BRIDGET PHILLIPSON: This Tory government has set families up to fail

It won’t come as a surprise to anyone working in early years education and childcare or those who have read my column in the Echo in recent months, but over Easter, the Conservatives’ childcare offer fell at the first hurdle.

A pledge without a plan, from a Department without a grip, led by Ministers without a clue.

By expanding entitlements without a plan to make good on their promise, the government set families up to fail. As a result, we’ve seen delays to the roll out and parents across the country left without the hours they were counting on.

It’s a simple truth, but one Ministers can’t seem to understand: offering families funded childcare hours are no good if they can’t access them.

Families need a credible long-term plan for childcare and early years education, which is what Labour will deliver.

It won’t be an easy task given the scale of the challenge and the mess of a system the Conservatives have created.

In England, more than four in 10 children under five currently live in a childcare “desert”, an area where childcare is already hard to find.

Estimates show that across Sunderland, there are more than four children under five, for every registered childcare place.

But by piling the pressure on an overstretched, fragile system, the Conservatives’ pledge without a plan could end up crashing the market just as they crashed the economy.

And providers know it. Nursery leaders have said signing up to the scheme would be “financial suicide”.

Nurseries cannot guarantee places for parents, leaving families in limbo, because the government has failed to tell them how much money they will be receiving to provide the very childcare hours the government had promised.

It’s shambolic and it’s scandalous.

Labour will build a modernised childcare system, supporting families from the end of parental leave to the end of primary school, informed by our expert-led Early Years Review chaired by the respected former Chief Inspector of Ofsted, Sir David Bell.

Sir David Bell’s review will look at how we deliver a trained and motivated early years workforce, how we build capacity and how we raise standards throughout the childcare system.

Labour is serious about the work of government, about driving high and rising standards across education, about breaking down the barriers to opportunity for our young people.

That’s why you’ll never see us making a pledge without a plan and you’ll never see us playing games with families’ childcare.