Deport foreign born convicted criminals some of whom have been in the country for decades ministers say some of those do want to morrow's flight have been convicted of rape and manslaughter the labor m.p. David Lammy told the Commons that many were guilty of nonviolent offenses but the Home Office Minister Kevin Foster defended the government's stance the windage generation should be defined by the midwife we delivered hundreds of babies the person who can't travel thousands of miles work hard and provide for their family for decades and I do think it is absolutely remarkable now the lines being adopted opposite that somehow it's defined by those who are of a serious persistent criminal offenders a man has been found guilty of planning terrorist attacks in tourist destinations in London just over a year after he was cleared of planning an attack outside Buckingham Palace 28 year old Mr Chantrey who's from Luton unwittingly told the undercover police officers about the plots and boasted about how he deceived the jury of his 1st trial the German chancellor Angela Merkel says she respects regrets the decision of the woman widely seen as a most likely successor not to put a cell forward for the row and a great cram Karrenbauer was confirmed should also step down as the head of the main governing party the Christian Democrats the government is examining proposals to build a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland banning street has confirmed that is being looked at by a number of government officials Boris Johnson has called it a very interesting idea b.b.c. News. The government spends billions of pounds on free early years education the theory is that this is good for children their parents and society at large but does the evidence add up analysis is in half an hour. Now on Radio 420 year old image in Rhodes makes her debut in our 1st person narrative series My name is. Come out and. Get. A way that they can think about it that's why this story begins. To get. You to list a remarkable but still a close a true. McCarley waiting for the 66 bus because that's why the story begins. No sign of the box. I'm with my O's a producer who is carrying all the care Ok I'm a newbie and I've never presented a radio program before. It can be like 10 minutes before it comes on a 3 piece but they're not convinced that oh wait it's bad and I. Get that. I'm a name to me I'm 22 years old I live with my mom and my bridge and no face London and I'm obsessed with housing. One day free some of the guys I was on the bus on my way to walk as I looked out the window I saw something which free me and shocks me . So we're on the top of the $66.00 possibly. Because many straight onto the floor of the new breed house tell me what neighboring houses were just coming up to a new breed house is a office block both in the sixty's it's about 7 storeys high and it sits on the side of the. Aisle Did you see when you look up at the top that you look in and so when I looked I could see people spaying and people's toiletries sitting on the windowsill and I realize that people living on the 1st floor but not just living on the. Living up to 7 stories off the building why did that strike you as remarkable . The thing about sitting on the top deck of the by. Us is that I was able to look into the real house and I knew it was being used as temporary accommodation because they hope. Much ng net curtains and so at that point I put $2.00 and $2.00 together I knew the state of housing in bridge. Because in 1909 my family were made homeless we lived in temporary commendation for 10 years until we call moved into social housing and I knew that this was probably being used by one company or one landlord to house people. As a pain services housing because. The landlady selling the house that we were privately renting and it was me my mom and I my Freo distance took 4 to 5.5 hot cocoa. And my mom my dad had split up a few months before the time what was the 1st accommodation you went into that we went into at b. And b. And. I want to point that we're going to go. Back to spring to look at. Our back door if you want to apply pen from the outside even if you could do that. My mum wasn't going to complain about. The risk of being kicked out. I still feel quite in secure I still even though we live in secure combinational I'm really in social housing I still worry about being made high miss which might sound a bit old. But how do I get free to middle class people why it's like to. Live in vulnerable position I have a phrase that very well. Drawn innocent. Worker It's when I listen back in Him I ask them and my mum was like yeah she's going this is what. I know. She was like you need to go to one of the speech for think rid of it. I don't think so I don't think you know I think that I feel that you don't have to get my mom for you to say she's that you don't have a good right if. She doesn't like my list so we get back to the story maybe house this is the office block island to do from the bus they used to be regulations that have buildings like this it's a flat earth and they are tiny Some of them just one 3rd of the government's minimum space standard and when we stepped off the bus to recall something on top and. So we're standing outside maybe house it's pretty grim it's a very gray it's facing away from sunlight sunlight Kong and. Know when to record in the building. Not. Yet here I want to move away. But we're just standing on the pavement. It is a pavement is a clear pavement. What's your name. So you just tell me very quickly. Because this is go. So we were standing outside recording until you guys came out and said that we can't be here and that we need to get off because it's private property. Did you feel threatened I did feel frightened I felt like immediately like why are you here with you doing what are you recording it makes me wonder what they got to hide because we were only outside that building foot maybe a minute under under a minute before somebody came out and told us to move. That was there. And there's now a guy outside who's making a phone call and staring up at. My fellow incredibly lucky that we were made high miss when we were which sounds like a very bizarre statement to make the I