National Assembly for Wales

May I welcome everyone to this meeting of the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee? The first item on our agenda today is introductions, apologies, substitutions and declarations of interest. We haven't received any apologies. Are there any declarations of interest? No. 

We will move on then to item 2, which is our final evidence session in our inquiry into pregnancy, maternity and work in Wales. It is, in fact, evidence session 9. So, I'm very pleased to welcome today, Huw Irranca-Davies, Minister for Children, Older People and Social Care; Julie James, Leader of the House and Chief Whip; together with officials, Owain Lloyd, deputy director, childcare, play and early years division; and Jo-Anne Daniels, director of communities and tackling poverty. Okay. If it's okay with you, we'll move straight into questions, and perhaps I might begin by asking the first question, which is: in terms of the primary aim of the new childcare offer being to support the Welsh economy by helping parents, and particularly mothers, to return to work, or indeed to increase their hours of work, the committee would be very interested in what evidence there is to show that that primary aim is likely to be achieved by this legislation.

Thank you, Chair, and we welcome the opportunity to be in front of you. As you know, the offer is already being piloted, so we can actually see live information coming through from the seven pilot areas, the early implementer authorities, across the country, and of course, we intend to extend that to another seven authorities in September. So, hopefully, shortly, we will be making an announcement on that. The early evidence that we're having is we are seeing direct evidence that this is releasing disposable income back into households. So, we're being told by parents who are currently involved in the early implementers of it releasing £200-£250 a week back into households. Bear in mind that the majority of people who are taking up the early stage of these pilot ones are below the average median income in Wales of £26,000, so it's going into the right families as well.

But, interestingly, what we're also finding out, Chair, is the flexibility that this is giving. So, some parents are using the flexibility now of this wraparound childcare offer, for the first time in years, to be able to go to their employer and say, 'Well, actually, I'd now like to take up that offer of five additional hours, 10 additional hours, that you've offered before; I couldn't do it before because I couldn't afford the childcare, frankly, to do it.' Now, they're saying they can. Others are using it—and there is a good family impact on this—not to expand their hours of work, or to flex their hours of work around more flexible childcare, Government-supported childcare, but, actually, to spend more time with their families at the time when they need to do it. So, actually, to change their hours of work in order to see their children, rather than working with the inflexibility they had previously. So, we're seeing live the results of this on families already and on working parents; it's beneficial. But we're only into year one. 

There will be, by the way, a more thorough evaluation of the year one, which I think is coming forward in the autumn.

In the autumn.

In the autumn, we will be able to bring back more feedback on the first year. 

Is there anything that you might share with the committee prior to that, in terms of these early findings that you've just referenced?

Is there anything interim that we have? I think what we could probably do is write with a bit more expansion on what we've said, because a lot of what we're hearing is the direct feedback from on the ground. By the way, curiously, one of the other—. I know the focus of your inquiry and we can write to you to précis more of the information that we're hearing already, in advance of the autumn evaluation, the full evaluation.

I can tell you of one of the other interesting impacts I heard, which is on workforce development and childcare. We know that for the majority of people involved, for right or wrong, within the childcare sector, the early years play sector, it tends to be a woman-dominated workforce. But I would say there are good exceptions to that, and we want to encourage a greater diversity within the workforce as well. But, interestingly, last week, I visited a childcare provider that is making use of this childcare offer now in the early implementers, and this was the offer that made the make-or-break decision for them to continue in childcare provision or not. It was the continuity of this with the 48 weeks a year, which took it through the summer, that made the decision for them to say, 'We're going to carry on being a childcare provider.' 

Now, if you multiply that in terms of the employment opportunities in a predominantly women workforce, there is going to be a direct impact from this. But it's hard to measure it at this stage, because we're only in year 1.

Bethan Jenkins—Sayed, sorry.

Diolch, Bethan. Thank you very much for that question. It's worth saying that this Government would always be open to where the evidence takes us, going forward. Because one of the things we should be doing as policy makers and policy formers, in terms of committee roles, is being open to the idea of what should come next. But, let me step back.

This is a clear manifesto commitment; it's based around working parents, and there are people who are saying, 'Well, can you extend it beyond working parents?' This is based around working parents because a lot of the existing evidence shows that it's with those working parents, including work that we commissioned ourselves, that is where the best value for money would be. Now, there are also people who are saying, as you suggest, that we should take it back into the early years, into year 2, into year 1, immediately after, at that moment where a parent immediately decides—mothers and fathers, by the way, because there's an issue here around paternity as well—but when they really want to get back to work. We're aware of that; we're absolutely sighted on that, but what we have here is a manifesto commitment, which is a very good staging post, because this will bring forward the childcare provision to year 3, where it wasn't before. As I mentioned in the opening remarks, we're already seeing the difference that that is making on the ground to people receiving it.

Where we go in the future is an interesting question—money allowing. But as we ran up to the last election, I think I'm right in saying, none of the parties represented around this table had an offer that was to do with nought, one and two-year-olds—it was to do with three and four-year-olds. But of course it doesn't sit alone. Outside of this, we've got Flying Start; outside of this, we've got Families First. In addition to this, we've got the tax-free childcare offer, which all parents can use, even with this, by the way. If it stood alone, I'd be worried, but the fact is that there's such a wraparound that we're doing with parental support, including the Parents, Childcare and Employment scheme, and so on, as well. So, there's lots of stuff going on beyond this. I'm aware of where the evidence is saying we might want to go next; we work within the financial constraints we have, with the manifesto commitments we have, but whenever Julie is sighted on where we might go next, we should be thinking about that.

Okay. Jenny Rathbone.

