Childcare, like housing, is one of those products where the shortage has got so acute that it feels weird to have reservations about any policy aimed at expanding it.
Yet just as the Conservatives’ proposal to unlock the mass conversion of family homes into flats, which I wrote about last month, is a two-edged sword which risks locking the impact of the housing crisis into the architecture of the country, so does Labour’s latest proposal for childcare in primary schools have serious downsides.
The proposal, reported last month, is to fund the creation of thousands of new childcare places in so-called ‘deserts’, where existing provision is thin. Nothing wrong with that, in itself – but the devil is in the detail. According to The Times:
‘Under proposals expected to be in its manifesto, the party is looking to fund new nurseries in primary schools across the country to provide continuity of education for younger children.
The centres would be integrated into existing schools as part of what Labour claims will be a “modernised childcare system” available from the end of parental leave to the end of primary school.’
Under the proposals, councils will be ‘encouraged to set up their own nursery provision’ in primary schools. Labour believes that this will ‘reduce costs while allowing schools to fully integrate their nurseries into the wider early years education programme.’
At this point, as a reader of CapX, you ought to be hearing the horror-film violins building the tension as the pieces start slotting together. But let’s press on – why is it so important to cut costs?
‘Data from Ofsted reveals that the number of registered childcare providers in England fell by 20,000 from 2015 to 2022. The number of places offered by childminders has also declined.
Experts say the declines have been unevenly distributed across the country and in some areas parents can find it impossible to get the childcare hours they need to work full-time.’
Ah. That’s very strange, isn’t it? It is all but universally accepted that there is an acute childcare shortage in this country. Normally, one would expect the sector to expand provision to meet all that demand. Instead, it has haemorrhaged places. Clear evidence of foul play.
Not that you’d pick that up from reading the article. The only potential explanation offered to the casual reader of The Times is this:
‘However, critics claim that the funding offered by the government to childcare providers to pay for the free hours is not enough to cover their costs, with the sector’s income from the government having fallen by 13 per cent in real terms since 2017.
A recent report by the Commons education select committee said “underfunding” of the early-years entitlements had left providers “unable to invest in development and straining to survive”.’
Not once, in 800 words of reporting in this country’s paper of record, does the word ‘regulation’ appear. No explanation is offered as to why childcare is so expensive that not even government is prepared to pay for it in the volume parents need. Truly, the call is coming from inside the house.
What’s actually happening here is pretty simple: Labour is proposing to take the next big step towards lowering the de facto school starting age to, well, one. Or just under one. It is doing this by pleading the exigency of a crisis almost entirely inflicted by policymakers.
Compared to other countries, childcare in the UK is extremely expensive. Part of this will be down to our general economic malaise – carers need to pay usurious rent too – but a lot of it, as others have detailed, is down to how we regulate the sector.
This is already one factor people give for why they’re having children later, and having fewer than they want. But as I’ve written before, that in itself doesn’t necessarily exercise the state:
‘Why should the state spend money gestating future taxpayers when it can, in the words of one former spad, “just import people”?’
Much more concerning, for the Exchequer, is that there are people who still stubbornly insist on starting families, and thanks to the collapse in childcare provision ‘in some areas parents can find it impossible to get the childcare hours they need to work full-time’. My emphasis.
What to do? It would be perfectly possible to reduce costs in the existing childcare sector, but so many of those are down to state policy that it would be rather embarrassing to do so, not to mention politically difficult to face down the chorus of vested interests which would accuse you of lowering standards.
That’s where schools come in. On the face of it, it isn’t obvious why locating a childcare service in a primary school would ‘reduce costs’ – unless those services were afforded more flexibility than their private counterparts on things such as staff-to-child ratios and other areas of regulation.
We don’t yet know if that is Labour’s plan, but politically it would make sense. Schools are already somewhere where staff look after larger numbers of children. They’re also assumed to be a safe place for children to be – unlike the apparent wild west of private nurseries and childminding.
If in-school childcare provision can be made cheaper, through some mix of real economies of scale and providing cover for selective deregulation, future governments of either stripe will have every incentive to expand it, at the expense of private provision.
That might happen organically if hard-pressed parents can get more hours for their childcare credits at their local school, but it isn’t hard to imagine a future chancellor querying why parents should be able to spend taxpayers’ money on ‘luxury’ private care when their local school is available – let alone receive any support for stay-at-home parenting which keeps them off the GDP treadmill.
Critics might fairly point out that this is a slippery slope argument, and say that it isn’t fair to criticise Labour’s proposal, which in itself merely expands provision and choice where it is needed, on the basis of where it might lead.
But unlike many fallacies of formal logic, the slippery slope is one that does tend to describe the development of real-world policy fairly well. Not just because of the cost logic I described above, but also the simple fact that once you have conceded a premise, it gets increasingly difficult to reject policy conclusions that build on that premise.
The idea of rolling childcare into the formal school system, for example, follows seamlessly from the existing insistence that any childcare provider except a child’s own parents must hold a clutch of qualifications and deliver a prescribed early-years curriculum.
Naturally the Conservatives have done nothing about this – they wouldn’t want to be accused of lowering standards. But in failing to act, they have accepted the premise that not only is childcare properly part of the education sector, but that stay-at-home parenting is an exceptional circumstance in which children are permitted to receive what the system must deem substandard care.
That suits the Treasury fine, because it is a far nobler justification for gearing childcare support towards making parents deposit their children in the system as soon as possible than the need to wring revenue from them.
A bolder Conservative Party, with a stronger conception of its own priorities as distinct from the Exchequer’s, could make a perfectly cogent case for a very different model, one where the legal school starting age is the proper time for mandatory education.
That would give it the leeway not just for sensible deregulation of the childcare sector, but also for legalising informal care arrangements (such as the one my parents found for my brother and I when we were young) and turning child support into a flexible credit which could support such arrangements or allow parents to work less and spend more time with their children, as Miriam Cates proposes.
Yes, the aforementioned Greek chorus would squeal. But if a bold government enacted such a policy in year one, it would endure. Cheaper childcare and more flexibility would be very popular with parents; it would be very difficult for Labour to take it away from them.
Indeed, sources tell me that the Opposition were at one point extremely nervous that the Government might opt for something like the Cates plan instead of merely funding more childcare, for that very reason.
Alas, we do not have such a Conservative Party. Once again, they have preferred instead simply to preside over a misfiring model, allow the left to control the narrative of why it’s misfiring, and tee up yet another big expansion of the state into family life.
Click here to subscribe to our daily briefing – the best pieces from CapX and across the web.
CapX depends on the generosity of its readers. If you value what we do, please consider making a donation.
