Speeches by Bailey.

“Yes. It was my great pleasure to speak at their conference, not recently but a few months ago, and I would very much like to continue that conversation. Your suggestion of some more structured engagement with maintained nursery schools is a good idea, Chair, and one that I will take away, because I hugely value the con…”

“That is a really important question. Overall, we do not think that there is a sufficiency problem with childcare. As I said earlier, 93% get their top three choice. There is lots of provision, and the sector has responded magnificently and expanded hugely to the extension of the entitlements. There are places, sometime…”

“Chris can come in with some specifics if he has the data on the retention, but this is where everything else that we are doing is really important. When you have your great job and you have gone in at whatever level you have gone in at, it is about making sure that there is the status and recognition. It is about makin…”

“Thank you very much, Chair. It is a really great pleasure to be here. Thank you for this inquiry, which I am really looking forward to reading the outcome of. I am here with Chris Armstrong-Stacey, who is director of early years in the Department of Education. Have I mangled your job title or is that correct?”

“At the moment, if a parent has concerns or complaints about the setting, there is a process through which they can report to Ofsted. If it is a concern about an individual child, they can complain to the ladder—to the local authority. What I am saying is that we are committed to improving that process. We have this add…”

“I love maintained nursery schools as well. I think that they are brilliant. I talk about them a lot, as Chris will attest. My boys went to a brilliant maintained nursery school. They are consistently best practice across the sector, because they do all of the things that you say. They have SENCO. They have a teacher. T…”

“You have to be able to do both. Both are important, and I believe passionately that getting women into work is a huge benefit for them, for their children and for the economy, and that is a wonderful thing. Childcare should be seen as infrastructure. It is important. It is massively beneficial to be able to do that. In…”

“That is the crucial crux of all the questions about the early education system, to be honest. You have to be able to do both.”

“Yes, of course I acknowledge the challenges. We are very proud of delivering the working parent entitlement. We inherited, basically, a pledge with no plan for delivery and no money from the previous Government, and I am very proud that we have been able to keep that promise to parents and make it happen. Of course, we…”

“The funding has gone in for this year, which is 2026-27.”

“The Secretary of State is talking about her personal ambition. She is talking in broad terms about the future that she sees for the system. We are working through the early education and childcare review on these big questions, and it would be through that process that we would be able to set out further detail as a Go…”

“The Secretary of State is setting out her ambition for where she would like to see the system. It is right that we have an ambition for where we want to see the system go in the future. Of course, we need to make sure that the policy decisions that we are taking in the meantime drive towards that long-term ambition, an…”

“I am confident. We have seen a huge uptick in the numbers of people working in early education. It is a great career. It is a really rewarding job. I would encourage anybody to consider it. I think 14,000 more people are working in the sector this year compared to last year. The sector and the market have responded bri…”

“I understand. I would want parents to hear from my contributions today and from what the Secretary of State intends to say later that we are hugely ambitious for the early education and childcare system in our country. We have established the early education and childcare review because we want to ask these big questio…”

“That is a brilliant question. First of all, this is the first time in a long time that there has been a proper, coherent strategy for the early years. I am really pleased to hear that, broadly, the witnesses that you have had are supportive of that direction and that attempt to really focus on early years. In terms of …”

“Very good. Thank you for the opportunity to say a few brief opening remarks. It is great that we are meeting today, almost exactly a year since we published the Best Start in Life strategy; it was a year ago yesterday. I thought it would be a good opportunity just to reflect briefly at the outset on some of the things …”

“I do accept that the quantum of funding is not the same as it was under Sure Start, but I do not accept that it is not enough. I just want to explain why. We have £900 million over the course of the next three years to deliver this, so there is significant funding. It is making a significant difference. I was in Staffo…”

“That is a really great question. The first thing I would say is something I hear a lot from families. They are really fed up of the fragmented nature of everything that happens in the infrastructure around children. As a one-year-old or a mum, you do not realise that you are in a healthy baby service; you do not realis…”

“Yes, absolutely. Chris, you may want to come in on this in a moment. On health, I strongly agree about the benefits of health integration. I am really pleased that we have healthy baby services in so many local authorities now. I am really pleased that the Department of Health and Social Care has committed to that bein…”

“The process of the early education and childcare review is a multi-year one. We will work on that as quickly as we can. I cannot be specific, I am afraid, but it is through that process that I would expect that those kinds of decisions would be taken.”