Chamber and committees

My question goes back to early learning and childcare. Councils have done an amazing job in rolling out the 1,140 hours, but I was a bit concerned by the reference to our now being into refinement when there are big questions about the viability of private nurseries based on the rates of return that they are getting. They are getting only about a third of the entitled two-year-olds into nursery, and the flexibility that it was claimed would be integral to the scheme when we set it up has not been achieved.

What are your reflections on that? It is more of a point than a question, but I was alarmed that the witnesses thought that we are into refinement when there are major problems with aspects of the roll-out.

You are both being very diplomatic. The danger with all of this is that the changes are big-bang changes. Many will know that I was a critic of the centralisation of the police. We have, in effect, a form of centralisation for colleges, and we are about to go into a form of centralisation through the national care service. The more diplomatic you are about whether objectives have been achieved, the more difficult it is for us to make the right decisions about further big-bang reforms, as I would call them. I therefore encourage you to be a little blunter about whether college regionalisation has been effective. If it has not been a success—even if you are not clear on whether the objectives have been achieved—surely that in itself should cause us to pause. A little bit more of a direct response from you would surely help us, because we have big decisions to make.

I might be wrong about all these things, but I do not think that I am. My fear is that we will end up with another set of reorganisations that will not deliver and that we will be back here with you in five years’ time saying that it is not clear whether the objectives for the national care service have been met. I encourage you to be a little bit blunter, as we have big decisions to make.

Forgive me for being a bit provocative.

I will return to the issue of the fair and meaningful contribution and, in particular, to the role of insurers in that. There was concern before about the impact on a charitable organisation’s finances if it made a contribution but its insurer did not support it. Do we have a clearer understanding of the attitude of the insurance industry to that?

I suspect that it is subject to negotiations, so you will probably not want to answer but, in the interests of giving confidence to providers or charitable organisations, if an insurance company was not contributing to payments and that threatened the viability of an otherwise good organisation, would your system be able to flex to reflect the fact that the insurer was not paying?

Are you delivering the promise?

We have heard evidence from others who mentioned the survey of literacy and numeracy that used to take place. It was not perfect and could have been improved, but that type of survey or census approach is better than the use of data, including the use of the results of the SNSAs as part of the framework, to assess the performance of schools and individuals. We are not doing it the right way: we should return to a survey approach. Why will you not consider that so that we can stop having crude league tables that demoralise schools and pupils?

Do not misunderstand me: I am in favour of data, but I am not in favour of making available individual data on schools that can be turned into league tables. I understand that you do not produce the league tables, but newspapers have done so, and they can do so only because you publish the data. Why do you not produce surveys, which would be a far superior system? I just do not understand why you continue with the policy when it has been criticised widely by a number of people.

What evidence have you gathered to justify the inclusion of children’s services in the national care service?

You provide the data.