All the evidence we've been hearing is that parents and organisations are saying that it's far too late to wait for three years, minimum, before you return to work, because you've already lost your skills, you've forgotten what role you used to play, and the job's moved on. So, this is a huge challenge for us, because it's not enabling many parents to stay in the workforce at the grade they were at before they became pregnant.

Julie and I have discussed this—both from the narrow confines of the childcare offer, which is a significant step forward, I have to say, but also in the wider agenda of equality, in the wider agenda of early return to work. We know what that evidence says. It's a good debate to talk about where we go next, where we should be shaping the next offer that this Assembly brings forward, that the next Government brings forward. But let's not underestimate the significant step forward that this will be, and how popular this is, I have to say, as well—not simply out there generally amongst the population, but from the people that I've spoken to. I'm not a Minister who is sitting on the fifth floor of this building, thinking, 'Well, what are Owain and Jo-Anne telling me about how this is going?' We've been out and seen it first-hand. We're speaking to parents who are at the receiving end and saying this has given them the flexibility at year three, but it goes alongside the additional support that we are groundbreaking with in Wales: the Families First stuff, the children zones, the Flying Start—all of that—the foundation years, which are part of this 10 hours minimum. Some authorities do more than 10 hours. All of that is part of the offer that we have for parents and parents getting back into work. There's the European social fund-funded PaCE programme to get people back into work.

Last week, I was up in north Wales. I saw a brilliant initiative we're working on with the National Day Nurseries Association, partly funded by the Welsh Government as well, called Childcare Works. That is specifically focused on bringing people back to work within this scheme, but people of non-traditional entries. So, there are a range of benefits to this. But could we go further in future? We probably could. Does the evidence show that we should be thinking differently about going forward? It probably does. But, there's an offer to deliver here.

Can I also say that there are other aspects to the very important issues that Jenny raises, which are around working with employers to ensure that they put their best foot forward in encouraging women to come back into their workforce after maternity as well? So, the new economic contract that we've just announced, with its fair work elements, will use all the levers at the Welsh Government's power to assist people in the private sector to stay in touch with their female workforce as they take maternity leave. So, all of the issues there will be discussed by the fair work commission when it begins its work shortly, around things like retaining the option to keep your IT equipment, to being included in team meetings during your maternity leave, to being encouraged to stay in touch as your job moves on, as you said. All of those things also assist, because we know that childcare is an important element, obviously, but there are other barriers to returning to work. So, we have a raft of other measures around fair work. In our public sector bodies, the public sector equality duty, the reporting mechanisms and some of the levers we have there, wrap around the childcare offer to push people in the right direction around making sure that we retain the skills that women have once they've had children and get them back into the workforce.

We've looked at the potential for the fair work board to address some of these issues, but they have their work cut out for them. We've had even employment lawyers telling us about their employers not adhering to the letter of the law, so, that is the state of the problem.

I just wanted to go back to the childcare pilots in these seven areas, Minister. Is there any evidence from the work that you've been doing on the ground that it's enabling people who weren't in work, until this offer occurred, to go back to work? Because, clearly, two or two and a half hours of nursery education doesn't enable anybody to go back to work on its own—by the time you've got there, you've got to come back. So, extending this to 30 hours, is that enabling people to come back to work earlier than they would have done otherwise?

Yes, we've got some really interesting stuff coming through from the pilots. A lot of people have been clamouring to have some of the pilots in their area. We're not doing that, because what we're doing is targeting it at areas where we can learn lessons. So, one of the interesting ones, for example, is in Gwynedd, where they've combined this offer with the team around the family. So, I know the committee are probably aware of it, but the team around the family approach is that much more wraparound provision for the family, including working with the family to support them back into work, which they then combined with the parallel childcare offer. So, actually, they're taking people who were previously out of employment, giving them the support that they need, and then saying, 'By the way, here's the childcare offer. You can now afford to go back to work.' And it's working.

So, that combination of the advanced programmes that we have in Wales—which do not exist over the border—is actually helping people to get back into work. If we can learn from that Gwynedd example, and there are other good examples out there in the seven pilots, and then translate them through into the next seven that we do, then we're into some really interesting territory. So, it's not only delivering for people who are already in work and avail themselves of Government-supported childcare, but actually people who want to get into work, who are supported by other schemes to work with that family and support them back into employment, and then the childcare offer is the cherry on the cake that makes it worth their while. So, we're seeing it happening in the live pilots. 

So, do you think you've now gathered enough information to counteract the Public Policy Institute for Wales report that was commissioned by the Welsh Government, which indicated that the impact of the offer for three-year-olds, with the target age group, was extremely small—was very minimal? This was the report done in 2015. Have you been able to prove PPIW wrong?

There's a lot of validity in much of what PPIW said, but also it's worth reflecting on the fact that they did concur with us that the biggest obstacle to returning to work was childcare costs for many, particularly lower income families. But the full evaluation of the year 1 pilots that we'll bring forward in the autumn should be able to put more meat on the bone with that—and as we take the other seven pilots forward as well. We are, as I say, picking up clear live evidence that this is having quite a transformative effect. That's not to contradict anything that is in the PPIW report that we commissioned, because there's some good valuable evidence in that. But there's nothing as good as actually live-testing this out in the field, where the parents are saying to your face, 'I can tell you what effect this is having'. Regardless of very good and thorough studies in advance, going out there and doing it is what proves whether this works or not.

So, based on the learning you've already acquired from the seven existing pilot areas, has that made you minded to change the eligibility criteria for the new pilot areas, or are they going to be commissioned to do exactly the same thing as the existing ones?

