Affordable Childcare
The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-00808, in the name of Jamie Hepburn, on the Save the Children report “Making Work Pay—The Childcare Trap”. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes the many families in Cumbernauld and Kilsyth and across Scotland who struggle to meet childcare costs; further notes with grave concern the findings of a survey carried out by Save the Children and the Daycare Trust that parents on low incomes are being forced out of work by a combination of high childcare costs and a lack of support to meet those costs; understands that the survey shows that a majority of families struggle to cover childcare costs regardless of income but that the burden is especially heavy for families in poverty; notes in particular the findings that a quarter of parents in severe poverty have given up work and a third have turned down a job mainly because of high childcare costs; believes that affordable childcare is an essential part of making work pay and that supporting the poorest parents into work is the best way to tackle child poverty, and believes that the conclusions of Save the Children’s report, Making Work Pay – The Childcare Trap, should be given the utmost consideration.
17:05
I thank the members who signed the motion that is before us to enable it to be debated and those who have stayed behind to participate in or listen to the debate. I thank Save the Children and the Daycare Trust for bringing to our attention the matters that are in their report “Making Work Pay—The Childcare Gap”. I specifically thank Save the Children for assisting me in preparing for the debate and for bringing robotic dolls to the Parliament earlier today to publicise the debate. That generated some press interest and no shortage of sideways glances from bystanders.
Those of us who are parents know the trials and tribulations of organising childcare. I consider myself fortunate, in so far as my wife and I have been able to find reliable, good and affordable childcare for our young daughter. However, as “Making Work Pay” demonstrates, not everyone is so fortunate. Earlier this year, Save the Children and the Daycare Trust jointly surveyed more than 4,000 parents across the United Kingdom to explore their views on how the cost of childcare and access issues impact on their employment and family budgets and, in turn, to explore the effects on child poverty.
More than 14 per cent of those who were surveyed reside in Scotland, and the trends here are consistent with the overall findings. Those findings are striking, but they are not new. We know a lot about the difficulties that parents experience and what could make a difference. The results of the survey focus on the experiences of parents who live on the very lowest incomes—those in severe poverty. It will be no surprise that those families face the greatest challenge in accessing affordable childcare. Of the parents who responded to the survey, eight out of 10 who are in severe poverty said that cost is a barrier to accessing childcare. Parents who live in severe poverty were twice as likely as other participants to cite cost as a barrier to accessing childcare above any other barrier. The majority of parents who are in severe poverty—61 per cent—said that they had struggled to pay for childcare, whereas the figure for parents on higher incomes was 37 per cent.
Of the respondents, 41 per cent said that their childcare costs were similar to their mortgage or rent costs. That such a large proportion of families find the cost of childcare to be on a par with paying for a roof over their heads is surely a stark demonstration of the challenges. The high cost of childcare is felt by most families, but for families in severe poverty the impact is particularly drastic. The survey establishes that parents who are in severe poverty often need to cut back on key essentials simply to pay for childcare. Nearly half of families living in severe poverty have cut back on food to afford childcare and such families are more than twice as likely as families on higher incomes are to cut back on household bills just to afford childcare costs. We can surely all agree that no family should have to choose between feeding themselves or heating their homes and paying for childcare.
Many children are missing out on opportunities to help them grow and develop. Parents who are in severe poverty are more than twice as likely as parents on higher incomes are to cut back on after-school activities. Many parents in severe poverty have to make difficult financial choices simply to pay for childcare. The cost of childcare has caused a third of parents who live in severe poverty to get into debt, whereas that has happened to less than a quarter of parents on higher incomes.
It is little wonder that many parents in the UK struggle with the costs of childcare when they face the highest childcare costs of any Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development country relative to their income and spend 33 per cent of their net income on childcare. The pressures continue to rise. The Daycare Trust suggests that average costs for childcare have risen significantly since 2010. For instance, between 2010 and 2011, the cost of a childminder for kids aged two or over increased by 8.3 per cent, which is about four times as much as the uplift in the average wage in the same period. Make no mistake—the ramifications of those pressures are serious and, again, are particularly acute for the poorest families.
