Special Educational Needs and Disabilities: Specialist Workforce

Debate between John McDonnell and Virendra Sharma

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Westminster Hall

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I declare an interest, Mr Sharma—my wife is Dr Cynthia Pinto, chair of the committee on the Division of Educational and Child Psychology, and she is active in the Association of Educational Psychologists, so you can imagine what our breakfast conversations are like. I welcome the Minister, who has had responsibility for disabilities in the past, which gives her an understanding of some of the issues we face. She has also been a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Treasury, so she knows where the money is buried, which is extremely helpful. I thank Professor Vivian Hill from the Institute of Education at University College London, who has provided a number of us with briefings on educational psychology.

I want to draw attention to the issues facing educational psychologists. The chief inspector of education identified that the demand and need for educational psychology services from schools and families, to support early intervention and preventive work, has significantly increased. The inspector’s report also identified that there is a huge geographical variation—to which my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) referred—in access to EPs, and noted that 60% of local authority EHCP assessments are not being completed within the 20-week timeframe as required.

Alternative provision has been mentioned. The Ofsted report last November identified that more children are being referred to alternative provision, but often because of the lack of access to specialist services in mainstream schools. Let us look at the stats on the increased numbers of education, health and care plans being issued. During 2021, 93,000 initial requests were made for assessment for EHCP—up from 76,000 in 2020. It is the highest number since data was first collected in 2016. His Majesty’s chief inspector of education reported that 1.5 million pupils were identified with SEND in 2022—an increase of 71% on the previous year; I found that staggering. The number of EHCPs has also grown by 51% since 2014-15. I think we are all experiencing that in our constituencies, as we receive representations from parents struggling to gain access to the planning processes.

Also interesting—I wonder whether others have experienced this—is the significant increase in the number of SEND tribunals, which becomes incredibly expensive for the local authorities. This is worrying. It is interesting that Professor Hill has identified this from the various statistics that have been brought out, and it was raised in a debate in the main Chamber a couple of months ago about the unmet mental health needs of children and young people. A record number of children and young people are being referred to NHS services for mental health difficulties. In the previous debate on this issue, MP after MP reported the issues and demand on CAMHS that are overwhelming it; that is increasingly worrying.

An increased number of children and young people are being permanently suspended or excluded from school. Some Members might have listened to the reports this morning about the number of “ghost” children, who are no longer in school. The figure of 20% was absolutely staggering. Covid has obviously had an impact, and there is a continuing impact on mental health, but local authorities struggle to maintain levels of support services for families in particular.

I also found interesting the evidence that local authorities struggle to recruit educational psychologists. The recent local government ombudsman report shows that 70% of local authorities are now struggling to recruit EPs. The Government have recognised that; it is one issue that is being addressed in the future of our workforce plan for skilled workers and the recruitment of staff. It has also been recognised that the recruitment of staff from overseas can assist us during this period while we struggle to recruit.

Many local authorities are now relying on locum cover from private providers but, as hon. Members will appreciate, that can be extremely expensive compared with direct investment. Educational psychologists have raised with the Government the issue of adequate funding of the services overall, which my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West mentioned. Specifically for EPs, the Government responded in December with £21 million in additional funding, which was welcome. That will be for intakes from 2024, but the problem is that the core funding is inadequate—it has not been increased since 2020.

Let us look at the figures put out by the British Psychological Society, of which the Division of Educational and Child Psychology is a part. The announcement of £21 million for 400 additional educational psychologists is definitely a step in the right direction, but the BPS says that it really does not go far enough to close the workforce gap. The figure that I find shocking is that we are now at the stage where in 2017 there were about 3,000 educational psychologists working in England; on average, that is the equivalent of one educational psychologist for every 3,500 children and young people between the ages of five and 19. Again, there was one for every 5,000 for those between the ages of nought and 25 —the plan period. Therefore, the demand is for a greater increase of investment in educational psychologists to increase the numbers because of the increasing demands.

I will raise one issue that is specific to my own patch, but which may be reflected in other constituencies. I have 2,400 refugees—asylum seekers—in hotels in my constituency, including many children, who go into local schools. I have toured the hotels and done advice surgeries in them, and what has been reported back from the schools and from the discussions I am having with families is that a number of those children, who are largely from war zones, are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. That is placing an increased burden on individual schools. The teachers welcome rising to that challenge, but they need additional resources.

I would welcome a discussion with the Government—maybe all MPs have this situation in their constituencies—about what additional resources could be targeted at particular areas so that they can overcome this period, which I am sure will be temporary, but requires resources at the moment. The message is clear from the DECP and others: additional resources need to be specifically targeted at the recruitment and training of educational psychologists to meet this growing demand and, exactly as the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) said, to give children the life chances that they desperately need.

[Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)]

Looking at the time and the Front Bench, I would appreciate it if Members would stick to four minutes.

TfL (Funding and Station Staffing)

Debate between John McDonnell and Virendra Sharma

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[John McDonnell]

The reactions of my constituents have been remarkable, and other Members may have seen the same. People cannot understand why they are paying more in fares while station staff and ticket offices are being cut. I can understand their being perplexed.

On 18 December, the Labour transport spokesman on the Greater London authority, Valerie Shawcross, asked the following question of the Mayor:

“Will you guarantee that all LUL stations will be staffed at all times?”

The Mayor responded by saying that officers were drafting a response that would be available shortly. We still have not had that response. The fact that the Mayor has still not been able to provide an unequivocal answer suggests that that guarantee cannot be given. Following the King’s Cross fire, a legal requirement was introduced that there be a minimum of two staff at every station, but that applies to sub-surface stations only, so the others are extremely vulnerable.

The business plan also sets out that London Underground will cut the frequency of essential maintenance checks, still plans to introduce driverless trains at some unidentified point in future, is not filling posts, despite large numbers of Londoners looking for jobs, and seems to be plugging the gaps in staffing with casual workers more frequently. My constituency has a railway estate and I represent a number of London Underground workers. To be told a month before Christmas that they would not have a job not only shocked them, but caused real consternation and, understandably, considerable anger. The two rail unions that represent staff at London Underground—the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers and the Transport Salaried Staffs Association—rightly consulted their members in the light of representations that they received. On Friday 10 January, the RMT issued the following statement:

“RMT members have voted by 77% for strike action and by an even bigger majority for action short of a strike. The results will now be considered by a meeting of the union’s executive.”

Dates will be set and there will be strike action unless meaningful negotiations with the Mayor take place. RMT general secretary, Bob Crow, said:

“RMT members on London Underground have voted by a massive majority for both strike action and action short of a strike in a dispute which is wholly about cash-led cuts”

and

“plans that would see the axing of nearly a thousand safety critical jobs and the closure of ticket offices at a time when the tube network is under growing pressure from customer demand and needs more staff and not less to ensure safe and efficient operation.”

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. I must register an interest as a former employee of London Transport, where I worked as a booking clerk. I can certainly confirm that security and safety are most important for station staff when looking after passengers. The cuts will create fear in passengers’ minds and they will be reluctant to use the underground, so that they do not have to face criminals. A few weeks ago at Northfields station in my constituency, a staff member was attacked and it was only because other staff were there to assist that he was saved and a disaster was averted.

[John McDonnell]

My hon. Friend is experienced and knows what it is like to deal with customers face to face on the underground. He knows the insecurities of travellers and staff and outlines a recent, concrete example of what can happen.

Let me finish what Bob Crow said:

“Not only are a thousand posts on the line but staff remaining are going to be forced through the humiliating and degrading experience of re-applying for their own jobs—the same staff who have been hailed as heroes when the tube has faced emergency situations”,

which echoes my hon. Friend’s point. Bob Crow continued:

“That is a kick in the teeth for the loyal and experienced tube workforce who have kept services running safely and efficiently under constant pressure from weight of demand and a creaking and under-resourced infrastructure.”

He also said—I add this as it may prevent some carping or questions later—that before anyone starts

“shouting the odds they should take note of the fact that the turn out in this ballot was higher than the last mayoral and GLA elections and the vote in favour massively outstrips anything that those same politicians can even dream of in terms of a popular mandate.”

Those are the views of rank and file tube workers.

On 9 January, the TSSA issued the following press release:

“A strike ballot of front line station staff was called today by the TSSA rail union in protest at plans to close 260 Tube ticket offices and axe nearly 1,000 jobs.

It gave London Underground seven days notice of a ballot which will start next Friday, January 17 and end on January 27. Any subsequent industrial action could start from February 3 in the event of a yes vote.

Manuel Cortes, general secretary, blamed the ballot on the ‘reckless’ behaviour of London Mayor Boris Johnson who he said was refusing to meet the unions over their genuine fears for safety and security with the wholesale closure of every ticket office.

‘It was the Mayor who came into office in 2008 with a firm pledge to keep open every ticket office on the grounds of keeping passengers safe and secure at all times.

‘Now he wants to scrap the lot, claiming there will be no problems because he will keep staff on station platforms, those that keep their jobs, that is.

‘He wants to scrap permanent station supervisors who are in charge of evacuations and replace them with mobile supervisors who will travel from station to station.

‘But he will not answer the question; “How mobile can you be if all lines are in lockdown because of an emergency and nothing is moving whatsoever?”’.

