Nursery World - Childcare 'is vital to UK economy'

Childcare is now as important to the British economy as the transport system, the trade and industry secretary told delegates at the Daycare Trust annual conference in London last week. In a keynote address at the conference, 'Childcare's Changing Britain - Childcare for All: From Vision to Reality', Patricia Hewitt stressed the growing economic and social importance of childcare. She said it 'increasingly is a central part of our entire economy' and is 'an important business sector in its own right'.

Childcare is now as important to the British economy as the transport system, the trade and industry secretary told delegates at the Daycare Trust annual conference in London last week.

In a keynote address at the conference, 'Childcare's Changing Britain - Childcare for All: From Vision to Reality', Patricia Hewitt stressed the growing economic and social importance of childcare. She said it 'increasingly is a central part of our entire economy' and is 'an important business sector in its own right'.

Ms Hewitt said, 'Childcare as a business sector, childcare as a central part of our economic infrastructure, is just as important as the transport system in enabling women, in particular, to participate in the economy for their own benefit, but also of course the benefit of the economy as a whole.'

She added that the number of people working in childcare had risen by 50,000 in the past three years to more than 250,000 people, 'so that we now live in an economy where there are more childcare workers than there are car workers, and that's a change that perhaps not everyone's comfortable with and certainly not everyone's noticed'.

But speakers and delegates, as well as the conference chair, broadcaster Anna Ford, raised the issue of pay and conditions. In his speech Stephen Burke, Daycare Trust director, called for greater recognition of childcare workers by the Government. 'If we value children then we should value our childcarers,' he said.

The GMB trade union, which is affiliated to the Daycare Trust, used the conference to distribute its childcare charter, described as 'a new agenda for nursery nurses, creche workers, playworkers and childminders'. Among its demands are decent pay and conditions, better training and career development, better health and safety measures, better child protection, promoting equal opportunities, and better work-life balance.

There was a sharp exchange when a nursery nurse from Scotland told Catherine Ashton, the minister for Sure Start, early years and childcare, that she had undergone four years of training and had been working in childcare for 22 years for a current annual salary of 13,500.

The minister replied, 'All of you are very concerned about money. Any support I can give you I will try to give you. You do an incredible job with children's lives.'

Ms Ford then told her, 'Pay people better. Create a professional pay structure', to which Baroness Ashton replied, 'I don't have the magic wand to wave.' Ms Ford then told her to ask chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown 'if he does'.