Childcare Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-10-14
Topic: Government Operations
Margaret Beryl Jones (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, first, I would like to thank noble Lords who have spoken in support of our amendments. I also thank the Minister for his statement and his subsequent comments. The Minister raised other issues in his statement that relate to other amendments, and I know that noble Lords will want to pick that up when we get to those items I want now to concentrate on the specific issues relating to the timing of the funding review. The Minister did not address in his response the concerns of the Delegated Powers Committee, which has once again criticised the Government for a lack of detail in the Bill. It does not believe that the case has been made for why all the detail should be contained in secondary legislation, to be seen at a later date, rather than in the Bill. I was sad that the Minister was not able to respond to that today Secondly, the Minister did not address why the Bill is being rushed through in advance of the outcome of the funding review being known, which might, as we have heard, fundamentally alter the shape of the package that will be on offer because of the complexities which I think we all now understand. In particular, he did not answer the question asked by my noble friend Lady Andrews about when he first knew that he would not be able to let us have the information that he promised us at an earlier stage. A lot was riding on that at the Committee stage and we feel let down by his lack of commitment I hear what the Minister said about the timing of the funding review and that it would be published after the spending review in November, but nothing that he has said so far has provided any reassurance that even Members of the Commons will have the opportunity to scrutinise the Bill at that stage. Clearly, the outcome of the funding review would need to be before them at the Commons Committee stage for there to be any chance of scrutiny of how the scheme will work in practice. Although I listened carefully to the Minister, I do not believe that he gave such a commitment This amendment is not about delaying the Bill. The Minister talked about scrutinising evidence and about consultation. All those things can go ahead as planned and still take place—we have got two years before the implementation date—so I do not believe that what we are asking for is unrealistic. There will be plenty of time before the Bill comes into force to allow the outcome to be published and properly scrutinised by both Houses, so the current rush to the statute book leaves us feeling sceptical about the motives I was saddened to hear the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, comment that he thought that a sustainable funding solution was unobtainable, because the scheme seems untenable in the long term if we do not have that. We cannot have a scheme where the funding is made available for one year and then left to drift for following years, which appears to be what is happening at the moment and is why the sector is so unhappy about the schemes now being funded at a loss. We need a response to that. I respect the views of the noble Lord, but I thought that he was being rather too pessimistic We believe that what we are suggesting is fair. It would not alter the implementation date of the Bill, but it would give us more reassurance that the scheme is workable and tenable in the longer term. We are not convinced by the Government’s response and would therefore like to test the opinion of the House.