The survey indicates that a quarter of parents in severe poverty have had to give up work as a result of not being able to afford childcare. Those are not parents who have been made redundant or parents who could not find work. They are parents who had work but felt that they had to quit because they could not afford to continue to work. One third of parents in severe poverty had had to turn down a job; a quarter had not been able to take up education or training; and one in 10 had had to move home as a result of difficulties finding suitable childcare.
Recent changes to working tax credit by the UK Government will only exacerbate those problems. Its decision to reduce the percentage of costs of formal childcare that is covered from 80 to 70 per cent will be very damaging to poorer families. There is no better demonstration of the concerns that were caused by the changes to working tax credit than those expressed by one of my constituents in Kilsyth, who took part in the survey and said they felt that
“it is very short sighted of the UK government to make cut backs in working tax credit and tax relief for child care as there is a real benefit to the health and well being of parents plus the economy of helping parents work.”
I turn to what we can do to go some way to tackling the problems that are identified in the report. First, we can call on the UK Government to reverse its decision to alter working tax credits in a negative way. I hope that the minister can state what the Scottish Government might be doing to that end.
Here in Scotland, we can call upon local authorities to provide their statutory hours of childcare provision in more flexible ways to support parents into employment. In the longer term, we can consider Save the Children’s other suggestions—that those statutory hours of childcare provision be extended to two-year-olds, beginning with the poorest families; and that more be done to support out-of-school care for children aged up to 14 in low-income households.
Given the budgetary pressures, that may not be easy, but investing in that area may have wider economic and social benefits. It could also fit in well with the Scottish Government’s expressed desire to increase preventative spending. It might also make life that bit easier for some of the most vulnerable families in the country. Surely we can all agree that that is a goal well worth achieving.
17:12
I congratulate Jamie Hepburn on securing this important debate. When I saw the report from Save the Children and the Daycare Trust, I was reminded of another report from the Daycare Trust that came out nearly 20 years ago, in 1993. That report recommended that income spent on childcare should be substantially disregarded in calculating income support or family credit entitlement—something that did not happen at the time.
I remember the report well because I asked the Prime Minister of the day, John Major, about it at Prime Minister’s question time. When he did not answer my question I asked a written question, to which he answered, among other things, that low-income families do not use paid childcare. That was not one of John Major’s cleverer answers because that was precisely the problem. Tragically, it is increasingly becoming the problem again today.
To be fair to the Conservatives, they introduced such a disregard in due course, and that was built upon by the Labour Government at Westminster until eventually, in 2004, 80 per cent of childcare costs were met through child tax credits. It is deeply regrettable that the current UK Government has cut that back to 70 per cent. That is what is exacerbating the problems of the affordability of childcare in Scotland and throughout the UK.
Jamie Hepburn’s motion refers to a quarter of parents on low incomes having given up work because of childcare costs and a third having turned down a job on the same basis. The survey specifically asked Scottish parents; we are told that 30 per cent of Scottish parents said that they had cut back spending on food and 62 per cent had cut back spending on clothes in the past year in order to afford childcare.
The tragedy is that because of the actions of the UK Government, that situation is set to get worse, with the introduction of universal credit. Two options have been put forward for universal credit. However, Save the Children tells us that a single parent earning £15,000 a year and paying £230 a week for childcare would be £60 a week worse off under either option. The situation is very depressing, with the Westminster Government rolling back the advances that we have seen in childcare support over the past 15 years or so.
Turning to a devolved context for today’s debate, I accept and understand the difficult budgetary situation that the Scottish Government faces and I therefore realise that action will not be as ambitious as we would ideally wish. However, the Scottish Government should look very seriously at the recommendations from Save the Children. I think that some reference was made in the announcement a couple of weeks ago to extending childcare provision to some two-year-olds, which I certainly welcome, but I hope that the Government will also look at the other recommendations, particularly with regard to out-of-school support for families on low incomes.