just think that since austerity has come in and with the welfare reforms have come in I realize that our situation could have been so much well it's an unusual thing to say you know you were kind of lucky we were lucky we were lucky that when we made time in the ninety's I really can imagine being made and it's now it would just be. So now you know why these are the office block has thought to obsess me I see every day I've still never been inside it so I don't really know what it's like but we know the iron is our company registered in the British Virgin Islands I'm a copy of the floor plan from a friendly architect. So we just act like I could be at it it's fine. My name is Julia park I'll tell you what I do I'm currently head of housing research live at Bernstein So that means I do quite a lot of writing and research mainly about housing. I'd like to tell you how I came across a house and why it worried me so much it was actually pure accident I found myself in the area looked across the road at this looming office block and it was very disturbing it's quite hard to explain why but it was a baking hot day and I heard tense voices. Lots of rubbish at the base of the building so I actually thought it was squatted I thought about trying to get in but it didn't feel safe so I discovered how it's being used I went back to my office and checked the planning records you can see how buildings have changed over the years online Yeah one of the things I found out through the planning portal but it had been converted through permitted event rights to methods of element rights or Pedia it's an essential part of the story what they do is allow certain building types to be changed in particular ways without needing planning permission for many years it Ronnie really applied to a homeowner extensions but in the last few years it's kind of grown into something much bigger and many more building types are involved now and could be subject to p.d. Are and the conversion of office blocks to residential use is one of those new uses so the right to been abused essentially well you can see why it came about the building already exists we're short of housing it's not a totally mad idea but the problem is there are just 4 criteria which the local authority can't comment on so it bypasses the normal planning process and it's that process that would normally check an awful lot of important things to do with how housing works for quality area they can comment about traffic. Contamination noise from nearby buildings and flood risk so what they're not able what the planning authority can't do is insist on things like space standards we have one but but it only applies where planning happens where the full planning process takes place play areas it happens to be close to traffic slowing down starting up again is one of the worst set of conditions just because I've lived in a neighbor house for several years now and I passed it so much on my way to work kind of it doesn't matter what the weather is ever it's freezing weather it's boiling they've always got the windows open which to me suggests that they have really poor ventilation Well that's that's a great point to me and they would check the location is suitable and in the case of new pre house you know that's the 1st thing you notice So there are lots of things that had it gone through the normal planning process would have undoubtedly meant the conversion wouldn't have gone ahead. According to the floor plan Julia showed me the smallish today unit in the building is just bad 100 square meters. The government's own minimum space standard it's back to 7 square meters you know I genuinely think when the government 1st came up with this idea in 2011 I think it was I don't think they imagined that we would ever see homes as small as 13 square meters which is the smallest one in New Breed house so when you say 500 square meters can you explain how big. A moment everything after all have there I found on my arms out. How far my vote is going to meet this is I think an idea it would be roughly to review top to bottom on all sides yes I'm guessing it's made just under 6 foot Yeah so it's 3 metres by 4 metres it's a very common size for the main bedroom in modern houses the main bedroom with the kitchen and the bar for burial bed yeah absolutely I mean it is where the person sleeps but it's also where they do everything else and that's what makes it so shocking when you nibble off a sizable corner for a shower with a toilet in a wash basin and you have to have by law a basic kitchen and that's another piece of space used up you've really only got room for a bed maybe a bedside table and that's before you start bringing in your stuff somewhere to sit somewhere to eat and we've seen in so many of these newspaper stories people say I do everything on my bed I sleep in my bed I eat on my bed I sit on my bed it's all I've got room for. So this is where you live now where I live now we just passed through some very big gates and now where in my little if they really know it's every night they're very beautiful and bigger than the house . So we're heading up that's. My religion it's like you guys are. Not allowed. If you get. The inflatable yet. Which is something great for the environment not so good tenants if it keeps building down mana dog you Drew what is dog. You wanting. To hire an agent. That. Has kept kissing flooring on the floor. Then shame on all living room. Which is really mad and I mean. I think you back very. Quickly back to my house in a minute but you need to know something else when I 1st night is maybe house I began to go office block housing back then very few results came up even when the media did report on office blocks being news is tempered combination of reporters failed to mention permitted to Bettman that's what I wanted to find out how many of office blogs are being developed in this way so I sent out over 80 Freedom of Information requests I sent them to every London council and council outside of London so here or of my Freedom of Information requests all 80 of them where where where they come from because they're not just that one building we've just looked at night they are from all London Councils you go to every London council