Whenever Governments decide to intervene in areas they and their Civil Service are ignorant about, there are bound to be problems. This is exasperated where Ministers come and go frequently and one new set of rules is laid on top of the last set and in time a myriad of issues exist, but no one in Government really understands or cares about the problems they have created. I have no personal involvement in early years settings, but do have second hand knowledge. Many years ago there were very few state run nurseries, a huge number of voluntary sector run pre-schools and a relatively modest number of extensive private nurseries. There was little need for qualifications, particularly in the voluntary and private sector and so some settings emerged with no qualified staff at all. Some of them were very effective, others were not so. Over time successive Governments attempted to professionalise the sector and as part of this the need for qualifications grew and the ratios for the members of staff and numbers of children became much tighter. In tandem with these rule came expectations of the level of payment which would be made by parents and occasionally by the state to ensure that the children being cared for and educated received a high quality early years education. The staff pay in the public sector settings were subsidised by the School setting or directly by local Councils and so staff working in the private and voluntary setting have always lagged behind, even though the rest of the processes were applied throughout the sector. In the majority of privately run nurseries, the owners attempt to cream off the profits, whilst in many of the voluntary run settings, the focus is on the needs of the children and their families. The current crisis that is impacting the sector as a whole has come as a result of an off the cuff suggestion by George Osborne in the days before the 2015 General Election when he decided he would offer to double the existing 15hours of free childcare to parents. The problem with this offer was that it was not costed out and it has never been funded, and ever since has created a number of challenges for the settings. In some cases the organisations have sought to find creative ways of getting the parents to pay premiums for a range of additional provision such as expensive lunches. Clearly such tactics will only work in locations where the parents can fund such premiums. In nearly all settings the levels of pay disparity between the state run provision and the private and voluntary sector run provision has grown, yet the demands on all settings in terms of qualifications of staff has stayed on course. As this article explains the crisis is now beginning to emerge with significant numbers of qualified staff leaving their settings to seek work in state settings, or leaving the sector all together. The real tragedy in all of this is the very people who are skilled in helping to educate and care for our children, are having their needs ignored by the successor of people like George Osborne who made sweeping statements without any real understanding of the impact. The current Minister responsible for this area is Nadim Zahawi, let us hope he is willing to listen to concerns such as those identified in this article. If not there is a real prospect that the whole sector will collapse and lead to a major impact on children and their families, and significantly challenge the whole education system due to the fact that many of the strengths of our education system are introduced through early years provision.