Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:24 pm on 18 September 2018.
Diolch Dirprwy Lywydd, and I just begin by thanking all the Members for their contributions today, not least the Chairs of the Children, Young People and Education Committee, the Finance Committee and the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee, but also my congratulations go to Janet on taking on her new role, but also to all other Members who've taken part as well and spoken in real detail about the Bill in front of us. I will try in what I think is just over five minutes to respond to many of the points, but I think you'll appreciate that, in a Stage 1 debate, I may not be able to cover all of them.
If I could first of all turn to the Chair of the CYPE Committee, first of all to thank you, Lynne, again, for the work that the committee has done. I'm pleased that you support the involvement of HMRC within this in the best interests of local authorities and parents in a streamlined approach to the application and eligibility check in the system. This will make it easier for the local authority and parents. I'll reiterate once again that I'm committed to sharing the findings of the evaluation with the committee as soon as is practically possible, and my officials are indeed speaking, I understand, to the committee team at the moment about how we can best make this happen.
One aspect that's been touched on by a number of people, including the Chair of the CYPE committee, is the aspect of non-working parents, and I just want to make one thing very, very clear, because it would seem sometimes as if there's no provision out there at all for children of non-working parents, but, of course, children of non-working parents will still be able to access the universal early education provision in the foundation phase, and I will also be looking forward to mapping out more clearly the menu of programmes available to different categories of parents, including, I have to say, within the highly regarded Flying Start programme as well. This doesn't exist in isolation.