I write to every London council toy asking them asking them how many units combated on that's permitted development rules they were accusing temper combination and nobody said why is a 20 year old asking for this information and they didn't ask me about how many people wrote back to only a handful of bars right but probably the best one I got was from Lewisham council because they oncet every single question I asked And what did they tell you that they were using free form office blocks as temperate commendation. And they gave me a different breakdown parea. Kovan house as the 265 b. $27.00 unit take to weekly cost $5609.00 pounds $92.00 pence so that's how much money they are paying by private landlord to how I miss families lot of people listening to this will think so people living in converted office blocks what's wrong with that I mean there's a housing crisis it seems a sensible thing to do would you want to live in an office block because they called Temper combination but most people that live in temperate combination will know that isn't temporary I lived in temporary accommodation for 10 years that wasn't temporary we moved out of there in 2009 since then the housing crisis has only been exacerbated so people are spending prolonged periods of time and living in these buildings and when we consider that children live in these buildings I would really consider how does that impact their development how does that impact their self-confidence Oh I've written to to Secretary of State to the housing ministers I've contacted my local m.p. . I have had responses from civil servants asked to reply on behalf of ministers. Some of them have been quite sympathetic. But I've been fucked off by the fact that building regulations apply so I needn't worry too much you know these people are safe and I've written back to my normal stubborn way and said yes but actually building regulations don't cover this this this and this so this space that for example could easily go into building regulations you know particularly if they imported standard they've already got into regulation difficult Why do you think I think knowledge or I think the numbers are just too tempting. I think we can all probably agree that we could manage here for a while and we've all got different levels of resilience but I think it would take a toll on most people within months just the things you can't do just the feeling of claustrophobia and also the feeling of living in the worst housing you know you somehow want to what does it feel to be living in one room when you know that everyone around you has 5 rooms you know a church and if I go up it's like when I was younger I went to sleep with them thanks you could never do that could you you can never take your friends back to your high. And I like I wonder if children if their asses go where do you live I wonder what that that what they say I live here what they just lie because you must know as a child that that's not no what's not no motive in the law Yeah I wonder if I wonder if there's ever a case of like a child going into that office block and being worried that their school friends might see them and then realize that that is where they live Yeah I think about that a lot of kind of really depressing and upsetting. And that's partly what makes you care about this so much isn't it and I've been a housing architect for 30 something years now I do it because I absolutely believe in the difference that decent housing makes to people's lives so when I see housing like this this is some of our newest housing and it's the smallest housing I've ever seen all that I even know Wolf. Currently in London there I have a 56000 households live in an attempt accommodation up to Fats since 2010. So here we go another interview 3 pm It says here comes the main office you will be directed from ground floor exception to the podium level immediate moment use the next line you know it and. We're always there and with rain in London. The London Barry guy. I'm the person we've come to see is council leader Joseph educational. Joseph Reggie for Joseph a cheer for leader of Haringey council the leader of having a council called Joseph age of 4 who gets really upset when you misspell his name is just that sort of like coverage area now I die and it was one of the journalists Yes so maybe I can change the world in my own little way only and we can start with this documentary I was talking about how the housing of the house and yes this is a crisis and I think personally I think it's the role of council to provide social housing a lot of landlords neglect their responsibilities Well the biggest crimes I think is the fact that people can pour all of that money from around the world into the London housing market and there's no regulation of it I don't know how much you know but I lived in temporary housing I could not but I've kind of had of this new thing a few years ago who committed development housing being used to house. Families in temp accommodation and I've become a bit obsessed by the idea and I'm slightly nervous of that I think that at the time permitted development this so a permit if I 1st came in there was a lot of issues with lots of empty office blocks and I have to say until recently I thought that this saw a payday was only available for empty office blocks now the real problem is that developers can buy an office block a fix all of businesses within a office block and in turn into low quality high density housing and the issue there is a the council itself loses the business rights from those businesses also as a town sends a loses the income generated by people coming into the town center who work has a loss of business rights and there's a loss of the viability in the town center itself can you tell me about us the thick belt and whether in your council district Well we have an issue with a building called Alexandra house a 10 storey office block in the heart of work or in town center the building itself is full of businesses they provide secure a stable employment for lots of people and they provide the council with a substantial income through business raised up the problem here is that the you owners are seeking to use permitted to develop rights to