He called on the Mayor to end his six year ban on meeting the rail unions”—

he has refused to meet them for six years!—

“and to sit down with them instead to work out a solution which would guarantee ‘the safety and protection of all passengers at all times’.”

I repeat what the Mayor said in 2008, which was very specific. He said that there was no

“financial, strategic or common sense”

in the closures that were threatened at the time, and promised:

“We will halt all such ticket office closures immediately”—

That is a broken promise. It is a broken promise not only to the staff, but to the travelling passengers.

Passengers and the general public are anxious. A large poll—a face-to-face survey by Survation of 1,027 London underground users in 23 tube stations—showed widespread concern about the threat of ticket office closures: 71% of London Underground passengers interviewed said that they were “quite concerned” or “very concerned” about their station no longer having staffed ticket offices. Concerns were particularly strong among tourists travelling on the underground, with 81% saying that they would be “quite” or “very concerned” in the event of ticket office closures—no doubt because of their reliance on the offices for general information.

[John McDonnell]

Safety and security is a critical issue. Later, I will come on to some of the statistics that we have looked at, including research specific to women.

Perhaps the Minister will pass back to the Mayor of London that the same Survation survey found that 49% of underground passengers who were resident in Greater London would be “much less likely” or “somewhat less likely” to vote for a candidate for Mayor of London who went back on a promise to keep ticket offices open. That is what Boris Johnson pledged in his 2008 manifesto. That figure increased to 56% among those who voted for Boris Johnson in the previous election. People feel strongly, and they will be willing to express their concerns at the ballot box in due course. There is also a petition; 20,000 people have signed a 38 Degrees e-petition calling on the Mayor to keep his manifesto promise.

Political opposition to the cuts includes Labour and the Greens, and there has been cross-party support, including from some Liberal Democrat MPs, for early-day motion 787 proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). That sets out the detail of the cuts in an objective fashion, but its conclusion is to call on the Mayor of London to reconsider his proposals and to keep the ticket offices open. One Liberal withdrew his name in due course, but that was a tube line to Damascus conversion as a result of promotion to ministerial office. [Interruption.] I cannot believe that others would do that.

For opposition from the wider community, let me run through some of the broad range of groups that have expressed concerns. The cuts have been opposed by the TUC and by disability organisations, in particular Transport for All, which is the voice for disabled people in London on transport issues, and Disabled People Against Cuts. The National Pensioners Convention has now expressed its concern about the implications of the cuts.

Threats to passenger services are real. Let me run through what the cuts mean in concrete terms. Now, every passenger may depend on staffed ticket offices when the machines are out of order or their Oyster card has stopped working. Under the Mayor’s plans, passengers will have nowhere to turn during such everyday situations. They will have to rely on their Oyster card or contactless payment cards to travel, or they will have to pay higher prices for paper tickets. Passengers will have to buy tickets online, if they can, or at shops, and they will have to find the correct ticket on the self-service machines. Experienced tube workers have said clearly that there are real fears that errors or problems with tickets will no longer be resolved at stations, because there will be no ticket office and of course the shops that sell tickets cannot help with such problems—nor is that their role.

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

The role of the staff at the station is not only to sell the tickets or clean the station, but to assist the passengers, whether children, women, the disabled or visitors who come to the city and do not understand the workings of the underground system, such as moving through the stations from one platform to another. Staff are guiding passengers. Once they are taken away, individuals and groups will be suffering. I hope that my hon. Friend agrees that once the cut has been made, visitors and passengers will feel that they are not getting such services.

[John McDonnell]

My hon. Friend is right that certain categories of passengers will be affected the most. To finish on the subject of tickets, however, the Survation survey found that there was little confidence about relying solely on the automatic ticket-vending machines: 52% said that they had been unable to buy tickets in the past, due to the machine being broken. Obtaining information on the correct price and travel advice are also important, as my hon. Friend says.

New forms of ticket retail have become increasingly available, but surveys have shown that passengers value the face-to-face contact with staff, even for simply navigating around the complex ticket pricing system. The Department for Transport’s own review of ticketing acknowledges Passenger Focus research that found that

“passengers are more confident with ticket offices than any other sales channel of obtaining the best value ticket for their journey”.

In response to announcements in recent years about main line railway ticket office closures and reduced opening hours, Passenger Focus stated that

“passengers really value the presence of staff at stations. Any reduction in ticket-office opening hours and the subsequent withdrawal of booking staff often reduces the overall facilities available at stations… We fear that this could lead to passengers feeling less safe at stations and paying more for their tickets than they should.”

