Then it was the turn of the Sure Start minister, Baroness Catherine Ashton, who also said she was speaking 'as a mum who's employed nannies and childminders and used nursery provision'. But she disappointed many of those present when she said that the Government was 'nowhere near to thinking about' a nanny register. Nannies fired a barrage of challenges at the minister. There's already a system in place for registering childminders, so why not for nannies? Why talk about quality with childminders but not nannies? Why should a nanny have to lose children to a childminder or nursery where the parents can claim tax credits? Does the Government have any plans for recognising the training nannies have done? They felt Baroness Ashton left their questions unsatisfactorily answered, but she promised to listen, and she said, 'We don't want to lose you' - implying that the Government would prefer nannies to use their childcaring skills elsewhere.
TV producer Diana Muir showed the conference excerpts from the investigative programme she made, revealing some parents to be clueless when choosing a nanny, and some agencies to be unscrupulous about referring them - 'Yet parents treat agencies as some kind of register,' she said. And after the conference's endorsement from the Duchess of York, her former nanny, Alison Dady, regaled everyone with anecdotes about what it's like to work in the Royal household, demonstrating the answer to the question she says she's most often asked - 'How does a person like you get a job like that?' - with her down-to-earth pluck and humour. Alison too pledged her support to the campaign for a nanny register.
After lunch, seminars on employment matters, and a browse round the vast early years exhibition to which the conference was attached, the nannies returned to put yet more questions to a panel of experts. Professionalism, pay, parents' expectations, relationships with employers - the answer to all of them invariably seemed to be: nanny registration. Will it have happened by the next nanny conference? Watch this space.
