Education Committee

Chris Coghlan Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes]

I know that my hon. Friend has extensive experience of this area, not least through his own family experience. I am really pleased to see Ministers and the Secretary of State from the Department of Health and Social Care on the Front Bench for this statement—by accident, I think, but I will take full advantage of it.

We heard time and time again from parents and from professionals working in the SEND system that health has such an important role to play in the ability of children with SEND to access education, but that health services are too often absent from the table and there are no mechanisms to hold them to account. It is nonsense that the SEND tribunal can make rulings that are binding on education, but cannot make rulings that are binding on health. As we propose in our report, that is an easy fix that would create more accountability in the health system. Our report contains other recommendations, but we need to get this right, because the consequence of not getting it right is children being locked out of education.

[Chris Coghlan (Dorking and Horley) (LD)]

There is a 12-year-old child in Dorking who is autistic and has had two suicide attempts, the most recent within the past four weeks. They do not have an EHCP. As the Chair acknowledges in the report, there are serious concerns about local authority governance. I have received 120 family testimonies from Surrey and 650 from across the country of lawbreaking, unethical and harmful behaviour by local authorities related to SEND. How can parents have confidence that lives such as that child’s will be saved unless and until local authorities are held accountable under the law and there is swift and decisive intervention if they abuse their powers?

[Helen Hayes]

The hon. Member raises a devastating case, which is sadly not a unique example across the country. The pressures that families face as a consequence of this failing system cause further health complications, not least with mental health and wellbeing. He is right that there are problems with local authorities’ ability to deliver against their statutory responsibilities. We highlight in our report the broken nature of the link between powers and responsibilities—currently, local authorities do not have everything they need to enable them to deliver—but the crisis across the system also masks local authorities that are performing poorly, even by the current standard. I believe the hon. Member’s local authority is one that faces particular challenges.