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Liz Truss, newly installed Childcare Tsar, or more accurately Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Early Years in the Department for Education, comes with quite a reputation. She tends to cause waves rather than ripples - not least when she started her political career with an extra-marital bang!
Raised eyebrows
Her appointment caused a mass of raised eyebrows across the childcare sector. I mean, come on, we just got used to the safe and almost cuddly double act of Miller-Teather. We could work with them... This Truss woman has a load of very strange ideas that she's cobbled together from around the world. She just doesn't get the sacred intricacies of the UK's childcare market. And to add salt to the wound, she seems like she might be difficult to bully. "Bring back the lovely Sarah Teather".
Me, I don't see it like that. I think it's brilliant news. Here's why:
The UK spends more than any of its western peers on childcare. And yet the costs of childcare remains stubbornly and ridiculously high as well. The problems are complex: local authorities get too much money and spend it badly; Ofsted has very high standards - too high in some cases; the working families tax credit system is a shambles; and New Labour got very confused about whether it was trying to fund good quality childcare or convince women to go back to work.
Is change in the air?
There are plenty of changes that a clever, bold soul might make. Relaxing ratios in nurseries; licencing agencies and bringing nannies and all that lovely cash in hand remuneration into the mainstream; extending the scope of childcare vouchers or even passing the responsibility for administering them on to payroll departments; and accepting that 3,000 SureStart centres across the country could be easier to justify as 1,000 centres in the poorest areas. It's easy to envisage changes that will lead to better outcomes for more parents - "the greater good" as Bentham would have put it. But there isn't a change that won't adversely affect some people and have Caroline Flint and Polly Toynbee screeching down the airwaves.
Can Liz make some real change happen?
Childcare is a notoriously tough and emotive nut to crack so I'm skeptical. But at least she won't be afraid to try...
Ben Black