evict all of the businesses from the building and to turn the building into very small accommodation 219 units over 10 floors and I'm loath to call them homes because where the floor space is smaller than I had sole room and used to have a path through the toilet and some kitchen spice that's not a home particular if you don't have any natural light but the law allows these to be called Homes and I just think that's wrong so we've had 86 different applications as a council we lose. The ability to have a clear say on the type of accommodation that is actually built out of those 86 do you know how many were going to be temporary accommodation not suitable as I can't explain can't tell you how many were proposed to be used to type accommodation what I can see just looking at the last that were built within permitted development actually cost the residents of hiring I 60 affordable homes where we had permitted development you lose affordable homes because not done through the appropriate planning function. Can you stop. Questions. One second. With my decisions on. Can you stop them and. Be stocked around contaminated lines. Noise or transport impacts No these are very limited criteria However our current funding offices believe that this particular pairing up a question does not meet that criteria and as at the moment the question is being refused. Which means that right now Alexandra House buildings ascribe back in November as a potential human warehouse be developed on the pedia I read triumph for the council. What did you think of Joseph I thought he was really nice stuff and he's very insightful. But he was too kind of which is understandable because he's a counselor just becomes frustrating. I feel guilty saying that because he was so I think. Did you learn anything I did learn anything that wasn't already aware of. Was when you said that you'd made a Freedom of Information request. To say in my Freedom of Information question. I made to Freedom of Information requests to Haringey council and I didn't get a response to them but having brought up with. He just gave me all the information I had asked. Did you not think it was interesting that there was a financial as well as maybe you would say a moral case for not allowing these blocks to be transformed into temporary housing I feel like it sounds like bad but I always feel like when you make a financial case of something that will always take President I have a saying well isn't it awful that these vulnerable people live in these terrible conditions as soon as we bring in the financial argument people like oh. Well maybe it's terrible that the local council is losing money and that's I mean obviously that's great and it's important to make this point so that so depressing isn't it don't have to make a financial point rather than a moral point over a humane point. To kind of make progress. That might be the most interesting thing research. Well maybe you've said yeah. From all my Freedom of Information requests. Ever Fed of London Councils. As temporary accommodation one of my. My successful if I was recording Council they told me that combative branch and 29 units from 3 buildings Windsor house Sycamore House and House and that there were 198 children living in them so I went to go and see what they were like. Building Number one is when the house says I purchase ation directly beneath it and across the right it's a bias station and there's constant sirens coming out of the time. We try to get inside when South as soon as we approach the building somebody immediately came out and asked us what we were doing just like they did at Newbury house just like they didn't maybe have. According to one newspaper The fire brigade have raised concerns about this book so I went to ask. But as soon as I mentioned this to the head of the fire station opposite he immediately very safe hands and said I have to stop you. Building Number 2 Sycamore house. It's on the see it's not as bad as when the house and Stefano spot is Newbury hall but it does still resemble an office block the red pen I am one of these drugs is at least 29 pounds $99.00 for a bedsit That's $893.00 pounds a month. 30 member free Concord house and it's a lot converted up and down. And it's being used by the council as temporary commendation and for my f I why we know that there are 82 children living in the field and we spoke to a few people coming out called House one was a camera the full the building was like a real size by 2 young women who had free children who said have room was really small had bed bugs and she didn't like the knife is his rule there was a sign on the door No visitors allowed off to 10 pm as was hiding here what the government of recently said namely the permitted development rights are subject to a review they also say that there are examples of poor practice but that p.t.o. Have contributed to getting the homes built that this country desperately needs. So when I was in primary school I remember being asked to join us and I dream my temper accommodation which back publishes like a normal house and I think about children who live in these office blocks if they were asked to join the House at school what with they. When a family is my time this they have run out of choices is all of their autonomy and their lives are completely in the hands of the local council they have run out of options and have narrow. I believe that we should be able to do better than this My name is Amy was presented by image and roads and produced in Bristol by Miles ward. Looking southeast towards gust we talked rises 500 feet above sea level and just to be tour is one of those places in the u.k. That has a very special or clear building blocks with people who are inspired mentally and spiritually by the outdoors that is one of the most exciting things about it to me we see things every time kind of have you ever seen that before it even seemed to recall its timely interest we had a scope was going on that. Time really begins with a pretty steep hill a bird's heralding the entrance to the top in place and all this ramblings Thursday afternoons of on b.b.c. Radio 4. When I was time for analysis the education expert Professor Allison Wolfe asks whether the billions of