The Minister for Competitiveness, Stephen Timms, launched our new international centre for the study of the mixed market economy (www.uel.ac.uk/icmec) recently. He spoke about the new legislation coming into force on childcare and nursery education and described local authorities as 'providers of last resort'. He stressed that before creating any new places, those in the existing private sector should be utilised first, adding, 'It would make no sense to have one set of funding rules for PVI providers delivering the free entitlement and another for those in the public sector - particularly when over 80 per cent of all childcare is delivered by PVI providers and a third of children access their free entitlement in PVI settings.'
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