I know that the minister has visited North Edinburgh Childcare in my constituency, which has always been an outstanding example of a childcare centre. In fact, one of my earliest campaigns 20 years ago was to support all the local parents who wanted to set up that centre. That example illustrates how childcare centres in more disadvantaged areas have been able to draw in funding—at present from the fairer Scotland fund and previously from the community regeneration fund—to subsidise childcare to a greater extent. I am not saying that places in that childcare centre are cheap by any means, but they are a bit cheaper because of that subsidy.
I hope that the Government will also look to use funding streams such as the fairer Scotland fund to support childcare centres such as North Edinburgh Childcare, which I always very genuinely say is the best childcare centre in Scotland and which I think has received widespread recognition through several awards—indeed, it currently runs the Scottish Government crèche at Victoria Quay.
I think that my time is up, so I congratulate Jamie Hepburn once again on introducing this very timely and important debate.
17:16
I thank Jamie Hepburn for bringing this motion to the chamber, as it raises a very worthy issue. I also thank Save the Children and the Daycare Trust for their excellent report, “Making Work Pay—The Childcare Trap”, which I think everybody should look at in some detail. From reading the report, it is clear that there really is a trap—Malcolm Chisholm and Jamie Hepburn have put much about that on record.
I want to deal with an issue that Jamie Hepburn touched on in his opening speech: the UK Government’s cuts to the working tax credit, which have been a real attack on many families and have further damaged those who are trying to stay in employment and meet childcare needs. Those who previously received the 80 per cent support were most likely already experiencing in-work poverty, even with 80 per cent of childcare costs being met. We can see very quickly what the impact of cutting that support to 70 per cent will be—Malcolm Chisholm fleshed that out with some figures. I hope against hope that the UK Government will look again at that matter and realise that the long-term effects of what it proposes will be completely counterproductive, both socially and economically.
Save the Children believes that to guarantee 80 per cent of childcare costs under the universal credit would cost £405 million across the UK, which would represent a mere 0.45 per cent increase in the total welfare budget. I suspect that that would be a wise investment, given the long-term effects of having children grow up in fully benefits-dependent households. We are only too well aware of the damaging intergenerational poverty that can be created. There are communities in Scotland that are still benefits dependent because no support was put in back in the 1980s. We do not want to see that happen at this time of crisis in the UK economy. That is an important thing to say.
In the information provided by Save the Children, one of my constituents describes better than I could the problem that parents face. They say:
“I feel that the government is making it extremely difficult for ordinary people with children to earn an honest living. The current situation is encouraging people to give up work and go onto benefits as many people are better off that way. This is surely not the correct way to go about things. I enjoy working and would not be happy on benefits, however this is becoming increasingly difficult to manage.”
If that individual finds themselves on the dole, perhaps their grandchildren will think that being on the dole is the normal existence for human beings—it is not the normal existence; we have to support people in employment and into employment.
There are challenges not just for the UK Government, but for the Scottish Government and for this Parliament. I do not deny that the extension of entitlement to two-year-olds is a huge challenge in the current financial climate, as is providing out-of-school care for five-to-14-year-olds. However, something that we could achieve more speedily is getting the commitment to provide 15 hours a week for three and four-year-olds to work better. I do not think that local authorities are flexible enough in their approach and I do not think that they use partnership nurseries as effectively as they could do. Some people just cannot take up the entitlement because they cannot put their son or daughter into a nursery at 10 o’clock in the morning, leave their job and pick them up again at half past 12. That just cannot be done, particularly if people do not have wider family support. We must look at reforming that area to make it work better for families.