pounds the government spends on early years education is working. And coming in with my daughter Evie dropping off way to work I'm dropping my son he comes here 3 times a week. He's 13 months since he's just started a slow and difficult living and. Welcome to a modern nursery and to modern childhood and modern parenthood Alice Wolfe of Kings College London and of the years of studying the labor market this is probably the most dramatic change I've seen. Go back just to the 1960 s. Small children a family at home all day looked after by their mothers full time mothers are you sitting comfortably then I'll begin. Penny was a little black cat listen with mother went out a challenge time in the happy certainty that small children were at home doing just that. Take a prosperous Midland City like 1960 s. Nottingham we know that only about one in 14 year olds was getting any sort of formal childcare or time in preschool and that was the 4 year olds 'd 6. Since then nurseries childminders and preschools have exploded in number today government statistics tell us that virtually every single 4 year old and over 90 percent of 3 year olds get some form of formal child care so do almost 60 percent of 2 year olds. It's a different world and one place you can see the change is in the magazine nursery world founded in 125 it once sold to mothers at home in the nursery and the occasional posh person's nanny now it's the focal website and professional journal for a huge early years sector that has over 70000 Ofsted registered providers and a workforce that is nearly half a 1000000 strong. The editor Les Roberts has seen that change I joined the magazine in 1996 when my own daughter was at nursery term yes at that time there was only one place for every 8 children nurseries were really quite a scarce commodity really when the Labor government came in and launched its national child care strategy we saw a huge huge boom in nurseries and since that late 1990 s. Kickstart the market has gone on growing successive English governments have introduced different tax reliefs different child care subsidies but recently it's been more and more free hours of child care that child care paid for directly by the government government spending on this is now at $3800000000.00 pounds a year and has more than doubled in a decade of genuine a Starrett So why hasn't really years done so amazingly well mostly it must be that it's seen as a thing when when perfect policy Sunday Times editorial just before last December's general election summed this up extending free childcare makes sense the paper trumpeted delighted by competing promises of more money the cost is modest when set against the benefits it could bring surveying the politicians just sling to promise that a 5 hours childcare for all 3 year olds here 30 hours for all 2 year olds there along with a new offer for babies as young as 9 months the Sunday Times concluded that there is reassuringly loo real argument between the main Bertie's In other words the more child care spending the better. That is today's conventional wisdom why should it be and how did we get here. One good place to start is in the United States in a very poor suburb of Detroit. It's the early 1960 s. And a part time preschool program Perry Preschool is about to transform the lives of some fortunate 3 and 4 year olds. Steve bonnet from the National Institute for early education at Rutgers University explains preschool is not very common for most children especially not for the most disadvantaged children and the Perry Preschool is created at an elementary school in a very disadvantaged low income neighborhood all African-American just outside of Detroit These are among the most disadvantaged of the disadvantage and this was no ordinary preschool it's a 2 and a half hour a day preschool program 5 days a week with home visits once a week that the teachers go and work with the kids in their homes get to know their families but it's also one to one tutoring they're not shy about the importance of educating kids working on language literacy math and science but it's also about play it's about learning how to think before you act Steve Bonnett encounters the 1st set of Perry Preschool graduates when they were 19 and he wasn't much older as a young economist fresh out of graduate school he joined the team for such as working at the preschool tracking the early participants and comparing them with a control group of children who didn't attend were in an old house there's not even a door that closes between my office and the preschool classroom so early days I've been warned civil action by playing coach So there you are in this room you've got these data what did you do with them these are early times for computers and so what I did was create a grate on the wall there's one row for every one of the $123.00 kids and there's one column for every. Year from 3 through age 19 and so there is a box for every year of each child's life and I'm reading into each box What are the important things that happened in particular where the things that I might be able to put a dollar value on yeah yeah and call them on call and the differences became clear between the lucky children who had gone through the Perry Preschool program and the neighbors who had not writing in where they've committed delinquent asked her crime or been arrested did they go to jail did they get a job how much money are they are earning whether they've married had kids and then I've got to figure out is there some way I can estimate the value of their looking at these findings and adding them up and putting a value on them where did you end up we ended up at $7.00 for every dollar invested and that's an extraordinarily high rate of return that's higher than the stock market and we had been very conservative in making that estimate so we were fairly confident this is a solid number it's a very big that 7 dollars for one figure took the policy world by storm. James Heckman the Nobel Prize winning economist also what with data from Perry Preschool and became a hugely effective advocate of spending he insisted that the the investment The great to the rich. So governments should focus on disadvantaged children from not 5 spending on