Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Talks over Scottish childcare spending
TALKS have taken place between Scottish Government ministers and council chiefs after a review of childcare funding revealed an apparent £140 million underspend by local authorities.
Over the period 2014-15 to 2016-17, the Scottish Government has provided councils with £329 million of additional cash to fund the increase in free childcare youngsters are entitled to. But, over the same period, local authorities spent or plan to spend an extra £189 million, according to the Government’s financial review of early learning and childcare.
While the local government body Cosla claimed parts of the report “paint a very misleading picture”, Mark McDonald, childcare and early years minister, insisted the figures show the Scottish Government had fully funded its flagship childcare policy.
All three and four-year-old kids in Scotland, as well as vulnerable two-yearolds, are entitled to 600 hours of free childcare every year, up from 412.5 hours when the SNP came to power.
Mr McDonald insisted: “This SNP Government has done more than any previous devolved administration and indeed any other government in the UK to expand free entitlement to early learning and childcare.”
Regarding the funding, he said “where the money allocated does not all appear to have been spent as intended, it would be for local authorities to account for their own spending”.
But he stated: “It is clear this Government has met its commitments to fully fund this policy.”
As MSPs debated childcare at Holyrood, he revealed he had talks with Cosla, which represents the majority of Scottish councils “because we want to ensure, where we put a policy in place and funding to follow that policy, that the funding benefits those children we want it to benefit”.
Mr McDonald said: “The Scottish Government continues to be in discussions with Cosla about this.”
About 125,000 youngsters each year benefit from free childcare, with the SNP having already pledged to up the number of hours to 1,140 a year by 2020 - a promise the minister described as “our most transformative infrastructure project”.
Mr McDonald said: “No other policy has such potential to change children’s lives, the fortunes of their families and the prospects of the economy. This is absolutely a policy with a purpose and it is essential we get the expansion right.”