Meeting of the Parliament 28 May 2014
It was a bit rich for the minister to tell the Labour Party to listen and learn when the Government is debating its white paper flagship policy today with a huge absence from the SNP ranks. [Interruption.] I see that Mr Russell is laughing, but it is his party’s flagship policy.
I am glad that the Labour Party has selected childcare for debate this afternoon. As all parties in the chamber recognise, we must go further in terms of the hours that are provided, and we must extend eligibility. One concern is the issue of birthday discrimination, which my colleague Liz Smith will come back to in her speech.
Recently in the Education and Culture Committee, we heard evidence on Scotland’s educational and cultural future, with regard to the Government’s white paper. During the final evidence session, we discussed childcare—rightly so—with the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning. Mr Russell gave a typically modest performance, which included the following statement. He said:
“It is wrong to try to deconstruct it”
—the white paper’s childcare policy—
“and undermine it by taking a figure from here and a figure from there and saying, ‘You hivnae worked this out.’” —[Official Report, Education and Culture Committee, 29 April 2014; c 4098.]
That was quite an extraordinary statement. To question the financial assumptions behind the policy is an exercise not of deconstruction, but of parliamentary scrutiny.
As the Labour motion makes clear, the Scottish Parliament information centre recently published a full and rather devastating brief on the white paper plans. Is SPICe, too, guilty of deconstruction?
Perhaps I could go a step further and ask whether freedom of speech is no longer accepted by this Government.
Secondly, there are very good reasons to conclude that the Scottish Government has not got its sums right on the policy—notwithstanding the fact that the projected 6 per cent rise in female employment is purely illustrative, as the journalist Tom Gordon and many others have pointed out, and is in no way related to the specific proposals that are outlined in the white paper.
As other members have mentioned today, in order for female employment to reach Swedish levels, 104,000 currently inactive mothers would have to enter the workforce. As SPICe has concluded, there are 64,000 women in that category at present, and only 14,000 indicated that they would enter employment. Economic modelling for the policy cannot have been done, or we would not be here today debating the issue and asking for information. That is a crucial point because, as the cabinet secretary said to the committee, the childcare policy—in particular the third phase of the plan—will be funded via taxation.
If there are not enough women who are able—or, indeed, willing—to enter the workforce, that raises questions about the proposal’s affordability. SPICe has estimated that the third phase would cost £1.2 billion, which could rise to £1.5 billion if costs continue to grow. It is estimated that, in order to generate that kind of figure from increased workforce taxation alone, we would need a 10 per cent rise in employment rates, which is an extremely substantial advance in what would be a relatively short timeframe.
A further point relates to the nature of the work that it is anticipated those mothers will do. Kezia Dugdale raised that issue, too. In a press release that was issued the day after the white paper was published, the Scottish Government indicated that the projected 35,000 additional childcare jobs will be “mainly for women”. We all know—in my case, I know from my family’s experience—that people who work in the nursery sector are low paid. Most of them are on the minimum wage and many are on zero-hours contracts. They are much more highly trained and qualified than they were a decade ago, and are all registered with the Scottish Social Services Council. In a debate such as this, we should all put on the record how much we value everyone who works in childcare.
It is not just about education. The great thing about childcare is that it offers the chance to identify children’s development needs at the earliest stage, so that they can be addressed pre-school rather than later.
I very much welcome Professor Siraj’s review of the early years workforce. However, unless conditions are radically altered, many part-time workers within the sector will not earn enough to go beyond the personal allowance. Since the coalition Government came to power, the personal allowance has increased year on year and is now more than £10,000. Overall, the increase in the personal allowance has taken more than 200,000 of the lowest earners in Scotland out of paying income tax altogether. Moreover, it is assumed that the earning potential of mothers who are presently economically inactive will be roughly equivalent to that of those who are in work.
It is not solely the absence of childcare that is holding women back; it is also the fact that better access to education is needed.
We know that the Scottish Government has not directly modelled the impact of improved childcare, and that there is public interest in its doing so. I hope that, if necessary, the Scottish Information Commissioner does what she did in relation to the legal advice on Scotland entering the European Union, and takes this Government to the High Court to get that information.