teenagers was never going to work well early as education became the policy with no downsides a social level the panacea for an equal world no wonder we like it and it seems to get even better. It wasn't long before people became convinced that early years spending wasn't only a great way to help children's future development it was also a way to address another of society's ills child poverty in workless families and when labor turned on the child care spending taps in 1907 it had more than child development sites it was thinking about poverty and employment work is the best form of welfare the best way of funding people's needs and the best way of giving them a stake in society tossed in Bell what closely with major figures from the Blair Brown years before becoming Labour's director of policy they were policy was aiming to take child poverty as a core ject of and that meant a universal offer on child care so that women could go into work and that that was a core plank of reducing child poverty because when a 2nd earner goes into work you do see big reductions in child poverty so yes it was a combination of Rights and Responsibilities to go alongside extra support because it was a view that it was in everybody's interests not to have work with families so in other words we'll give you free childcare to help you go to work but if you don't go to work you won't get all of it Labor's childcare policies took effect within the labor market that was already increasingly female. In Britain as elsewhere that had been huge increases in the proportion of women in the workforce many were parents they needed childcare and it was often very hard to find there's nearly 72 percent of women in work today versus 55 percent at the beginning of the 1980s the highest ever seen we've seen particular growth in 2nd earners over the last decade childcare is certain an issue that has become more politically salient as we have moved towards a norm for couple families and for single parents to be much more likely to work in than they were in the past neighborly is chief executive of the early years Alliance whose $14000.00 members range from individual child minder students and parents to some of the biggest childcare providers in Britain the organization dates back to the early 1960 s. Founded by a group of moms with very little childcare around starting playgroups in local church holds it was almost a situation where it was expected there I say it was the man that went out to work and the wife stayed at home and looked after the children so from a provider perspective many local authorities didn't think it was actually a need because society has greatly changed rightly so and so are organizations had to change with the times to say the least. One striking change is the growth of private for profit nurseries many were originally small local startups but the last 20 years has seen chains taking ever more of the market expanding mostly through acquisitions some chains are enormous busy bees for example now owns $379.00 nurseries and counting. According to nursery world the u.k. Saw over 70 commercial deals and 2019 These included sales of u.k. Nurseries to an Icelandic group and to a giant French nursery chain Meanwhile 2 of our biggest chains were buying nurseries in the u.s. Italy and China I asked new leach Why is childcare now such big business that is because I think it's fair to say that over the last 203040 years we've pushed more and more people back into the working environment plus there's government spending and government is now the sector's largest customer by far Labor lost parent 2010 but the biggest spending surge actually arrived on the 1st the coalition government and then the Tories to start with it was 15 free hours for 3 and 4 year olds then in 2017 this was extended to 30 free hours for the children of working parents and expenditure jumped again. Obviously this isn't just about child poverty the reason the spending got past the Treasury is the apparent miracle of child care that gift that goes on giving. As someone who's probably spent too much time around Whitehall I know how much Treasury officials adore high employment rates and that's what they see in the childcare budget lines more available childcare seems to promise more people working higher tax payments and a larger g.d.p. It's all part of that win win scenario and it's especially tempting when growth is pretty much slowed to a halt and no one really has a clue what to do about it. Unfortunately for the Treasury However you can spend a great deal of money without actually having much impact on employment. Christine Foxon of the Institute for Fiscal Studies the research that looked at 30 hours of childcare delivered through the school system found that it brought about an extra $12000.00 mothers back into the labor market each year again that's not a tiny number of people but compared to the cost of the policy that suggests that it costs about $65000.00 pounds a year for each of those mothers to be brought back into the workforce which is quite a lot particularly when you consider that median wages average wages are sort of around 324-006-5000 pounds for every extra employee It definitely is a lot of money and probably not what the Treasury has in mind but perhaps we should stop fixating on employment rights as a reason to spend on early years it will still be money well spent if we're fostering children's development across the board all crucially reducing the gaps between children from poorer and from better off homes unfortunately we don't seem to be doing too well there on child development 15 hours free child care does boost children's attainment in school for the 1st few years but those benefits basically disappeared by age 11. England's very best preschool settings do have a major impact on children's development but there's no evidence that long days at nursery better than short ones and varies hugely so at national level there's little sign that the billions of pounds are paying off early as assessments and school tests at age 7 show that the average gap between disadvantaged children and their peers it's not just big but also pretty static. Well to be doing wrong. It turns out that that's a fundamental