I will finish by looking at the cost of childcare. Costs are too high, but I was interested to learn that costs in Scotland are higher than they are in the rest of the UK. I have spoken to Save the Children about the issue, and I wonder whether we are comparing apples with oranges rather than apples with apples. I want us to look at the quality of the childcare and the educational experience that are provided for children when they start to follow the childcare pathway. It might be the case that the like-for-like costs are quite similar, but that, because of the involvement of more highly skilled staff, a better outcome in qualitative terms is obtained in Scotland. That might explain the differential, but more efforts need to be made to look into that.
I again commend Jamie Hepburn for bringing the debate to the chamber.
17:20
I hope you do not mind, Presiding Officer, but I had to bring the baby into the chamber with me because I could not find a babysitter. On that note, Save the Children says that Jamie Hepburn is on the night shift, so I will need to see him afterwards to pass the baby back to him.
I congratulate Jamie Hepburn on securing the debate and on his excellent speech. I acknowledge the work that Save the Children has done in providing briefings for all of us, and I know that much of the evidence and the facts that they have provided us with will come up in members’ speeches.
I want to talk briefly about the living wage and, if I can find the time, college provision. Jamie Hepburn’s motion says that supporting the poorest parents into work is the best way to tackle child poverty. I agree, but I also think that that work must be quality work. To my mind, what is needed are good jobs that provide a greater degree of security and which pay a decent living wage. I know that the Scottish National Party and Labour agree on that, as their support for the campaign for a living wage shows.
I welcome the commitment that the Scottish Government announced yesterday to uprate the current living wage to £7.20 an hour. The minister will be aware that I revealed that 1,000 Scottish Government employees were entitled to the living wage but were not getting it. I am pleased to say that the wages of a number of those employees are now being uprated, and are being backdated, but there are still some areas in which that process is not quite complete.
The minister might also be aware that, last week, the campaign for a living wage revealed that across Scotland 16,000 employees who are employed directly by local authorities receive less than £7.20 an hour. I appreciate that the Scottish Government cannot demand that they be paid at least the living wage, but it has a political role to play in demonstrating leadership and the capacity of the living wage to help people work their way out of poverty. I certainly feel that if the Scottish Government and the local authorities demanded that all their employees be paid the living wage and built that into tendering contracts, we would drive a cultural change in the private sector that would benefit people right across Scotland. The Government has a leadership role to play in that regard.
On working conditions, there is an issue with temporary posts, zero-hour contracts and poor pay and conditions, which make getting and retaining a job extremely difficult. For some families, the thought that a temporary post might put them back on the job market in a few months’ time means that they will not bother going for such a job, because they will lose their jobseekers allowance and will have to wait six weeks to get that money back in their pockets. Frankly, that is just too big a risk. Therefore, we need to ensure that the jobs on offer are quality jobs.
In the time that is left, I want to talk about college provision. I recently visited Jewel and Esk College in Edinburgh Eastern, which is an excellent college that does tremendous work. I was very interested to hear what it had to say about childcare support and the allocations for that to further education colleges. Until I visited the college, I did not realise that the allocations are based on historical uptake. In other words, the money that colleges get is based on the number of students that they used to have who had children to look after. That means that we always address the situation in the past but never drive cultural change for the future. If we want to get into colleges more students who care for children, we need to be more up front about the type of provision that we can offer them.
It is important to recognise that colleges deal with the situation in different ways. Jewel and Esk College provides childcare support directly to the student, while Stevenson College and Telford College pay the money to the provider. Such inconsistency across the sector does not help people who might be considering going to college for the first time. It would be great if the Government could think about running a serious advertising campaign to attract parents back into education, thereby recognising the power of education to lift people out of poverty as much as the power of work to improve their life chances.
I congratulate Jamie Hepburn on an excellent motion and an excellent speech. I hope that on many of the issues that we have talked about we can go forward together as a united Parliament.
17:24
As colleagues have done, I congratulate Jamie Hepburn on securing this valuable debating time for an issue that is of great importance to many families throughout Scotland. I also thank Save the Children for producing an excellent report in “The Childcare Trap”.
