Meeting of the Parliament 31 October 2018
Thank you, Presiding Officer. You caught me slightly unawares there, as I was looking towards the Green Party benches for the next speaker, but there we are.
I start with the example of Archie, who went through his pre-school years depending totally on private sector childcare because both his parents work. One of them has the temerity to live on Shetland quite a lot of the time—although I am told that he redeemed himself this summer by taking Archie to Anfield for a pre-season game. My point is that the dependence that we, as parents, placed on the private sector was complete. I want to reflect that in recognising the Government’s ambitions for the delivery and expansion of childcare by saying that those are things that parents absolutely want. However, as members on both the Labour and Tory front benches have rightly said this afternoon, its approach needs to adapt to and recognise the scale of the challenges that exist not just in some but in all parts of Scotland.
One childcare provider who is in the private sector, which is essential to delivery in this area, wrote to me to say:
“There is no doubt that private nurseries are the poor relation when it comes to an equitable distribution of the significant Government funding to support the expansion of Early Years funded hours. Private nurseries are going to be squeezed as cash for capital works to improve”
local authority
“settings and to upskill their existing workforce takes place.”
That reflects remarks that have been made by members of other parties. The childcare provider went on to say:
“The private sector will struggle thereafter to retain our best staff, due to the lure of a better paid council job. The private nurseries in turn face a double whammy of”
local authorities
“insisting that any support they get is dependent on demonstrating they are a Living Wage employer ... whilst the hourly rate they pay to partner providers is below the operating cost threshold of the business.”
Those are serious and significant concerns that need to be ironed out by the Government as it progresses the matter. If they are not, the concern is about the hours that will be offered for nursery places. What we are talking about here is the 9 am to 3 pm slot, which suits some people. However, most working mums and dads might start before 9 o’clock in the morning and will certainly finish after 3 o’clock in the afternoon. That is why the other parts of the service will have to pick up those times, both before the start of what is broadly considered to be the normal working day and very much later into the evening. In my part of the world, there is a range of jobs in which people work way outside those hours—I know more people who start work at 7 in the morning and finish at lunch time, or who work later at the other end of the day, than I do people who work traditional office hours. Seeing that is essential to understanding and therefore to designing a system that takes into account the challenges of the modern working world that we are in—whether someone is a teacher, a fish processor, a worker in the hospitality industry or whatever.
I recognise that this is a huge challenge, and by no means am I diminishing or decrying the Government’s effort to get it right. However, accepting the points that have already been made about tackling the challenge of the landscape that is the modern working world will be essential in its redesign—or, if that is too strong a term, reconsideration—of what is currently not working. I also take Mary Fee’s point in her question about additional staff. Many of the Government’s own figures illustrate the depth of the problems there.
If I might finish with one other point, it is to say that it is for the Government to recognise what it is asking of local government and the entire range of organisations that provide childcare. Just last month, Highland Council said:
“to satisfy the government that we are delivering this programme of changes requires that any planning, monitoring, tracking, data gathering and financial reporting ... is becoming more complex and more detailed.”
I ask the Government, in responding to the debate, to recognise that there must be a happy balance somewhere when it comes to the necessity of auditing the use of public money and dealing with—