Not the eligibility in terms of working parents—let's make that clear—because this offer was based on working parents. The PPIW's report and other reports show that the biggest obstacle to returning back to work is childcare costs. We've known this for years—we're all politicians. People tell us this, but the evidence shows it as well, not just in this country but across most developed nations—the biggest obstacle is childcare costs. So, even though, as we've said, this only extends it down to year 3—I say 'only', but it's going to be the most ambitious of any offer within the UK, taking it down to year 3—we can already see—. We won't change the working parents criteria; that's where it's best targeted. The PPIW report—

Fine, but is there any flexibility to the way in which they roll it out, or are they—?

What we're trying to do is some interesting stuff. So, for example, different from England, we've set a uniform rate for the support of this provision—it's based on £4.50 an hour. That was set with stakeholders. In Wales, we do stuff collaboratively—we go out to ask people, 'Where do you think we ought to set this for the pilots?' It was welcomed, because in England the rate varies from area to area, authority to authority and provider to provider. There is complexity and confusion. So, that is working.

But there are interesting things such as what happens for those providers when we get to Cardiff or Newport, where the childcare costs are more expensive and so on and so forth. There are some interesting representations we're having around who can provide this offer. We're very fixed—we're listening to those representations, but we're very fixed on that it should be registered and inspected providers. Why? Why not just grandparents who love and cherish their grandchildren? Well, because this isn't purely to do with childcare; this is to do with child development, this is to do with nurturing that child and this is to do with the child having support around the family and so on—in which case, they need to be registered, inspected and built into that network. By the way, I've seen some brilliant small childminders providing this on a small scale to six children rather than 60 children and so on and so forth.

In terms of parental eligibility, we've built within the Bill that we're taking forward the HMRC Bill. It's a very narrow technical Bill, actually. The Bill that we're taking forward on the childcare offer is not to do with the wider policy—it's to do with what mechanism we allow for this to go forward. What we have learnt, Jenny, in the initial roll-out is that local authorities do not like the complexity of this—every local authority having to gather from each individual parent complex details on payrolls and birth certificates. All that sort of stuff, they want it done nationally. Secondly, parents don't like it because some parents in our constituencies have complex lives—they can't put their hands on all of the information. Some of them are self-employed and some of them are starting up small businesses. Some of them might be starting up childcare businesses, hopefully.

So, we're moving to a national system, similar to the one that's running—well, it's based on the one run in England by HMRC already, and we know that will work. Now, that brings with it certain things that we comply with in going to that system, but it does give us the flexibility in the Bill we're taking forward. If we came back on feedback from this committee around this to say, 'Look at some of the eligibility criteria', we've built that within the Bill—that we can come forward in secondary regulations and adjust the eligibility based on lessons learnt. We don't have to come back for a primary piece of law again, and we think that's the right balance. So, can we adjust? Yes, we can. Will we learn from the pilots? Yes, we will. But the core things about working parents and who should be providing—I don't think we're going to mess around with that too much.

So, the new pilots will be given the same job of work to do as in the existing seven pilots.

Yes, but learning more about things like this integration with Families First and the team around the family and all of that. If this is stand-alone, then I'd be worried—if it was just a childcare offer. But actually, the richness of what we're doing in Wales now needs to be bolted within this as well, and that's where the pilots become quite interesting, and also, by the way, how this ties in with workforce development as well. That's where the pilots will teach us lessons.

Could I ask in terms of costings, if it was extended to those in education and training, has any work been done on the costing of that?

So, particularly the workforce that is coming from the not in education, employment or training population? I hate that phrase, but—.

In general, if it was available not just to those in work but those in education or training. Would any work have been done in terms of the costings of that?

I don't believe we have, because this is a very fixed manifesto offer. It's on working parents. We've been asked if we could extend it to university students, people who are preparing for work, but what I would say, Chair, is that there are other schemes out there we already have. So, the ESF-funded Parents, Childcare and Employment scheme, for example, focuses on people who want to get back into work, and particularly from categories that need additional support. Now, we've committed to that until 2020, I think it is, and then we'll have to look at the recurrent funding and so on—what comes after Brexit, et cetera. But it's working. So, there are other things that we can do, Chair, outside of this, to make sure that other people can access work as well—PaCE, team around the family in north Wales, in Gwynedd. We can do this. 

Okay. Before we move on—and we need to move on—what would you say to the concern that there wasn't a great evidence base for this policy prior to the decision to introduce it? We've heard you talk, Minister, about some of the anecdotal evidence you've picked up travelling around Wales. Obviously, there's the experience of the pilots to date. But when the decision was made to bring this policy forward, what would you say in terms of the state of the evidence base for the policy at that stage?

We've done it based on what we've seen around international evidence as well. So, we know that—. The committee may well have seen some of this as well: evidence showing that the UK lags behind other western economies on rates of maternal employment, that around two thirds of mothers say the cost of childcare is the most significant obstacle for them working more. We know that from evidence, already, from the Resolution Foundation, and we knew this when we put the offer together, that around a third—it's more than a third, actually—of stay-at-home mothers say they would like to work. They would like to do, in fact, an average of 23 hours a week, if they had some support for childcare. We know that 20 per cent of mothers who are already working would like to take on an extra 10 hours a week on average. When you add that to the initial findings that we're finding from our pilots, which is reinforcing that—. I understand when people say, 'Well, could you extend this to two-year-olds, one-year-olds and so on?' I'd refer the committee to the First Minister's interesting appearance—I've never been on to this, but apparently he was on Woman's Hour on Radio 4 the other day, and he was given exactly that challenge. He reiterated the fact that we're going to end up with delivering the most ambitious childcare offer in the whole of the UK. But he also, when challenged, 'Could we do more?', said, 'We'd like to, but we can't do it with the money we've currently got. We've had eight years of austerity. We've put in place the most generous offer we can do with the money we've got available.' But where does the evidence take us, Chair? Interesting; thinking forward.

Okay, thanks for that. We'll move on, then, I think, to the issues around financial eligibility. Rhianon.

