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Leading early years organisation the Early Years Alliance has called for urgent clarity on a claim made by children and families minister Vicky Ford that a planned increase in early years funding will more than cover the cost to childcare providers of the upcoming national living wage (NLW) rise, after it emerged that the government does not know how many early years staff will be eligible for the NLW from April.

Speaking in a Westminster Hall debate on Thursday 3 December, Ms Ford said that the additional £44m in early years funding announced at the recent Spending Review "will pay for a rate increase that is higher than the cost that nurseries may face from the uplift to the national living wage in April".

As of April 2021, the national living wage will be extended to include 23 and 24 year olds for the first time, as well as increasing from £8.72 to £8.91. However,  which asked what proportion of the early years workforce the DfE estimates is aged 23 to 24 years old, Ms Ford admitted that the Department did not know how many early years staff fell into that age bracket. She stated that: "Data for early years staff aged 23 to 24 is not available because the data is banded into age groups" and that the Department could only provide data on early years staff aged between 21 to 24 years.

The £44m in additional early funding due to come into effect in April 2021 equates to a 1.2% increase for the sector, while the national living wage for workers aged 23 and over is increasing by 2.2%.

The Alliance has written to the children and families minister to ask for the details of the computation underpinning her statement.

Commenting, Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Early Years Alliance, said:

"How is it possible for the Department for Education to claim that this small rise in early years funding will cover the cost of the upcoming national living wage increase when it doesn't even know what proportion of the workforce will be eligible for that increase?

"Time and time again, we see the government claim that the funding that the sector receives is more than enough to cover rising costs, when the figures simply don't stack up. If the DfE want to claim that a 1% increase in funding is more than enough to meet the rising cost of wages, then it needs to have the data to back this up.

"At a time when so many nurseries, pre-schools and childminders are hanging on by their fingernails, any discussions around sufficiency of funding need to be accurate and transparent. As such, we look forward to the DfE publishing the details of the calculation they have based this claim on shortly."