This week I have been in Finland looking at ‘early years’ education and childcare with the Education Select Committee. Finland is always held up as an exemplar in education and our latest inquiry is on childcare. This is a big national topic here as the cost is one of the barriers to getting back to work.
Finland has the lowest birth rate in Europe and a shortage of labour so they have designed their childcare to get people back to work as immigration is very low.
The main difference is the cost of childcare (maximum of 295 Euros a month) and training of teachers, although their higher taxation enables them to fund it both federally and in the municipalities. The other main difference is children start formal education at seven although it was interesting to see letters and numbers on the walls of the nurseries, so they are learning while they play. Finland can afford to be more agile on these policies with a population of only 5.5million.
Shared parental leave means that most children can stay at home until one year old, but 95% of children go into nursery school after that. We visited government and municipality offices as well as schools and childcare centres. It was a packed agenda as always, but we had time to question teachers and officials. We will be feeding the findings into our inquiry. It was interesting and helpful to see how another country tackles the subject.
Being away on business meant that I was paired with a Labour MP for voting and that included the Illegal Migration Bill. I was very pleased to see the amendments I signed being accepted by the government. This will give some safeguards to the most vulnerable children and people and we will await to see if there are any further Lords amendments.
Although I have only received a couple of emails from people concerned about relatives in Sudan, I am monitoring the situation. It was right that the Government got out those working at the Embassy as we have a duty of care for our civil servants and they were being targeted. We are now working hard to ensure British citizens who want to leave are evacuated before the ceasefire ends on 30th April.
We have more citizens in Sudan than most of the other countries and are continually assessing the situation to make sure they can safely leave before instructing them to make their way to where they can be evacuated. Our armed forces are working all over the world on different operations and we are incredibly grateful for everything that they are doing, including in Sudan
I visited RAF Marham on Thursday to learn more about the F35B Lightning aircraft and the training of pilots for both the RAF and Fleet Air Arm. Sadly, no female pilots have put their name forward for the F35 training even though there are plenty of opportunities as they need more pilots. There are 875 F35s around the world in different air forces with over 1870 pilots trained. It is a very successful multi-task aircraft and we will have 74 of them soon with a quarter based on our aircraft carriers.
The next generation of military aircraft is called the Tempest and should be ready in 2035. This is a joint venture with Italy and Japan and will be built as soon as they can build the robots to make them.
Today, I went to the Royal Armouries at Fort Nelson where I as welcomed by Nigel Hosier and his team. It was fascinating and the oldest cannon there is from 1453.
Fort Nelon is free to visit and it has a good café so please go and check it out. You can also see part of Saddam Hussein’s supergun as well as the development of guns and cannons.
They have a very moving exhibition of metal soldiers, sailors and three civilians to commemorate the 258 who died in the 1982 Falklands Conflict. This will finish in July.
I will be out all weekend campaigning with our local council election candidates so hope to see you on the doorstep.
Don’t forget to take your ID to the polling station next Thursday for the local elections. Hopefully you have already contacted your local council for a free identification pass if you don’t have any other photo ID.
Have a good weekend.