I think we've covered the majority of the questions that I was going to ask. In regard to the roll-out of the pilot in Caerphilly—it's in my constituency, my borough—the evidence that's being gathered is extremely positive. I've spoken recently around this matter. In regard to the restriction on the eligibility criteria, and in regard to the fact that some would say it's very generous, in terms of the £100,000 cut-off for individuals, has there been any rethinking around that? What is the logic in regards it being such a high level of income? And would it be more beneficial, bearing in mind the holistic suite of measures that we've got and that you've already articulated, if it was a little bit lower or a little bit more targeted?

We've had a lot of discussion on this in the way that we're taking forward the offer, and we've currently gone in line with what the HMRC currently offer, for reasons of simplicity—that we go, at least initially, in line with the current HMRC model and mechanism, and theirs is based on, with the English offer, a £100,000 cap. However, we have flexibility in the Bill that we're taking forward to come back and revisit this. We have done a little bit of work before, looking at whether we could set it at a lower cap on the basis of balancing the arguments over the attraction of a more universal offer for parents, whoever those parents are—whoever those working parents are—against the more targeted approach that says, 'Well, can we make the money go further if we take it down to £80,000 or if we take it down to £60,000 or to £40,000?'

The other balance that we've had to do with this—and we have looked at it initially—is: what would the additional costs be, bearing in mind that we are using HMRC as an agent to deliver this? This is not cost free. What would the additional cost and complexity of doing that be, straight off—I mean initially, right now? What would the charge be? What would the fee be for doing it? What would the burden of bureaucracy be of doing that as well? Could it work with the current system? And one of the other pertinent factors, by the way, in this is: I will say to you, as a Minister, that we will, with the goodwill of the Assembly, deliver this offer—the most ambitious in the UK—but there is a timing issue on this as well. I am receiving letters on a weekly basis from parents in other parts of Wales, who haven't got the pilot, saying, 'Please can we have this?'

We are committed to delivering this by 2019-20 for the full roll-out. That means that there is a balance as well on the risk of saying to HMRC, at this point, 'We'd like a different system from what you're currently delivering.' Our assessment is that we've had the agreement from HMRC and the Treasury to take this forward, based on the current model. We are allowed to come back and rethink that in future, and we could discuss that, because I can see the social justice argument that would say, 'We could make the money go further', and do different things if we were to drop it. I can also see, I have to say, the classic universality argument of: it's focused on working parents and every working parent will want to say, 'Well, I've got a stake in this—I'm paying into it; I want a little bit out of it.'

One final thing: in the early implementer authorities—the seven—around about 60 per cent of those who are accessing this offer are below the average median Welsh wage of £26,000. Our evidence is that, in the higher earning brackets, it's only 5 per cent of parents who are taking up the childcare offer. That's not bad. If that sells a product to the wider public that is accessible to a wider range—

I think, to interrupt you, you're absolutely correct on that, but in regard to some of the narrative around that, part of that—the reasoning behind that—is because you have to provide such a lot of evidence that some of the more well-off parents are actually choosing not to do that and to go privately anyway. If that eligibility criteria is then changed, there could be a huge increase of capacity and of people who are wanting this provision at ages three to four. If it were to be, finally on this point, considered or recalibrated at a different level, would that, therefore, not make it far more accessible for those, capacity-wise even, around ages two to three?

Ooh. Interesting. Okay. If you were—and we're talking hypothetically here—to drop the cap—. And this all depends on rates of take-up as well, by the way, because once the childcare offer is there, that doesn't mean that everybody takes up the offer. At the moment, we're finding some really interesting things. In Valleys communities, there is an interesting cultural thing going on—and it's not only in the Valleys, by the way; it's also up in parts of north Wales—where the support is provided by parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles and so on, which I did myself. People are going, 'I don't want to access that at the moment'. But word of mouth is getting around and it's increasing. Word of mouth is getting around and they get that this isn't just childminding; this is about the wider aspects of child development and socialisation et cetera. So we think that'll change.

So, one is: would this automatically release to a two-year-old offer or a one-year-old offer? Perhaps, but depending on the levels of take-up with the wider offer. We know we've got enough in the system—we've put enough in the budget aside to deliver the entirety of this offer. If the take-up is lower, or if you altered the eligibility criteria to drop it—bearing in mind that we'd have to pay fees to HMRC in order to do that, and we'll have to look at other unintended consequences—would it then automatically release funds to a more targeted group of lower average earnings households? Potentially, but not definitely. Because if the take-up extends massively and it takes it up even more than we're anticipating, we might have used the whole budget already. 

Okay. And, finally, Chair, if I may—

Sorry it's a long answer.

No, no, that's fine. Finally, in regard to the importance of this being the most ambitious childcare offer in the UK and where it could potentially be, it's very exciting in terms of maternity retention, especially if it could be targeted earlier, in the earlier years as well, which is where there's greatest need. There have also been concerns raised about why can't we upskill grandparents and family members in this regard because, again, that could also become part of an economic contract, and there is a debate around this at the moment in the sector.

Look, I think—. First of all, we've got two things going on. One is the amount of money that we're putting behind developing this in terms of facilities, which could be of different types, by the way, but also the workforce development as well. We are very keen that we maintain the quality in this childcare offer, and that is why we're so bolted down to the idea that these need to be registered licensed premises. But there are registered licensed child-minding premises that include grandparents, aunts and uncles and so on and so forth, and we're in discussion with those groups and so on because, as far as we're concerned, this foundational economy part of this offer, which it really is, in every street in every community—whether it's in rural Pembrokeshire or whether it's in the middle of an urban area in Flintshire or whether it's in the deepest south Wales valleys, it's in every street. If we can enable the quality of provision through registered inspected ones—and I've seen these in situ; I've seen schemes that are using this childcare offer in pilot areas already in north Wales that are also using Flying Start provision in that alongside the childcare offer, alongside early years stuff, and, my goodness, it works effectively when it's done really well. So, we should be using this as an opportunity, but that's different from saying we're going to extend this, with the best will in the world, to every relative that would like to use this as a childcare offer, because this is also childcare, child development. This is employment and training. This is career progression.

