Interview: Helen Hayes MP, shadow children and early years minister
Fiona Simpson
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Fiona Simpson grills the shadow children and early years minister on Labour’s plans.
Helen Hayes has been MP for Dulwich and West Norwood for seven years, replacing Sure Start champion Dame Tessa Jowell.
It is just six weeks since she took over from Tulip Siddiq as Labour’s shadow children and early years minister but has already made waves in parliament, quizzing government ministers on delays in children’s mental health treatment and lack of support for childcare.
Did early years need more support from the government during the pandemic?
It has been a stark illustration of how the government doesn’t properly see early years as part of the education system.
It really wasn’t clear whether settings were meant to close or remain open; early years workers didn’t have key worker status. It is absolutely understandable that the sector feels that they were ignored and badly let down during the pandemic.
What more can be done to support the sector to recover from the pandemic?
In the very short term, in our children’s recovery plan which we published last year, we have a proposal to increase the level of pupil premium funding for early years to the same level as reception.
More widely, we need to take a big look at the early years sector and how funding is structured and allocated with the aim of giving much more stability to early years settings.
The number of disadvantaged two-year-olds using their early years entitlement is below pre-pandemic levels. What can be done to increase uptake?
The two-year-old offer isn’t particularly easy for families to understand or access. There is a need to look again about how that offer works and how it is made available to families.
Lots of early years settings are fragile and are closing in areas of deprivation. Those are the areas where the disadvantaged two-year-olds who are eligible for that offer are living.
The early years is facing a workforce crisis – how should this be addressed?
We have to make sure that people working in the sector have the right support and are properly valued, and that we put the career and pay structures in place so that they can be encouraged to make an extremely rewarding lifelong career in early years and working with children.
Labour published plans for a £14bn education recovery package. Is it still needed?
Absolutely. We see the impact of the pandemic on educational attainment, on early years, on children’s mental health. We know those impacts have been felt hardest by children with the most disadvantage and we need that investment to help children to recover.
Your predecessor Tulip Siddiq undertook a "Big Conversation" to meet the early years sector and better understand issues. What did it show and will you repeat it?
That’s absolutely something I will be looking to do.
The Big Conversation showed there is fragility in the sector, many settings have closed and we know that more are on the brink of closure. We know that professionals feel undervalued and underpaid and we know those impacts have been felt more disproportionately in areas of disadvantage.
We also know that parents want high-quality childcare to be available wherever they live so we need to look at that consistency of provision, the affordability of provision as well as building up the sector to support them as needed.
Tulip Siddiq had the early years brief for five years – how do you hope to build on that?
Tulip was fantastic in this role. She built strong relationships with the early years sector and started to develop Labour’s plan for what we would do in government.
My task is to ensure that our commitment to the country on early years, when we reach the general election, is fully developed.
Having a successful set of policies for the early years is vital for reducing inequality, for giving every child the best start in life and for our economy. Having good early years and childcare at an affordable level, everywhere across the country, helps families to work.
Do you support family hubs or would Labour scrap them if elected? Are they a supplement or replacement for Sure Start children’s centres?
We welcome the government’s admission that closing more than 1,000 Sure Start centres up and down the country has been a complete disaster and there is a need to replace that provision and support for families.
Family hubs are a pale imitation – they are in a handful of places when we look at how many Sure Start centres have closed.
The government needs to set out what they mean by family hubs. That isn’t clear at the moment – there has been no articulation of a core offer of what constitutes a family hub.
What are your political ambitions?
There are few more important things than trying to ensure that every child in the country has the best possible start in life and the best possible support throughout their childhood in terms of mental health provision. If I can play a role in developing Labour’s offer for the next general election and getting Labour into government, I’d be thrilled with that.
CV – HELEN HAYES MP
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December 2021-present – shadow children and early years minister
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May 2015-present – Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood
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April 2020-December 2020 – Home Office shadow minister
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January 2020-April 2020 – Opposition whip
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1998-2015 – Director – Urban Practitioners