where providers often struggle to be financially viable. That means that we have to prioritise where resources go and we have targets to ensure that we do so, but inevitably, we must attach the highest priority to ensuring that accessible and affordable child care exists for those who work.
I know that my hon. Friend asked me more questions to which I need to reply. Given the time remaining, I fear that I shall have to undertake to write to her outwith this debate in order to satisfy her with regard to some of those points, but I hope that the remarks that I have been able to fit into the time available have at least answered some of her questions.
- Adjourned accordingly at Three o'clock.
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