"The child minders' own professional body says they don't want deregulation, they want high standard professional child minders"This is of course a fatuous point, all professional bodies oppose deregulation and support credentialising- because that keeps out entrants to the market and enables their members to make more money. If anyone can find a single example of an organisation representing established people in a profession that lobbies for barriers to entry to be loosened then I will tip my hat to them, but I doubt anyone could.
Credentialising and occupational licensing make jobs harder to get without actually improving the standard of service being provided.
The two jobs that I did when I was a student- working as a security guard in various warehouses and offices and on building sites putting up ceilings- both now require the possession of formal qualifications in those fields so that I would not be able to do either job today.
This was only just over a decade ago. Similar barriers to entry have been placed in other lines of work. This of modest importance to current and future students but is a serious barrier for the long term unemployed and for anyone who uses the services of industries that are insulated from competition and innovation in this way.
Update: As proof that quoting the childminder's professional body is a fatuous and moronic argument- Polly Toynbee repeats it today:
The National Childminding Association protests against Truss's deregulation plan: it wants to keep inspections. Nor does it want higher staff-child ratios, saying it fears childminders becoming deprofessionalised
