Children with SEND: Assessments and Support

Linsey Farnsworth Excerpts

Monday 15th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for opening this Petitions Committee debate.

I want to take this opportunity to address the 208 people in Amber Valley who put their names to the petition, and the more than 100 constituents I am supporting with their fight to get the SEND provision they need. In November last year, Ofsted released a damning report that found that the then Conservative-run Derbyshire county council’s SEND provision had “widespread and…systemic failings” and that it created a postcode lottery. Fast-forward less than a year, and now the Reform-led council has done no better. In one of my first meetings with the new leadership, I asked them whether they agreed with the comments of their party leader, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), about the overdiagnosis of SEND. They told me that they did not believe that. Imagine my shock when just weeks later, the leader of Derbyshire county council said that he agreed with the hon. Member entirely.

Among all this chaos and uncertainty in Derbyshire, it is hardly surprising that over 208 of my constituents and 124,000 people nationwide who have experienced similar struggles have signed this petition. It reflects the anxiety felt up and down the country about what the proposed reforms in the schools White Paper might look like. Although families, teachers, parents, children and educators all know that the SEND system absolutely needs to be reformed and better enforced, they are worried and scared that these changes could let them down yet again. My constituents in Derbyshire have experienced that for many, many years.

[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Suffolk Coastal) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an incredibly compelling case on behalf of her constituents. Does she agree that families have to fight so incredibly hard for an EHCP, and face so many anxieties and so many battles to get one, that they feel that it is a golden ticket? Behind that, however, there is often a lack of sufficient resource, sufficient funding and sufficient support. Any reforms and any discussions in the White Paper must look at improving resources, within schools and externally, through separate specialist provision.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

I absolutely agree. Unfortunately, in Derbyshire, obtaining an EHCP is merely the start of the struggle. It is certainly not the end of the struggle for those families who desperately need the support that their children deserve.

Many view the legal right to which the petition relates—the right for SEND children to get assessment and support in education—as an important guarantee in what for far too long has been an unstable, broken and chaotic system characterised by long wait times and prolonged poor communication with little or no meaningful action. Having legal protections in place will absolutely guarantee that my constituents in Amber Valley will continue to be able to fight for the support that they need, even though they are battling against a council whose leadership do not even believe that SEND is an issue that they need to address. On that basis, I ask the Minister to confirm today that, going forward, legal protections will be in place for those families who so desperately need that support.