Meeting of the Parliament 26 February 2026 [Draft]
I thank Roz McCall for her motion and for this debate.
We have heard from parents up and down the country not only about how expensive childcare is but about how difficult it is to find a place and how inflexible the hours are. At the heart of the issue must be a recognition that the world has changed since those of us here were little. The days of being able to survive, let alone thrive, on one income are gone and parents must go to work to provide. We also often live further from family members and the so-called village feels distant from many young families. The constant pull between providing for wee ones and being there and present for them is exhausting.
We have heard much from families about how difficult it can be to find a place. We recently experienced with our son Callan how much of a rush there is to find any childcare, let alone the right childcare. We are extremely lucky to have a wonderful childminder lined up to look after him, but trying to find a place was pretty wild. As first-time parents living outside a major city, we thought, perhaps naively, that getting a place would be relatively easy, but several nurseries had no spaces and childminders had long waiting lists.
We must ensure that the mix of childcare across the sector meets the demands of parents and children across Scotland and that places are of high quality and deliver learning opportunities that allow children to flourish. There must be high-quality jobs that value the expertise of those who work in the sector, and we must provide further development opportunities as we look to expand funded hours.
Childcare is an investment in the next generation, but it also supports women back into the workplace. I have friends who have two small children and have spaced them in age so that they will have some funded hours for their older child by the time their second maternity leave ends. Despite that, they will still pay the best part of £2,000 in childcare. No one should be paying so much and funded hours should not be serving as a family planning mechanism.
Scottish Greens want to establish a simple, universal and free childcare guarantee so that all children in Scotland have access to funded childcare hours from the age of six months and until they start school. We want to extend the 1,140 hours of funded childcare to all two-year-olds in Scotland as soon as possible, with provision starting from the Monday after their second birthday. That should be a priority during the first half of the next session of Parliament. Following that, we want to expand funded childcare for all children aged six months to two years, with the aim of providing a universal 570 hours of funded childcare by the end of the next session of Parliament. That will be accompanied by capital funding to expand the number of places available to meet that increased demand, and there will be significant investment in the workforce to ensure that we have well-trained staff.
We will also ensure that the increase in funded hours enables greater flexibility in childcare provision so that parents can access the childcare that they are entitled to. That includes delivering more wraparound care to suit existing work and school patterns, increasing flexibility in council-run nurseries—in particular, to accommodate shift workers—and reviewing and expanding childcare models. [Interruption.]