Death Penalty (India)

Debate between John McDonnell and Virendra Sharma

Thursday 28th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

That is the specific point I was about to make. We all abhor and condemn that appalling crime, but it should not be used as an excuse to implement the death penalty.

The manner in which the Indian authorities have dealt with executions has also raised concern across the human rights community. The two recent executions were announced to the public after being carried out, which violates all international standards on the use of the death penalty and makes timely interventions and final appeals before execution almost impossible.

Amnesty International points out that the use of the death penalty in India is “riddled with systemic flaws”. According to the briefing Amnesty International provided to Members for this debate, of particular concern under anti-terror legislation is the broad definition of terrorist acts for which the death penalty can be imposed. In addition, there are: insufficient safeguards on arrest; provisions that allow confessions made to the police to be admissible as evidence; obstacles to confidential communication with counsel; insufficient independence of special courts from Executive power; insufficient safeguards for the presumption of innocence; provisions for discretionary closed trials; sweeping provisions to keep secret the identity of witnesses; and limits on the right to review by a higher tribunal.

In its briefing, Amnesty succinctly sums up why we abhor the death penalty and urges India to join those nations that have rejected its use, stating eloquently that the death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. It violates the right to life as enshrined in the universal declaration of human rights. It is arbitrary, discriminatory and can be inflicted upon the innocent. I would add that all the international evidence demonstrates that it is also ineffective as a deterrent to crime and can often result in terrible, irreversible miscarriages of justice. For all those reasons and as a friend of India—someone who has close family ties and community links with India—I urge the Indian Government to join now that community of nations that have renounced the use of the death penalty and have abolished it once and for all.

I hope today that we can speak with one voice on this issue. By doing so, we may be able to impress better on India the need for change. So many MPs have supported the campaign not only because of their own personal conviction, but because they are reflecting the views put to them by many of their constituents. Somebody from the media argued that the reason so many MPs support the debate is they have Punjabi and Sikh constituents. Well, that is undoubtedly true. MPs are simply doing their job in representing their constituents’ views—that is what we are elected to do. It is also worth understanding why so many Punjabis and Sikhs have made representations to us. First, there is of course a real fear on their part that a number of their compatriots could be executed, and on humanitarian grounds they wish to prevent that.

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate, and on doing so at the right time. As he said, the reason all of us here support this cause is not that we are anti-India. We must kill the myth that we are anti-India or that we are interfering in India’s internal affairs. We are taking a matter of principle and fighting for the rights of the people living in India and abroad.

[John McDonnell]

I fully concur with my hon. Friend.

Human Rights on the Indian Subcontinent

Debate between John McDonnell and Virendra Sharma

Thursday 15th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

There is real consternation among the community in this country and across the world. This case has been taken up by Amnesty International as one of its urgent appeals across the world. As I said, I want to use this platform to appeal to the Indian Government and the Indian President to address the case of Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar and to consider the abolition of the death penalty itself.

Devinder’s mercy petition was rejected in May and his case is now moving towards the execution process. He was sentenced to death in August 2001 after being found guilty of involvement in a bomb attack in 1993 that tragically killed nine people. He was found guilty solely on the basis of an unsubstantiated confession that he made to the police and which he later retracted. He thought that it had been made under duress from the police. He was subsequently arrested under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act at New Delhi airport in January 1995. That Act has now been repealed and was criticised internationally and inside India for being incompatible with international standards for fair trials and fair arrests.

In March 2002, the death sentence against Devinder was upheld by the Supreme Court, but the opinion was divided, with two judges in favour and the senior judge coming down in favour of acquittal. In December 2002, a review was made of the judges’ decision, again resulting in a split decision. Usually, in such circumstances, a recommendation is made that the President accept the mercy petition, but unfortunately the petition was rejected in May this year, as I have said. Now, Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar faces the death penalty.

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I must declare an interest, in that I was born in India. I am therefore familiar with its constitutional system and traditions. My hon. Friend talked about the changes in the country, but does he also acknowledge that India’s main party and the Government have undertaken to reconsider Mr Bhullar’s case as a result of pressure from the international community? Does he agree that the Indian authorities responded to that pressure?

[John McDonnell]

That is exactly right. As a result of the campaign in India and the support that we and Amnesty International are giving it, there could be a breakthrough in this case that could lead to the abolition of the death penalty. There are clear concerns about the fairness of the trial, as well as about the eight-year delay in implementing a decision, which I believe constitutes cruel, degrading and inhuman punishment. As a friend of India—as many of us here are—I therefore appeal to the Indian Government to think again, to allow the mercy petition to go ahead and to allow this person’s death sentence to be commuted, but also to consider the issue of the death penalty itself, which I see as a continuing blemish on the Indian constitution and political system.