Hansard

I declare an interest, in that I am a councillor on Aberdeen City Council, and I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests.

In her opening remarks, my colleague Liz Smith acknowledged the Scottish Government’s laudable aim to expand childcare but challenged the Scottish Government on the reality on the ground, which is simply that the provision of those places remains a significant problem, particularly with regard to flexible access for parents.

Local authorities will have to deliver the Scottish Government’s expansion of free childcare to 1,140 hours by 2020, and we have to be conscious of the challenges that they will face in meeting the expectations of the Scottish Government. From my discussions with senior education officials in the north-east, it is clear that there is genuine concern about the ability of local authorities to deliver that commitment within the timelines that are available. In Aberdeen alone, with 3,500 new places having to be secured, it will require 15 new nursery facilities to be built. To achieve the deadline, work on those facilities should really have started last year. The situation is even more challenging when councils such as Aberdeen face difficulties in accessing land to ensure that the facilities are built in the right place.

Further, the programme for government states that 20,000 qualified practitioners will be required. However, in the north-east we are already struggling with a chronic shortage of workforce in teaching and nursery. Aberdeen, in particular, is struggling to recruit new nursery nurses, yet staff projections show that, to meet the requirements of expansion, the city will need an additional 267 qualified practitioners. Even if all 267 of them were in training right now for their qualification, they would not be finished until 2020, which means that they would not qualify in time. Further, with colleges having their funding cut, resulting in a reduction in part-time and flexible places, the Scottish Government is not making it easy for local authorities such as Aberdeen to meet that challenge.

Educationists in the north-east have been clear with me that there needs to be a rapid expansion of private early years education. However, the Government’s current policy does not provide enough incentives for providers to move into the market.

As Ruth Davidson announced in February 2015, those of us sitting on this side of the chamber advocate parental choice and flexibility within the childcare system. That involves a childcare credit so that parents can choose where and when they will use their entitlement for funded nursery provision in order to support them to combine work and family commitments. We learned this morning of a proposed child account to ensure that money follows the child rather than the institution. That is a welcome proposal and, if the Scottish Government is truly committed to it, it will show that Scottish Conservative arguments on flexibility and freeing up the system have finally sunk in. However, we on this side of the chamber are sceptical that the SNP leopard has truly changed its spots.

In her speech, Annie Wells touched on a number of very important issues. What Scotland’s young people need is not mere political tokenism but support and early intervention. Drawing on her experiences in Glasgow, Annie talked about the need to support disadvantaged children and troubled families; in her further reflections on being a mother all her working life, she made a convincing case for why flexibility in childcare is so crucial.

I welcome Daniel Johnson’s remarks about flexible childcare being critical in helping mothers back into work and ensuring that parents who are able to get back to work have that childcare support. If we do not provide that, we will, in his own words, have barely even started.

Tavish Scott spoke interestingly about how, when he was a candidate back in 1999, the Conservatives were even then talking about vouchers. I thank Mr Scott for reminding the chamber that the Scottish Conservatives are always consistent.

Gillian Martin focused on an economic argument—and rightly so. I absolutely agree with her about the need to get people back into work. However, a balance needs to be struck because, as research shows, children need to spend time with their families. We need to avoid really young children spending more time in institutions than with their families.

Bob Doris made an interesting contribution that did not just take the party line. In raising questions that affected his constituency, he set out a sensible challenge to the Government, and I hope that ministers were listening to and act on what he said.

One of my other colleagues, Alison Harris, touched on another extremely important point: the inequality and injustice of birthday discrimination. As the member made clear, the Scottish Government’s approach is illogical, and I agree that it is “just plain daft” that a child is entitled to less care if they were born on the last day of February than if they were born on the first day of March.

In his speech, Jeremy Balfour challenged what is a patchwork of childcare for working parents. He also raised the issue of the underfunding of partner providers. The fact that their staff work on very low wages can compound existing workforce issues, particularly attempts to secure the recruitment of new practitioners. Such a proposition is not enticing.