The scourge that is child poverty is a source of great shame to our society. The thought of a child being born into poverty, not receiving the opportunities that many of us take for granted and suffering—on some occasions—from malnutrition and illness is truly distressing.
All members of the Parliament can agree on that and we should do all that we can together to eradicate a problem that should belong in a bygone era. Save the Children’s research shows that 90,000 children in Scotland live in severe poverty.
In the past few days, there has been much talk of boosting our economy, creating jobs, attracting investment and getting Scots back to work. It is difficult to argue that those are not vital to Scotland’s prosperity. Most people would concede that the Scottish Government is doing a good job in achieving that, despite the economic difficulties. However, people must be able to go to work.
Short of winning the lottery, the simplest way to eradicate poverty is to boost household budgets, which is best achieved by securing productive employment. Kezia Dugdale made a good point when she talked about quality employment rather than just employment, as such. For many, the cost of childcare is simply too high, and there is a genuine disincentive to go out and work. Jamie Hepburn discussed that in some detail.
Childcare costs in the UK are among the highest in the world, and parents in Scotland face costs that are higher than the UK average. The Daycare Trust’s 2011 survey showed that parents in Scotland pay on average £100 per week for 25 hours of care and there has been an 8.3 per cent increase in the past year alone—a time when fuel and food prices have also been on the rise and many parents have had their wages frozen. Matters have not been helped by the coalition Government’s decision to reduce the amount that low-income families can claim towards the cost of formal childcare from 80 per cent to 70 per cent. I make no apology for repeating that extremely important point. That reduction means an average loss of more than £500 per year for the 44,500 families in Scotland who receive the support.
Research has consistently shown that the inability to secure or afford childcare remains the most significant of all the barriers to gaining employment. Indeed, the growing up in Scotland study found that 55 per cent of unemployed parents would work or study if they could find quality, reliable and convenient childcare.
Only last week, one of my constituents contacted my office because she was unable to secure adequate childcare so that she could attend James Watt College. She currently has to miss days at college to care for her child and may have to drop out of her course altogether, thus limiting her chances of gaining the type of employment that she wishes for and, of course, stunting not only her life chances but, ultimately, her child’s.
Despite the additional funding that the Scottish Government provided for childcare support in the previous session of the Parliament, such situations continue to arise. However, despite budgetary constraints, there is a will to develop support for families to meet childcare needs. That support will include a new generation of family centres, in addition to flexible childcare options, which will include asking local authorities to provide their statutory hours of childcare in more flexible ways in order to support parents into employment.
Of course, I argue that the simplest way to address child poverty would be if we had access to our own substantial resources or control of our own tax and benefits system, which would enable us to do far more in Scotland to resolve such matters. One does not have to look far to see how much better things could be: Children in Scotland pointed out that, across the North Sea, Norway has the fourth-highest level of child wellbeing in Europe while the UK sits shamefully in 24th place, behind Slovenia. Furthermore, the child poverty level in Norway stands at 6.7 per cent, which is a quarter of the UK figure.
I am sure that the Scottish Government will continue to do all that it can with the resources that it has to improve the life chances of all Scotland’s children. The early years strategy and sure start fund will offer real benefits to thousands of young Scots. However, I agree with Jamie Hepburn that we must also study Save the Children’s report and consider what more can be done to help parents to get back to work and tackle child poverty.
17:28
I commend Jamie Hepburn for giving the Parliament the opportunity to debate a significant report.
We all tend to accept as a given the importance of a positive early-years life experience. However, what happens in practice belies the commitment to supporting early intervention and early years services. We know, and it is well stated, that families that have work opportunities and work experience help to create more stable and more positive children, who are better able to take advantage of the education system. We know that family stability is fundamental to a good start in life and we know that the quality of services is critical, as Bob Doris mentioned.