You may come to this at some point, but, if you haven't seen this already, I'd recommend it—the childcare, play and early years workforce plan. This is to do with turning our childcare sectors—part of the foundational economy—into something that is careers across play, childcare, early years development. So, it's less putting the child in a place where we know they're safe than putting the child where we know they're safe and they have a quality of child development. And, yes—you know, relatives could have a place in that as well, because I've seen it happening.

Chair, can I just say something about the cap as well, just to put the whole thing in—

Well, just before you do, leader of the house, might you address the issue in terms of the cap in terms of joint incomes? Is it the case that if two earners were both earning £99,000 a year they would still qualify?

It is the case. I've been very frank on this. It's a choice we've come to for the reasons I've laid out, but, on the other hand, I would say the early implementers, even before we get to the autumn full evaluation—that's showing that it's less than 5 per cent of higher-earning families that are availing themselves of this; the majority are low-income.

Let me put a different perspective on it for you. One of the biggest problems we have in Wales is the lack of women who return to science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers after maternity. So, if we—. I don't want to be putting—. I understand all the social justice issues and, obviously, people in the foundational economy and in the median average earnings are targeted by this policy, and, absolutely, we need to make sure that people have it, but we also have a problem with women returning to STEM careers—a big problem. In fact, they drop off a cliff when they have. So, we need to make sure that we have offers in place that attract women back into those careers as well. So, we just make sure that we don't have any ending—in targeting people for whom income is the big issue, we don't have unintended consequences of not enabling women where, actually, just getting any kind of childcare because of where they live and work is an issue. So, if we want a woman researcher who lives in Powys to return to work, we need to make sure they can access the childcare arrangements there. So, there are other nuances to this about why women don't go back into actually really well-paid careers. That's not about the price of childcare; it's about the availability of it. So, we need to cover off both of those things in this offer, and we also need to look at what the needs of our economy are. So, absolutely, we want women to go back into any work that suits them and so on, but we also want an accelerator programme. We don't want, artificially, to be cutting people out of their childcare with caps. We all know—all of us know—how the benefit caps work. You get trapped into a particular level of income because you lose things as you go up. So, there are lots of nuanced issues around where and who and what should be available.

And then the third one I really want to emphasise is that you also want provision that has a mix of people in it. Perhaps the whole place is using particular childcare issues. You do not want segregated off ones—so, these are for the people on this income, and these are for—. There are all sorts of nuances that need to be evaluated as part of the pilots so that when we come back to look at it we see whether we've hit targets in a range of issues around getting women at all levels in the Welsh economy back into work once they've gone on maternity leave or back into work once they've been out of work. The average at the moment, I understand, is about five years—so, out of work for about five years. It's hard to get back into a high-skilled career if you've been out for five years. So, all those returners' programmes need to have the childcare offer attached to them as well.

Okay. We need to move on. If it's a very short point, Jenny.

Just very quickly, perhaps the most uncomfortable issue is that we're increasing social inequalities because, as the future generations commissioner points out, workless households are not getting the benefit of this enhanced childcare offer—the registered quality childcare offer—and that is a concern.

I'm going to express a nuanced difference of opinion with the future generations commissioner on this. If this was independent of any other offer that Welsh Government is supporting and providing, I would exactly echo those concerns. But the fact that we have that range of other offers I've talked about already, that this does not stand in isolation, makes me confident, I have to say. This is a step forward for working parents; we know it is, the evidence is stacking up on it. We also need to make sure that we're also providing the other wraparound provision to help ease those barriers, encourage people into work, for people who are outside of this offer, and that they can step up to this offer as well. We're doing it. So, I get that because I, like most people—like the First Minister when he appeared on Woman's Hour—if we had limitless amounts of money—. And, as we look to the future, let's talk about where we can go. But, for now, this is a huge step.

I know you've covered these points previously as well, Minister. Thank you very much. Gareth Bennett.

Thanks. Minister, you mentioned earlier about some parents having complex lives themselves. Some of them are self-employed, for instance. So, how will your childcare offer work for self-employed parents with irregular incomes?

So, one of the benefits, Gareth, of the way that we're piloting it in stages—unlike England, where they did it one go—we're able to learn from England but also from what we're piloting. We know, and we've learnt from the early implementer authorities, that some of these complex situations with parents who are self-employed, parents who are starting up businesses—particularly when you start up a business, very often, over the course of the first year, your income is totally unplannable; it's sporadic from week to week, day to day. So, we are able within the way we've defined this and the HMRC system that we are using to offer flexibility for family circumstances for those with irregular income.

When we introduced the Childcare Funding (Wales) Bill to the Assembly, it has a framework there where we can actually use (1) real-time information, because it isn't based now on parents coming up with their weekly salaries, weekly income and so on. It will based on data sharing, with protection, across different gateways, from tax, HMRC, DWP, et cetera, et cetera. So, the parents won't have to do that; we can make it work. To apply, parents are asked to anticipate—to anticipate—whether they'll earn over the minimum income threshold within a three-month period. So, they can do that; it's got that flexibility. And, if they meet the eligibility criteria on the day they apply or they reconfirm, they remain eligible for that whole three months, even if their circumstances change in that time. So, there's some flexibility to accommodate that sporadic nature of people starting a business, people who are self-employed.

