Children: Speech and Language

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I know that the noble Lord has vast experience in education and I am grateful for his question. We are sharing widely the good practice in the better communications research where speech and language therapists work with teachers and teaching assistants to provide support. He is absolutely right about a divergence in provision around the country and the shortage of funds, but it must be for local authorities and their partners to assess local needs and to make better use of resources so that they are directed where they are needed. Our proposal for a local offer will do this and will put parents and young people at the heart of decisions.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, the Minister told us just now that the Department of Health and the Department for Education are working closely together in this area. With respect, for many years the two departments have claimed to be working closely together but when it comes to determining who pays for what, they have been quite unable to agree. Can the noble Lord assure us that he will personally use his own best endeavours to ensure that, in future, there is a proper complementarity of responsibilities in terms of how the funding is found for special needs education and for speech therapy in particular?

[Lord Nash]

I thank the noble Lord for his question, and he is absolutely right about the poor record in cross-departmental work, particularly in this area. I shall investigate the matter and write to him further about it. I think he will be pleased with what he sees in the forthcoming Bill on this.