My Lords, on behalf of these Benches, I express my sadness at the untimely death of Lord Darling. We can have some small insight into the extraordinary pressure that he must have worked under, at a time of global financial crisis, and the calmness and judgment he brought to his role. We send our very best wishes to his family, in particular.

We have heard some powerful messages from across the Chamber today on the importance of high-quality early years education. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, very much for securing this debate and all noble Lords who have contributed to the topic. Whatever our perspectives, today’s debate has highlighted how crucial it is that we ensure all children have the best start in life. Decades of evidence, as we heard today, has shown that quality early years education has a critical positive effect on children’s outcomes, in the short and the long term. That is why the Government are committed to ensuring that every child receives high-quality education and care.

I absolutely accept that His Majesty’s Opposition are rightly there to challenge the Government’s record but, before I talk more about the Government’s policies in this area and attempt to address some of the questions raised by noble Lords, I feel it is important for the record to say that some of the remarks about how unsuccessful our education system is are very far from the truth. We have seen a significant improvement in reading and in maths. Our children aged nine and 10 are now fourth in the world and the best in the western world at reading. There has been a significant improvement in maths as well. That has been thanks to the absolute focus that this Government, and in particular my former ministerial colleague Minister Gibb, paid to this very important plank for future education. I absolutely accept the challenges posed by noble Lords, but we need to keep the record straight on the Government’s record on education.

The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, gently again raised the important issues of childhood obesity. I will take back his thoughts to my ministerial colleagues about the importance of a review and the work he is leading in relation to ultra-processed foods. The early years foundation stage framework requires that, where children are provided with meals, snacks or drinks in an early years setting, they need to be healthy and nutritious. We have example menus for early years settings in England and provide guidance to staff on menu planning. I hope that he takes some reassurance from the focus within early years, although I accept his concerns about the wider issues of obesity.

The quality of our early years provision was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and others. England has some of the highest-quality provision in the world, with 96% of early years settings rated good or outstanding by Ofsted as of August 2023, which is up from 74% in 2012. The early years foundation stage statutory framework sets the standards that all early years providers must follow to ensure that children have the skills and knowledge they need to thrive. In 2021, this Government reformed the early years framework more broadly to improve early years outcomes for all children, particularly disadvantaged children—noble Lords rightly raised the subject—in the critical areas that build the foundations for later success, such as mathematics, language development and literacy and, importantly, in play, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, articulated so clearly.

I am delighted to be able to tell the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that we are making great progress in encouraging children to connect with nature. We recently launched our National Education Nature Park; I can send her the link. This is providing children in every school the chance to map their school grounds and upload those digitally, so that we can build a whole digital map. There are grants for schools with very low levels of biodiversity to be able to increase biodiversity. I visited an extremely urban school in Birmingham earlier this week to see what it was doing in relation to the nature park. It is growing vegetables; it has chickens and takes the eggs from them for the breakfast club’s scrambled eggs. I know that she is not pleased with everything the Government do, but I hope that she will accept that this is a step in the right direction.