Finally, if somebody falls out of eligibility at the point they reconfirm, if they are that self-employed or small business start-up, for whatever reason, the child will be able to remain in the Government-funded childcare for up to eight weeks. So, we're trying in the way that we pilot this to give that real flexibility that takes into account those complex things. And, by the way, as I said before—I wasn't joking—I hope that some of these people who are starting up their businesses and are in self-employment might well be people who are also going through this track of developing their own future as childcare professional providers.

Okay, I think—. Yes, thanks very much. Jenny.

Many witnesses, probably who don't live in the pilot areas, highlighted the costs of and lack of access to wraparound care, so that will apply to those whose children are getting the nursery education offer, as well as those parents who may need more than the 30 hours if they're endeavouring to hold down a full-time job, and it highlights the market failure. It is surprising, is it not, that organisations aren't identifying a demand and then filling it, given that schools are unable to develop the 30 hours if they're running two shifts of nursery education in the one room, yet—. You know, where are the entrepreneurs saying, 'It's all right. We'll pick them up at 11.30 a.m. or 3.30 p.m. and then we'll look after them until—'? Why aren't there more examples of this sort of thing?

It's a really good point, because, in the phased roll-out that we have to this, it runs alongside the phased roll-out of capital money that we're putting in, and programme money that we're putting into developing the supply of good childcare as well, in a myriad of different forms. Because we recognise that, in rolling this out in full across Wales—the offer by 2019-20—we are going to need a whole new battalion of professional registered inspected childcare providers. So, we're not waiting for the 2019-20 roll-out. We've put £60 million in the budget for the next three financial years and that'll be based on expanding and creating new childcare infrastructure, and, where that's needed, refurbishing existing provision or perhaps developing new provision.

We're also looking at the issue of co-location, because one of the issues that we're realising from the early pilots on this is that we inherit a slightly clunky situation. Part of this is the foundation years offer, 10 years minimum, some authorities do 20—10 years; I said it wrong—10 hours minimum, some do 20 hours, traditionally on maintained sector sites, but we've also got many non-maintained providers who are down the road a mile away, whatever. So, trying to bring these together—we're doing work on co-location of provision at the moment, and that, by the way, doesn't mean, in co-locating, it has to be in-house provision from a local authority. It could be, but it could be bringing an independent provider in house onto a co-located facility to provide it.

But we're also doing mapping of provision as well, and we're already aware, from some of the pilots, of where some of the provision overlaps, not just with this childcare provision, but existing provision, and in other areas there are gaps in childcare provision where there should be that demand. So, hopefully, some of the funding we're putting in, some of the workforce development— we'll work with providers on the ground to do this. I'm trying to think if we're missing anything, Owain, in terms of developing the supply side of it.

No. Just to add that I think the Cabinet Secretary for economy last year announced £100,000, which will go in, particularly, in terms of business development and helping start-ups with a focus around child minders and other providers. The Cabinet Secretary for finance—from this April, there's been an increase in the small business rate relief for childcare providers. So, I think there is a whole range of issues that we're trying to bring together in a package of support for the sector to both support their sustainability and also to help growth.

Can I just add one thing to that, Chair? We've also worked very hard with the higher education and further education sector to make sure that they liaise properly with the independent sector or have in-house provision to have childcare provision on campuses as well. So, that's another lever to try to get the availability bit covered off as well.

Yes, okay. We must move on. Time is rapidly disappearing before our eyes. Janet, on gender stereotypes—

No, I'm on the Parents, Childcare and Employment programme.

Yes, I think you've sort of dealt with the PaCE programme.

I mentioned it.

Yes.

Okay. What action is being taken to challenge workplace gender stereotypes in sectors, businesses and organisations supported by the Government?

We've been running several campaigns, actually, but the biggest one we've been running is the This Is Me campaign, which has been one of the most successful that we've run as a Government in terms of hits and take-up and so on. We also run—. Well, the new economic contract talks about fair work. We're also running several programmes to assist employers to have better human resources strategies so that they target, shall we say, less traditional sectors of the population. 

Gender stereotyping in work is a really interesting thing because it's deeply embedded in some of our social mores, if you like. So, I hope you've all seen—Chair, I don't know if committee's had a chance to actually see the video of the This Is Me campaign. If you haven't, I suggest you do. It's only a couple of minutes and it's well worth looking at. 

Coming back to you on that, then, the evidence we've taken thus far—those programmes weren't mentioned. This culture doesn't—

We only launched it in January, so I'm not too sure—

Well, we are in May. 

It's had an enormous number of hits since we launched it, so we're very pleased with it. But it's early days. This is a five-year programme that we've started, and it's got a whole series of things that we're going to run. I suppose I'm not that surprised. It's a little disappointing, perhaps, that you haven't had anybody who's seen it. 

Not one. And I suppose, for me, there seems to be some innuendo that this culture exists. We've taken evidence, very strong evidence, to the contrary from a wide-ranging size of businesses within—. 

Sorry, Chair—I'm not aware of the evidence you've taken, but I can tell you this: I've toured an enormous number of STEM-related employers in Wales over the last three years, and very frequently I'm the only woman on the site. So, by way of example—. I don't know if you spoke to any of those employers, but it's quite clear that a large number of our employers only target specific bits of the population in terms of who they look to recruit. So, we've been working very hard with all of the sectors that access Welsh Government funding to get a different HR strategy and a much more modern approach to an HR strategy in place, so that we get much more gender-balanced workforces. The STEM one is a male-dominated area, but if you go into a domiciliary care setting, it's very rare to see a male domiciliary care worker. You do get the occasional one, but it's very rare. 

I'd just like to come back on that. I've got first-hand knowledge of male care workers—a number of them, actually, in agencies locally in my constituency. I just want to put that out there.

