Baroness Barran (Con)

My Lords, this is a very different topic from what we were discussing before the dinner break—we move to nursery milk. Only in your Lordships’ House could one say those words. My Amendment 98 would bring childminders who are registered with a childminding agency into the scope of the free nursery milk scheme. As your Lordships know, the nursery milk scheme provides a free portion of milk every day to any child under the age of five attending a registered childcare setting; it is a long-standing initiative dating back to the 1940s. The legislation underpinning the scheme was written before childminder agencies—CMAs—came into existence, and a later drafting oversight meant that milk subsidies were not mentioned in the legislation that created CMAs in 2014. For a decade, childminders registered through CMAs have been unable to claim milk subsidies, while those registered directly with Ofsted can; that is despite the fact that all childminders are Ofsted regulated and operate under the same regulations. The loophole has been widely acknowledged as a clear legislative oversight. Two successive Governments, including my own, have pledged to fix it, but sadly no action has been taken. As a result, more than 10,000 children are currently missing out on free milk. As CMA-registered childminders make up a growing share of the workforce, the number of children affected increases every year. A simple legislative update would close this loophole and restore parity across the early years sector. I hope that the Minister can do better and go further than previous Governments—including my own—and commit not only to addressing this but to giving the House a “no later than” date for doing so. I beg to move.