tension between promote the employment that keeps Treasury happy and doing great things for children's futures question Fokus and explains if you want to childcare program that's going to bring a lot of mothers back into the workforce you're going to want something with long days pretty flexible wraparound care and generally pretty cheap so that it's affordable for families by contrast if what you care about is improving child development evidence suggests that you want much shorter days in a very high quality setting like the Perry Preschool in fact politicians love to say that child care is going to give you both great child development and bring a lot of mothers back into the workforce but in practice what we've seen is that places like Scandinavia where child care programs do a lot of great things for children's development both their academic attainment but also their health their propensity to commit crime those programs don't tend to have a big impact on mothers labor supply by contrast when you look at places like back in Canada you see a program that brings a lot of mothers back into the workforce but doesn't do anything or potentially is even slightly harmful for children's development on dimensions like their social development What was it about the program that made the trade off so dramatically obvious the focus there was on subsidizing flexible childcare and making it very affordable for families but there was less emphasis on what actually would be happening within those child care settings so that's a choice here we can help children's development all we can support what can parents how does current English policy measure up actually not very well on either front delivering everything for everybody turns out to be a lot harder than we thought. Current Rush is a deliver more and more government funded hours that's expensive so there's real pressure to keep the cost per hour down but as we've seen good childcare isn't just about sending children somewhere it's about what happens when they get their lives Roberts of nursery world I mean the amount of hours that the government funds has gone up and up much really to the concern of nurseries because actually these hours have always really been underfunded nurseries are not getting anything like what they would charge as a fee for an hour of child care nurseries need to have some surplus income even if the charities for equipment start training a decent pay scale a rainy day if government funding barely covers basic costs they have a major problem to an outsider looking at this arms race of promises from the political party as you might think this is a wonderful time for nurseries but you don't think it is no nurseries are really hurting because if you're losing a pound an hour for every one of the funded hours that you give and you have Cratylus of children in your nursery who are taking the 33 hours or even the 15 you know that ends up being a big loss and also more sort of insidious thing is that the quality can go down if you're underfunded you can't pay very good wages and it's already a very low wage sector and you can't offer maybe as many things as you did so generally it's very hard to keep the quality as high as it was. So how might nurseries manage well they might sell top up hours at a higher rate but that depends on parents wanting more and being able to pay for them and of course the children he needs most help aren't for the most part in areas where parents by lots of extra hours and so how balance the nurseries books the more free hours the government offers the greater the challenge. Nabeel leach of the early years Alliance run semesters directly as well as counting many nursery operators among his membership as soon as the 30 hours was introduced basically they had to start charging for lunch use the nappies for trips I was talking to a provider not that long ago who charges over 10 pounds a day for a lunch per child now of course that isn't for the lunch of a child I mean I don't know about you but I would spend 10 pounds on a lunch that's to make up the shortfall of funding throughout the day and government seems quite happy to turn a blind eye to this because of course they would argue that keeps people up by charging for extras seems to work well enough in more affluent areas there are still masses of nurseries around and new ones opening but what about and poorer neighborhoods I'll give you a real case example where an operator operate exclusively in areas of deprivation last year for the 1st time ever we closed 25 percent of our entire portfolio we closed $28.00 nurseries The danger is that as governments offer more and more hours the pressure on nursery costs will any increase of course $1.00 possible and unlikely solution is to fund every single nursery place at a much much higher rate but some campaigners want a far more radical rethink. Lynn Burnham is vice chair of Mothers at Home Matter its members agree that families with small children deserve some extra help it's financially a really tough time but they fundamentally disagree that help should only come through formal child care or depend on parents going out to work as of campaign group we strongly believe that a small child's best interests are served by being cared for one person and we feel that under 3 us really need to have the time that they spend in childcare limited but do you feel that there are many parents whose children are in daycare or nursery who are not necessarily a Blige to put them there but they they do well the problem that we're facing is that women are not really given that choice any longer they're told in their postnatal groups that you step back on the ladder and that you put your child into child care and there's all sorts of subsidies from government to enable you to get rebates off of the cost of the child care at the end of the day is the taxpayer the ends up paying for this child care and we as a campaign group we strongly believe that there should be a level playing field and that all mothers should receive equal remuneration whether or not it's asking someone else to care for your child or whether you choose to do that caring for yourself so why are you disappointed at the parties manifestos