Malcolm Chisholm, Jamie Hepburn and Bob Doris mentioned the working families tax credit. It is quite bizarre that a Conservative-led Government that places great emphasis on work and families is making it exceedingly difficult for many families to work in the way that they now need to work. Families either need two incomes to survive or, when a parent is bringing up a child on his or her own, they need childcare so that they can work as well as raise their children. If the coalition values working families, it should rethink what it is doing with the working families tax credit.
Malcolm Chisholm referred to the 1990s and a debate that he attended in the House of Commons. I do not want to get into party politics, but in 1997 the Labour Government, followed up by the Labour-led Executive in Scotland, fundamentally changed the quality and nature of the debate around early intervention and early years services. The sure start fund, the working families tax credit, getting it right for every child, the workforce development fund and the changing children’s services fund all helped to create a more structured and well-supported environment. When we debate the budget, we need to watch that we do not shift the priorities away from those critical services that people might think are of greater value. We ignore and abandon such initiatives at our peril.
I have one more thing to put on the record; I will end on it. We often look beyond Scotland for examples of good practice in how we should support children and families. Perhaps we need to pause and reflect on the good practice that happens here in Scotland. Why not look at that good work and build on it? Liz Mercer and her team in the Cathkin community nursery in Rutherglen achieved the highest possible gradings in a recent inspection. Lynn McCafferty and her team at Brucehill nursery in Jackie Baillie’s constituency are leading the field in children’s emergent literacy. In my constituency are Doris Robertson and her team in the West Johnstone family centre, where the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education reports noted the very good quality of care and learning that are being made available to children. We do have good practice in Scotland—we have fine examples, but they need to be well supported and financed so that families, parents and the children get the best possible start.
My final plea to the minister is that by all means we should learn about good practice elsewhere, but let us concentrate on establishing a Scottish model and sing the praises of what is happening here in Scotland.
17:33
I add my congratulations to Jamie Hepburn and thank Save the Children for its important and thought-provoking report, which flags up so many of the barriers that are facing those who are in lower-income groups and the difficult choices that they have to make when they are looking after their children.
Notwithstanding some of the comments from Labour members about the UK Government, I have to say that the Labour Party in Scotland and the former SNP minister who has just left the chamber did a great deal to refocus the debate. Hugh Henry was right when he said that we have much that we can be proud of.
There is no doubt that early childhood development through good-quality care or educational opportunities is crucial to determining the future health and wellbeing of children. The statistical evidence for that is non-contestable. The possible attainment gaps are well established; they can open up at as early as 22 months and, if we do not do something radical about that, it is difficult to close them later in life.
I therefore welcome the debate very much, but I suggest that the discussion is not just about childcare but about an opportunity that goes well beyond providing invaluable support to parents: the provision of early years education to enhance and promote children’s wellbeing and development. Indeed, not getting that right can have profound and potentially expensive ramifications later in a child’s life. I believe that all parties in the chamber have done a lot to move that debate on, which is good news.
I hear the criticisms of the UK Government in relation to the tax and benefits issues, but I do not entirely agree with what Malcolm Chisholm and Hugh Henry said in that regard. I believe that the Westminster Government has taken to heart the importance of early education. One of the first policies that it implemented was the entitlement to 15 hours a week of free early education. That is an important provision that we can build on in Scotland. The message from parents that they want greater flexibility and the free entitlement, particularly for those in disadvantaged communities, can take us a long way down that road.
An important point, which I think Bob Doris raised, is partnership issues for both nursery and childcare provision. We face far too many rigidities in Scotland in that regard, because, through local authorities, the state can dictate a bit too much at times just what placings are available. That is unfortunate, because parents want much greater flexibility and choice. However, it should not be just about convenience for parents, as the social and educational interests of the child must always be at the heart of provision.
The Save the Children report provides compelling evidence of the difficulties facing many families because of what it describes as the childcare trap and it sends out a strong message to employers—the point made about colleges in this regard is important, too—that they have a vital role in supporting families and our young children. We need to take that message to heart, so I warmly congratulate Jamie Hepburn on bringing the debate to Parliament.
