Debate contribution: Childcare: High-quality and Affordable Provision

Debate contribution by Mr Robbie Butler on 12 February 2024.

MLA

Mr Robbie Butler

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

12 February 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Childcare: High-quality and Affordable Provision

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4217975

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Principal Deputy Speaker. Some of you will be glad to hear that there was a printer malfunction in my office up the stairs, so I do not have a well-crafted written speech like the Member from across the Chamber who proposed the motion. I will be kind of winging it, but the good thing about winging it on this topic is that we have been talking about it for around two years, particularly on the all-party group, which the Member who proposed the motion chairs brilliantly. It has been quite a journey on that all-party group, and I mirror the chair's comments about the secretariat support that we get from Employers For Childcare and, in particular, from Aoife Hamilton. I know that this is a very important subject for all the parties, because a number of amendments were tabled in the Business Office. Thankfully, ours was accepted. If the Members opposite and those around the Chamber will indulge me, I will say that the amendment is quite moderate but very important. It changes only a couple of words in the motion, and I will outline, at the very start, the first word that I am proposing to change and why. Without reading it verbatim, the amendment, at the very start, replaces the word "address" with "prevent". As legislators, we need to be a lot more deliberate about the language that we choose when we are proposing ambitious strategies, policies or plans to help change the lives of the people whom we purport to support. I will expand a little bit on why I think that is important, but, during questions earlier to the Education Minister following his statement, it was brilliant to see the number of Members who spoke about special educational needs, children with disabilities and those who need additional support. As has already been asked — we will probably repeat this many times — why do we need to do this? There are a number of reasons.

I thank the Member for her intervention. I will jump on that point now. It is better to do that than to try to jump about in the mess that I have written down here. I was going to raise that point, because a constituent of mine, who is also a constituent of the Minister, contacted me this very week. One of the issues for the sector is that there are not enough spaces for parents who are applying, but that is further compounded for families with a child who perhaps has some other difficulties and needs additional support. The businesses and the sector do not have the capacity to support such families, and, unfortunately, children are facing discrimination at the very earliest age.

It is unintended discrimination, but, because they cannot access the childcare services that other children can, they are, unfortunately, being disadvantaged at the earliest point in their life.

The Minister will know, as will all Members in the Chamber — our inboxes are becoming inundated — about the difficulties that many parents in Northern Ireland face. The difficulties are twofold: one is the high cost of childcare, making it unaffordable, while the other is its lack of availability and accessibility. The business sector is now gearing up to get involved in the conversation. That is reflected in the second part of my amendment, because what I want to see happen is that, when the Minister embarks on policy planning, it will be not just parents' voices that are included in the co-design and co-production but the voices of those who represent the business sector. The FSB, the CBI and Women in Business are now contacting us to reiterate the absolute need to have their voices heard in order to ensure that what is crafted and created speaks to them and meets need. In the first instance, you would be surprised if I did not speak up for children, Minister, because childcare should be centred on the child. It really needs to be built around the child. I would like you to reflect on the recommendations that we have already heard about in 'A Fair Start' and, indeed, in the most recent independent review of education, because they all point the same way. I hope that your Department will be one of the more ambitious ones in deploying what are termed children's rights impact assessments (CRIAs). I would like to see this being one of the first policies that has them embedded throughout, because, if we are serious about tackling disadvantage, educational underachievement and barriers to a full life experience for all children, we need to ensure that key policies, which, by the way, are a piece of infrastructure for everyone, address the needs of the child. Why are we doing this? The Member who moved the motion referred to the fact that a full-time childcare place costs over £10,000 on average. When that is broken down, I think that 25% of parents are paying over £1,000 a month. When faced with such a bill, in addition to the cost-of-living crisis that we are in, crippling mortgage rates, fuel prices and food inflation, parents and families have to make decisions. I have two grown-up kids, as you know, and I now have three little kids. With the first two, I did not need childcare. I worked shifts in the Fire Service, so it was OK. Now my wife has had to make a decision. She is a nurse and has had to reduce her hours to 30 hours a week to overcome the difficulties not only in accessing childcare but in doing so mechanically. Perhaps the Minister needs to pick up on that when he responds. As has already been picked up on, there is gender disparity, and I am displaying it in my own blinking house. I try to be as flexible as I can to respond to need, but, unfortunately, owing to the way in which we are set up at the moment, although, again, they should not be, an unintended consequence is that women are discriminated against. It is not just when it comes to accessing work. We know that those who work full-time get access to higher levels of training and more opportunities for promotion and career enhancement. That should not be the case in 2024. I want to talk about the availability of childcare places. The Minister will be well aware of the difficulties in our constituency of Lagan Valley. Sadly, this week, one of our longest-established and best childcare facilities, Birdies, announced its intention to close its doors. I do not know all the details behind that decision, but I suspect that part of the issue is staff availability and fair pay for staff. We want to pay those people a good wage, and we should. We should have professional training for them. How do we do that, however? Centres are faced with crippling costs, whether for fuel, rent, rates or whatever. They are also trying to pay their staff, and the staff just are not there any more. It is one of those fields in which it is so hard to recruit. Again, I hope that a full-circle strategy will speak to that. On Ms Dillon's point, I recently had a parent contact me about the barriers that her child now faces. That centres on the fact that the child has additional needs. That is why I am happy with the amendment that we have offered to this excellent motion. We absolutely support the motion and hope that you support our amendment. There should be co-design/co-production of any strategy or plan that comes through that involves families whose kids face the most challenging start to life, perhaps in accessing waiting lists in the health service or professional help from paediatricians or with speech and language. It must not be done in isolation. It must not be a stand-alone policy. It must be one that will speak to many policies, such as those on anti-poverty, gender imbalance in the workplace or addressing educational underachievement. This policy must have the capacity to speak across all those sectors. There is a wealth of evidence at hand, from the English, Welsh and Scottish models and that in the Republic of Ireland, and wide recognition that many of the issues that we will discuss are well-versed but need to be faced into. I challenge the Minister that we need to see a costed options paper as soon as possible, so that the Assembly and the relevant Committees can get their teeth into it. The strategy needs to be co-designed, forward-facing, ambitious and child-centred and to underpin an achievement that Northern Ireland can be proud of and lead the way in on these islands.

1,459 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not qualifying

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:36 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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