The Truth about the Conservatives, Nursery places and Sure Start

David Cameron claims he wants to make Britain more family friendly but he’s planning a Toddler Top-up tax

Last Sunday newspapers reported a secret Conservative party memo that reveals they will end Labour's guarantee of free nursery places and allow nurseries to charge parents of 3 and 4 year olds  supplementary fees.

Labour is expanding free nursery provision from September this year to 15 hours of flexible care a week. And we are offering a Toddler tax credit of £200 a year, £4 a week, for the parents of younger children.

"The party has kept the policy out of its election manifesto. But in a letter seen by the Observer, shadow ministers have assured nursery providers that under a Conservative government they will be allowed to charge top-up fees - at least temporarily. The move, which is designed to help struggling nurseries to survive, will require the party to suspend a code of practice put in place in 2006 that ruled out any additional fees."
Observer, 25 April 2010

Save Our Sure Start - The Facts

Labour believes in Sure Start as a universal service for all families with children under five, but David Cameron says Sure Start should just be for the poorest families.

Labour will protect Sure Start funding this year, next year and the year after with inflation rises in funding up to 2013. The Tories published plans in 2008 to take £200 million each year from Sure Start to spend elsewhere. And they have refused to protect Sure Start from further funding cuts in future years.

Plans for Sure Start cuts   

* In their ‘Helping new families’ policy document published on 15 March 2008, the Conservatives committed to cutting spending £200 million per year from the Sure Start budget in order to spend elsewhere.

“The cost of the policy is £200 million per year. This will be funded by… the £200 million per year, with which the Government are intending to pay for a new cadre of ‘outreach’ workers from Children’s Centres, to hire, instead, 4,200 additional professional health visitors”
Conservative Party Policy Document “Helping New Families”, March 2008

* However, the funding for extra outreach workers is just £79m – far short of the £200 million the Conservatives have pledged to cut from Sure Start. In order to pay for their pledges the Conservatives would therefore need to cut £79 million from the Sure Start budget currently allocated for additional outreach workers, plus a further £121 million.

* A £200 million cut would represent around 20 per cent of the total budget.

* The Conservatives have now partially u-turned on this policy, claiming they can take some money from the NHS to part fund the health visitors plans.

And yet despite this, the Conservatives’ position on Sure Start is clear – Sure Start is far from safe with them.

* David Cameron has said he wants to take Sure Start backwards by restricting it to those on the very lowest incomes.

“We will take Sure Start back to its original purpose of early intervention, increase its focus on the neediest families, and better involve organisations with a track record in supporting families.”
Conservative Party Manifesto, April 2010

“We will improve Sure Start by taking it back to its original purpose - early intervention, increasing its focus on those who need its help most.”
David Cameron, speech on families, January 11 2010

“We want health visitors that call on every family and do so universally and then identify the families under most pressure, they get extra support though Sure Start that should go back to its founding principles of helping families in great difficulties, not just come to a children’s centre to help parents who are in work.”
David Willetts, BBC R4 Today, 20 January 2010

* The first years of the Sure Start programme were focussed on a narrow group of children – the Comprehensive Spending Review in 2000 set out a target by the end of the first Parliament to reach 18 per cent of all poor children under four - around 187,000 children. Today Sure Start reaches 2.8 million children.

In the 1998 Comprehensive Spending Review, the Government established the Sure Start programme, to work in the community with very young children and their families. The programme improves the life chances of children by improving their health and social development and ensuring that they are ready to learn when they get to school, so breaking the cycle of disadvantage. Sure Start programmes operate at neighbourhood level, and are based upon strong evidence - from the UK and elsewhere - of what works. There will be 250 local programmes up and running by 2001-02, supporting about 187,000 children, or 18 per cent of all poor children under four.
Comprehensive Spending Review, July 18 2000

* The Conservatives have said they would cut spending by £6bn within the first few months of a new Conservative government. The Conservatives have been clear that Sure Start is not safe from these cuts.  Cuts on this scale would mean £1.7bn coming from the Department for Children Schools and Families budget which includes Sure Start.

Nick Robinson: Are you protecting Sure Start?
George Osborne: I'm not protecting other areas.
BBC News, 30 June 2009

* And the Institute for Fiscal Studies have said that the Conservative plans to take Sure Start back to its original purpose are not clear on whether this would mean cuts in real terms funding or means testing.

“The Conservative’s manifesto says that they would keep the Sure Start programme. However, it states (p43) that they would ‘take Sure Start back to its original purpose of early intervention, increase its focus on the neediest families, and better involve organisations with a track record in supporting families’. It is unclear whether this would involve an overall reduction in real-terms funding or a shift of existing resources towards deprived families (perhaps through means-testing).”
Institute for Fiscal Studies, Education Briefing, 26th April 2010 http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn98.pdf