17:37
I, too, congratulate Jamie Hepburn on securing the debate and I congratulate Save the Children and the Daycare Trust on their report. Other members have covered the issues that the report highlighted, but I think that it is worth repeating some of them.
It struck me that I did not know that the cost of childcare is significantly higher in Scotland than it is in the rest of the UK. I did not know that eight out of 10 low-income families struggle to afford childcare. Although I did know that the lack of affordable childcare is a major barrier to accessing employment, the fact that 25 per cent of parents living in severe poverty have had to abandon working to stay at home with their children because it costs too much should be a staggering statistic for us all.
Hugh Henry was right to remind us that we have solid foundations on which to build. I am grateful for other members’ acknowledgement of the initial work of the Labour Government on improving access to childcare. I remember that the expansion of such access occurred in 1997, when I was the mother of a five-year-old and it was too late for my family to benefit from it. I was most jealous of those who did. However, it was critical then for parents who relied on going out to work. We have positive examples of good practice around Scotland that show what we can achieve in that regard.
I came into Parliament with a mission, as many of us do, which was to tackle poverty. I had worked in disadvantaged communities, where I saw not just poverty of income but the poverty of aspiration that was visited on successive generations. I learned a number of valuable lessons there. First, I learned that a strong economy and a strong society are different sides of the same coin and that one of the best routes out of poverty is through employment and having a job. I witnessed people not just improving their income but having a sense of achievement and walking taller, with a sense of self-esteem. For many of them, it was the first time that they had seen a sense of their own worth reflected by employers. Having a job mattered; it mattered to income levels and it mattered in all sorts of subtle ways in relation to raising aspirations in the community.
The second lesson that I learned was that, when we try to intervene to break the cycle of poverty, it is necessary to do so early. Appalling though it may be to think about this, a child’s life chances are determined by the time that child gets to the age of three. We know that if we intervene early and work intensively with those children and their families, we can begin to turn things round.
The other thing that struck me was that, if we provide childcare to enable parents to work, as we did in many of the communities that I worked in, and at the same time provide a supportive, nurturing environment for those children, we get a win-win. If we truly want to target poverty, that is the kind of approach that we must adopt.
We know that parents in Scotland are struggling to cope with childcare, we know that the biggest barrier to employment, particularly for women, is childcare and we know that the very poorest parents are being priced out of work.
In my remaining time, I will focus on the provision of 15 hours a week of free early childhood education and care for two-year olds, because it brings both those strands together. We know and can identify the children from disadvantaged households and we know where the parents are struggling. If we correlate that with employment, we should be able to identify those families; it is not rocket science.
A cost-benefit analysis would show us that, if we invest now, we will save the public purse in the long term, never mind what we will save some of the poorest families in terms of experience.
I recognise the minister’s personal commitment to the issue. I know, because she has told us, that she regularly chases her Cabinet colleague Mike Russell—and more power to her elbow—but I have to say that we need to do more than chase the cabinet secretary. If she does that, she will have the support of MSPs across the Parliament for the kind of action that I know she wants to take.
17:42
I am very grateful to Jamie Hepburn for securing the debate, on one of my favourite subjects—or one of my favourite rants—which is the cost of childcare in Scotland.
Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Save the Children to discuss, among other matters, the survey that led to its report, “Making Work Pay—The Childcare Trap”. I could quibble about some of the methodology, given that it is a UK-wide survey and I am not sure how representative the Scottish samples are, but I will not do that, because by nature I am not a pedant.
More fundamentally, anybody who has ears to listen and eyes to see will know that a significant proportion of families pay more for their childcare than they pay for their rent or mortgage. As all members who have spoken in the debate have demonstrated, there is an obvious connection, which stares us in the face, between the costs of childcare and leaving or staying in employment. I welcome the work that Save the Children has undertaken and will endeavour to respond to its report, as well as to the concerns that have been raised by members during the debate.
In the little time that I have, I will try very hard to demonstrate what the Government has done, what it will do and what it would like to do.
