Meeting of the Parliament 08 March 2016
I congratulate Cara Hilton on securing this debate on a critical issue for families. The figures in the Family and Childcare Trust report, to which the motion refers, are both dramatic and damning. They show that childcare in Scotland is unaffordable and is getting more unaffordable, and that childcare is more unaffordable in Scotland than it is in the rest of the UK, in spite of the gloss that Mr Adam tried to put on that.
There are consequences for families across Scotland. Cara Hilton went through in detail some of the ways in which families deal with that, but there are probably two fundamental ways in which families deal with unaffordable childcare. One is that one parent, usually the mother, simply does not work. She gives up work or is unable to take up work, with all the consequences that that has for the family income and for career prospects. The second strategy that is often pursued is that grandparents take the strain. Last year, the Family and Childcare Trust produced a report that was based on a survey of how much childcare grandparents provide, and it was discovered that the majority of grandparents in Scotland provide some support for childcare and that the figure in Scotland is much higher than that in the rest of the UK.
We should ask ourselves how we got into this situation. We know how we got here, because the childcare alliance, to which Cara Hilton referred, undertook a significant piece of work when it set up its commission for childcare reform. It was clear about where we had gone wrong on childcare in recent years and it said that the single-minded focus on free pre-school hours to the exclusion of all else had had detrimental policy consequences for other and necessary forms of childcare. Providers too have told us in recent weeks that the underfunding of free childcare places has meant that additional costs have been passed on to parents and families who are paying for their childcare or for the additional hours that they need in order to work full time.
The childcare alliance was absolutely clear that what families need is childcare that is flexible all year round, is for all ages and is affordable, not just free. There is no reason why we cannot deliver that, because other countries do it. Other countries provide childcare in a way that means that childcare arrangements do not come to a grinding halt three times a year when the school holidays start, and in a way that people know will not bankrupt them, because there is a limit on the proportion of their income that they will have to spend on it. Those countries do not invest more public funds than we do; they invest similar amounts and get much more back for it.
The onus on the minister is to take the opportunity this evening to at least signal a shift in the Government’s thinking—to say not that it will go into the election simply boasting about free pre-school hours, which on many occasions in recent years has really meant playing catch-up with the rest of the United Kingdom, but rather that it will present a plan to move forward and bring about the transformation in childcare that families in Scotland want and need, which we can achieve if we have the political will to do it.
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