Children's Centres

Miss McIntosh
23. To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what funding he has allocated to children’s centres in each of the next five years.

Ed Balls
Budget 2007 announced significant extra funding for Sure Start, childcare and early years over the next spending period. This will amount to at least an additional £340 million by 2010-11 compared with 2007-08 levels—over £1.6 billion by 2010-11. This is in addition to the extra resources that the Government provided at Budget 2007 to meet the commitment in the ten year strategy for childcare to increase the free early education offer to three and four year olds from 12.5 hours to 15 hours by 2010.