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Meeting of the Parliament 22 September 2011

22 Sep 2011 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Affordable Childcare

Constance, Angela SNP Almond Valley Watch on SPTV

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.