last year. Well yes because at the end of the day there isn't any equality there for those families that choose to do parenting differently it's all just very narrow minded and very err blinkered in our book Burnham argues that parents should get a share of early years funding even if they choose to stay at home and look after their own children rather than sending the kids to nursery while they go out to work. That would be a radical shift and you might think these views would be anathema to nursery operators but nearly each of the early years Alliance is starting to think along surprisingly similar lines I did some work on a large supermarket chains and one of the things we did is we talked to parents who were working for them would you change your working hours would you like to spend more time with your children and almost across the entire portfolio of people that we spoke to they said yes they felt guilty when I got home and they were shattered and they had to barter their young child and send them off to bed having not communicated with them they weren't there when they had their 1st steps they weren't there of than on their birthdays they were in a good place so I think it's about balance this is not all about getting people back into the working environment we need to have a balanced life and we need to make sure the children are able to be children and parents are able to be parents so you don't feel that there's a large number of women out there who feel we need more and more support because we need to be back full time it's a vicious circle they do anymore and more support because they need to be back full time because we can't economically make things work otherwise but it is a vicious circle and at some point we might look back and just see what the consequences are of not having a different system what would your ideal system they I think it would be that we allow parents to be parents at home with their children if they wanted to be for a longer period of time that we gave them support financial support allow them to be with their children and that we didn't force them and rushed them back into the workplace where many of them I have to say feel uncomfortable is about balance in life and I think we're starting to lose that most of us as I found when making this program have just taken it for granted that preschools and childcare are great for children and great for gender equality and great for the economy too. But it's increasingly clear that there is no easy match between great. Child Development and fitting child care in with parents work to moms so should we just stop spending all that money and doll back to something more limited I asked Christine. We're spending a lot of money we're not having that much of an impact on employment rates we're not having a dramatic impact on children's cognitive development since we just stopped spending all this money would anybody notice Well families certainly would they're getting quite a bit of value out of having these free childcare hours and the childcare subsidies as well so certainly stopping those payments would have quite a big impact on a relatively small group of the population all of the spending that's going on free child care is spending that families aren't having to do of course if someone is looking after their children full time at home and they're also 15 hours of child care that's nice they'll probably take it but it's not likely to revolutionize family finances but a bigger impact for women who are already using that much child care it's a bonus for them they get it for free they were paying for it before going to grandparents or using other informal care before but they're not actually using any more child care than they were before and in fact they've actually now got a higher family income than they used to have so on that basis they might even need to work less to support the same standard of living so one result of all our recent spending might be that parents who were working like crazy to pay for their child care actually less I'm not sure that was quite the idea. 10 south that we aren't transforming child development we're not making a big difference to employment levels what we are doing is subsidizing young families who are suddenly finding things very tough but does he universal subsidy really need complicated eligibility his benefits with precise numbers of hours tied to specific employment conditions. Not just make it a simple subsidy. What's worse is that year on year we seem to be forgetting the 1st big argument for early years spending that it helps disadvantaged children. We feel warm and virtuous about it in large part because we think children in tough circumstances are having their lives improved but we're losing nurseries in poorer areas we're not doing nearly enough to attract good staff to the most needy children and our policies are just about more and more time in cash they don't prioritise the sort of structured targeted and expensive programs that produce the Perry Preschool miracle. If we RINGBACK sorted out the tangle around our current Universal Office then maybe we could quite separately start creating some small miracles for our own most disadvantaged children. If something seems too good to be true it usually is and early years education turns out to be a classic example it can't after all deliver everything for everyone all at once time to rethink. Analysis was presented by Professor Allison both the producer was Beth Segall Fenton. Glenda Jackson stars in a series of new dramas are family grooming secrets what you know all about I understand your desire to suppress a scam corruption and destruction this assault on his conscience was based on an assumption that he actually had one community and family is stronger than we think he's right I really hope he's right fault lines money sex and blood on b.b.c. Radio 4 simply other ways in which life unfolds begins next Sunday afternoon at 3 o'clock. B.b.c. News at 9 o'clock the government has suffered a setback in its attempts to deport 50 foreign born offenders to Jamaica tomorrow the Court of Appeal has ordered the home office not to remove anyone from 2 detention centers near Heathrow unless they have access to a.