Hansard

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