That's great, and, of course, I'm generalising a little. I can take you to a couple of STEM employers that have excellent gender balance. But I'm saying the generality across the piece—. I visited a domiciliary care provider very recently and there wasn't a single male in the whole of workforce, apart from the owner, I have to say, who was male.

We've got some related questions we could move on to—

What I'm saying is that there are a raft of things we're trying to do. We're doing the This Is Me campaign, which is aimed specifically at youngsters who are looking for careers, to encourage them to look at careers that are outwith the normal stereotype. We're looking at assisting employers through our Business Wales structure and our advisory structure, to get them to have better HR strategies in general, but to include targeting non-traditional elements of the workforce. We have an enormous programme about to roll out to help disabled people get into apprenticeships in particular, because obviously that's a route into work. And the new economic contract has a number of issues around fair work in it, which are aimed at targeting some of the gender-stereotypical things that we have across the economy.

Can I just ask what the composition is of the fair work commission, because it's been referenced a lot by Government when they've come to give evidence here?

Its gender composition.

The First Minister announced that there would be a fair work commission to follow on from the work of the fair work board. There's been a small blip, but we're hoping to announce the chair of that commission by the second week in June, and the announcement by the First Minister said that it would be a gender-balanced commission.

That's very vague.

Well, it means half and half, I assume.

In terms of we don't know what the work of the commission is going to be. 

Of course you don't. You won't know it, because we haven't announced it yet. 

What about the work of the fair work board? What's the balance there? 

The fair work board was the social partners in Wales. So, it had the three social partners plus a Minister on it. All we did was we agreed a set of levers that could be used by the Welsh Government across the economy in Wales, and we agreed what we could agree about a fair work definition. We also agreed what we couldn't agree about a fair work definition. That sounds easy but it wasn't. And we've agreed that the commission now needs to take that forward. It needs to do a series of pieces of work, which the commission itself will have to take ownership of. So, once the chair is in place, there'll be announcements about that, but the chair will have to take ownership of that as well. The whole point of having an independent chair is to get that ownership. And then, working off where we've got to with the board, which is the stuff that was put into the economic contract around fair work, they will take that forward. You won't know about the make-up of the commission because I don't know it—until the chair is in place, we won't have that—. 

Yes, we'll have to wait and see. 

And then my final point: was the fair work board gender-balanced? 

No. 

Jack, we'll have to move on, I'm afraid, as we've got nine minutes left. Jack Sargeant. 

Thanks, Chair. I'm conscious of the time so I will try and hurry this up. Leader of the house, you mentioned STEM careers quite a lot there, and the difficulty there is sometimes for women to get into STEM careers. I know that personally myself coming from a STEM background, and how difficult that is for women. The promotions that we're doing currently, we need to do a lot more of, and I'm fully behind that. You also mentioned during your evidence earlier that when women come back from maternity leave after they've had children, it's extremely hard, and it drops off a cliff, to return to STEM careers. I'd just like to know how the Government is working with those workers and employers in terms of eradicating this, and making sure that there is a route back to the workplace for those women. 

Absolutely. We have some excellent examples where that isn't the case. Airbus UK, in your own constituency, is an example of an employer that has a range of offers in place, and has a much better record in terms of getting its female STEM employees back. But a lot of this is around having traditional set-ups in the workplace and having quite a male-dominated workforce in the first place. So, it's all of the things we know around flexible working, so assisting them to have different HR strategies, which means you don't have to be present nine to five, or nine until six, which makes it impossible to have any kind of flexibility, to have what we call modern working practices. By that I don't mean just flexible working hours; I mean output-based work. So, you can work wherever you are as long as you produce the output. That doesn't work for a production line company, but for many STEM companies you're talking about research, so why do you need to do the research between nine and five, for example? If it suits you better to do it at three o'clock in the morning, what's wrong with that? 

That sounds trivial, Chair, but, actually, we know that a large amount of the women who have reported that they didn't return to their STEM career report about the rigidity of the hours that the company sought to impose, because they haven't moved at all on from that kind of standard working. The issue around job share, the issue around keeping people in touch with the workforce that I mentioned earlier, so allowing you to keep your IT equipment, your connection to teamwork meetings, you know, your general 'in touch with the workforce'—. At Airbus, for example, if you're on maternity leave, you are invited back into your team meetings. GE Aviation does something similar, and Tata does. The big companies often do. Smaller companies tend to be less good, although I can think of a couple of examples of good practice there. 

So, this is about us encouraging through our business advisory service, and through our incentivisation. So, where you are in receipt of Welsh Government funding of any description, we ask you to sign up to the fair work contract now, so you start the process of looking at whether some of the working practices that you have are helpful or are a hindrance in this regard. This is going to sound like an extreme example, but I've got two examples of this in my own constituency, where we have women who have gone in as brand-new STEM workers in a company, and they've been asked to use the male lavatories because there aren't any female ones. I can't begin to tell you how much most women would not want to do that. 

So, there are some really basic things about if you're going to be targeting a diverse workforce, then you need to have made the adjustments necessary to ensure that that workforce can work. That isn't just for people with disabilities who might need adjustment; that's actually just something really basic like lavatory facilities. So, you may think that we're talking at a high plane here, but for lots of our small and medium-sized enterprises we are not; we are talking about really basic thoughts around what would be necessary to allow this person to work comfortably in this space. You know, we are there to assist with business advice, with some grant funding, with some leverage of that, with connections into universities and FE colleges to make sure that you have some flexibility. A lot of STEM people want to carry on a bit of research and also do some work, for example. There's a whole range of things that we can do, but we have a long ladder to climb in getting back to this.

