With Gordon Brown making childcare and early years the focal point of his comprehensive spending review, there probably couldn't be a better time to talk to Norman Glass, one of the creators of the Sure Start programme when he was deputy director in the Treasury.
Glass, who left the Treasury in 2001 to join the National Centre for Social Research, is impressed, but not surprised, by the Chancellor's commitment to childcare as a means of dragging children out of poverty.
"When I was in the Treasury, he (Brown) was supportive of Sure Start and followed its progress," he says.
Glass is enthusiastic about the measures outlined by Brown: the pilot programme to extend free nursery provision to 12,000 two-year-olds in 500 areas is "very promising", as is the target to create 2,500 children's centres by 2008, up from 1,700.
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