However, before I continue I would like to make one broad point. In doing so, I do not seek to be controversial or to disrupt the consensus that often—and rightly—exists in members’ business debates, so I will choose my language carefully. If there was ever an issue that best crystallised the arguments for this Parliament having more powers, surely it has to be the need to provide for and support better our children and families. Let me be blunt; without control of taxation and the welfare benefits system, there will be no quick fix to ease the burden on, or the hardship that is faced by, hard-working parents or parents who wish to work. Nonetheless, I believe that we can do much more to ease that burden.
I will touch on welfare reform, which was mentioned by Jamie Hepburn and Malcolm Chisholm among others. The UK Government’s Welfare Reform Bill is substantial and will bring about—if I quote Jackie Baillie correctly from yesterday—“a seismic shift”. The Scottish Government supports benefits simplification and is considering the UK Government’s proposition as to what the universal credit will achieve, but we do not support welfare reform that will impact most greatly on the most vulnerable people. We do not yet know the full extent of the impact of the changes or the effect that there will be on devolved services. Nonetheless, we will continue to engage proactively on the subject with our colleagues at Westminster. Members will also wish to consider the part that they can play in that work. Bob Doris exercised his right to do that tonight.
For the moment we must work within our constraints. Liz Smith touched on an important point in referring to what we have managed to achieve collectively as a Parliament. In essence, we have achieved consensus on the need strategically to prioritise the early years.
I could have run up the back of the chamber and hugged Hugh Henry when—
Go on! [Laughter.]
I will resist—to save his blushes, never mind mine.
It was music to my ears as a mother and as the Minister for Children and Young People to hear that we have excellent practice here in Scotland and that we do not necessarily need to go on study trips to Scandinavia—to Norway or Sweden, for example—or elsewhere. Malcolm Chisholm mentioned the North Edinburgh Childcare family centre. I have visited it twice and have been very impressed by the work that it does. Hugh Henry mentioned Cathkin nursery, which blew me away when I visited it to see the work that it does.
Many areas in Glasgow, Dundee and North Ayrshire are doing interesting work with vulnerable two-year-olds. I am aware of a pilot that was commissioned by the previous Scottish Executive that, interestingly enough, showed that extended provision did not have a huge impact on two-year-olds, but did have an impact on supporting parents and helping people to be better parents. That is a significant bit of evidence.
I am pleased that over the past four years the Government has increased entitlement of free pre-school education to 475 hours per annum. That amounts to 8 million more hours.
More to the point, what are we now going to do? To answer Hugh Henry more substantively, I think that this Government is committed to making the decisive shift to preventative spending. We have an opportunity to be bold. We have created an early years change fund to lead the way on preventative spending, and we will take the work forward jointly with local authorities, the national health service and the third sector. We know that the investment in zero to eight-year-olds, and zero to three-year-olds in particular, pays back countless dividends. I personally will chair the early years task force, which will oversee early years activity, picking up on our priorities of childcare, family centres, play, early learning experiences and supporting parents.
I hope that members will be reassured that we are committed to expanding the capacity, range and flexibility of early learning and childcare. We will develop the steps that are needed to make early learning and childcare accessible and affordable to all—obviously within the constraints that I have outlined. I am committed to the fact that there are positives to be achieved, but the bigger prize to be gained for our children is for our Parliament to evolve into full adulthood and to exercise all the rights and responsibilities that go with it.
I will quickly say something about our third sector partners. Third sector organisations are crucial partners in delivery, and I am delighted at the allocation of £6.8 million to the early years action fund, which was announced today. That will support the expansion of innovative and exciting models of integrated learning, childcare and family support.
My final point is the one that Kenny Gibson raised about child poverty. Although I am pleased that, over the past 10 years, the level of child poverty has dropped from 28 per cent to 20 per cent, I must say that 20 per cent is still far too high. The Government is absolutely committed to doing everything in its powers to eradicate child poverty.
Meeting closed at 17:50.