And then, with returners from work, we know that if you look at the stats—I haven't brought them, Chair; I'm sure we can supply them to you, and there are some interesting stats—they show the percentage of women going into STEM careers, which is pretty low anyway, and then it sort of stays static through university, and then into actual career, it drops, and then the ones who do get in, they have children, and it literally drops because the return is so difficult if there's no flexibility and no adjustment for the people coming back who now have childcare responsibilities, obviously. 

So, we've got a long way to climb, but we've got some good programmes in place. 

Okay. Okay, Jack?

Yes.

Bethan.

There are range of things that we can do there. So, with the public sector equality duty, obviously we're talking about the public sector. We have a range of measures in place there to ensure that our public bodies track exactly that information. There has been a bit of an issue, which I became aware of via Twitter, actually, where we don't publish it on the UK Government site in the way that public bodies in England do. Actually, we collect a lot more information, and it's a lot more available, but we don't publish in that way. So, Chair, I can make the commitment here in the committee today that we are currently working on the best way of making sure that that information is all published in a usable form, preferably as open data, but it will be published. So, that's a lacuna, because we're in a better place, we have better information, but it isn't publicly available in quite the same way. So, you can search for it, but it hasn't been presented nicely in that way. So, we'll cover that off. 

And then, in the private sector one, the new economic contract sets out what we expect for levels of funding and interaction with the Welsh Government. So, again, using the levers at our disposal, if you are looking to have underpinning funding from the Welsh Government, then you will be expected to sign up to the economic contract, you will be expected to indicate that you're working towards a number of areas to get particular levels—three levels, if you see the way it's set out. The fair work commission, we hope, will put a lot more meat on that as well, because we want to come to an understanding across the piece in Wales, for the private as well as the public sector. We don't have all the levers in the private sector, so the idea of the fair work board, with the social partners, and now the commission, is to get the buy-in from the private sector, so they voluntarily come along on this journey with us about getting fair work. 

Yes. So, what we're looking to do is to get the commission to set up a piece of work that the private sector can buy into that allows us to extend the duty for our reporting. As you know, it's 250 employees at the moment, and that doesn't even touch most Welsh companies because they're all much, much smaller than that. So, once the commission chair has been sorted out—and as I say, there's been a small blip in that, so it will be early June—the terms of reference will be public, the commission's work will be public, and then they will be working on what can be achieved—because the commission will have the social partners on it as well as a number of other people—in terms of us agreeing that, in Wales, we agree, across all sectors, that this represents fair work, and that the Government should use all of its levers in order to achieve that, and report on it, because, obviously, if you don't report on it, you have no concept of how it's going. And in the meantime, the workforce partnership council that has all of the public sector bodies on it will be taking forward the piece of work.

As I said, it's unfortunate that we—I think, rather, an oversight—didn't arrange for it to be published in that usable, one place. You can search for it, but it's not easy to do. We want that to be done, because we want to hold people's feet to the fire, quite frankly. So, if they're not good enough, then we need to get them there. And I'll just say—although you didn't quite ask me this, but I'll say it anyway—because we've got the rapid gender review going on, one of the things I want to do is I want to make absolutely certain that the Welsh Government itself is an exemplar in this area. So, it is not acceptable that we have any kind of gender pay gap in the Welsh Government, or that we have any kind of issue with returning maternity, or that we have any kind of diversity issue. We are not quite there yet; we're all right, but we're not there, and we have got to get there. So, our first commitment is that we put our own house in order, in a big way.

Yes, I would love to be able to do that. Unfortunately, employment per se isn't devolved to us, so we do it via our ability to have the efficient and effective working of our public services. But all the evidence shows that, if you have flexible working policies, you have more efficient and effective public services. Because, actually, all of the evidence, everywhere, shows that the more diverse your workforce, the more flexible it is, the happier it is, the more productive it is, the better your bottom line is. So, this isn't even just about our belief in equality; this is actually about the bottom line. So, our big mission, through the economic contract, and through the fair work commission, and through the Workforce Partnership Council that does the public sector bit, is to ensure that all of our partners (a) understand that, and (b) take the steps necessary to put that into effect, using all the leverage at our disposal. So, the point of the fair work commission is to get the buy-in from the social partners—so from the Federation of Small Businesses and the Confederation of British Industry, and all the rest of it who make up the social partnership, as well as the trade unions—so that we can do it by consensus in Wales, because we don't have the devolved power to impose it. And, actually, imposition is never the way you want to go anyway; far better for us to go along that path because we all agree it, and that's the entire purpose of the commission.

But, again, you could put something into the contracts—that they may not get a contract if they don't do x, y and z. If they don't give you that information, if they don't work flexibly, you can say, 'Well, actually—'.

Yes, that's exactly right. So, the levers will be that, if you're going forward in a procurement with the Welsh Government, or you get grant in aid from the Welsh Government, or you get flexible skills funding—all the levers that we possibly can—you must sign up to this.

Childcare support.

That's right—the childcare support. You must sign up to the social contract, the new economic contract, and that's what releases the funding. So, those are the levers. But there are sections of the Welsh economy that we, unfortunately, don't have those levers in, and the point of the commission is to get people to sign up to that, because we've persuaded them by example and by evidence that, actually, their bottom line is affected by this. So, yes, it's a sort of three-pronged approach, really.

Okay. Thank you very much for that, leader of the house, and thank you all for coming in to give evidence to the committee today. You will be sent a transcript to check the factual accuracy in the usual way. Diolch yn fawr.

Okay. The next item we have today is item 3, papers to note. We have two papers: a letter from the Llywydd in relation to the postponed Senedd@Delyn event, and a letter from the First Minister in relation to the equality and human rights implications of Brexit. Are Members content to note both papers? Okay. Thank you very much.

In that case, we will move on to item 4, which is a motion under Standing Order 17.42 to resolve to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting, and from item 1 of the meeting on 7 June. Is committee content so to do? Thank you very much. We will move into private session.