Nusrat Ghani
Main Page: Nusrat Ghani (Conservative - Sussex Weald)Department Debates - View all Nusrat Ghani's debates with the Department for Education
(1 day, 21 hours ago)
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Ashley Dalton
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention and his kind words, and I agree that we cannot simply say that there is overdiagnosis. It has been said previously that there were not as many people with SEND before; the reality is that we do not know that, because for many years, SEND simply went unnoticed. People were not diagnosed, and were simply written off as naughty or backward. We must recognise how important these children are and how much support they need.
Dozens of parents in West Lancashire have contacted me to request that I come to the Chamber today to protect the rights they have under current legislation to enforceable provision based on a child’s particular needs. We all know the deficiencies that exist in the current EHCP system, but we must make sure that we listen to SEND parents. I know that this Government are committed to ensuring that these changes make life easier for SEND children and their families, not harder.
Twice, I have met a constituent who has a son with severe and complex special needs—he is nonverbal and has sensory challenges. Even when her son was offered a place at a special school, the local authority did not accept that place, despite it being cheaper than the local authority provision. It ignored recommendations and assessments, and my constituent’s son was out of education for seven months. My constituent had to use the rights that exist in current legislation to fight for the most basic right—for her son to have an education—and the issue was only resolved because of his legal right to legal enforceability and the tribunal power to name a school. Had that not been the case, her son might still not be in education. My constituent agrees with the Government that the system we inherited is not working, and she is not asking us to scrap these reforms, but we must ensure that the changes we are making to an unfair system support SEND children and their families as much as we possibly can.
Last year, Reform took control of Lancashire county council, the authority that makes decisions about SEND provision for my constituency. It is obvious that, despite claiming that it would tackle the issue, Reform has demonstrated no interest in it. Its national party does not care—as has already been pointed out, not a single one of its Members is present for this evening’s debate. Reform-led Lancashire county council has failed to provide tailored support for children in my constituency, and has failed to support families in my constituency who are fighting tooth and nail for their children to have the same opportunities that the rest of us rightly expect as standard. It would be an abdication of my duty to represent my constituents if I did not seek to give parents every tool in the box to defend the right of their children to a decent education, in the face of a local authority whose leadership turns its gaze away and plugs its ears.
I am proud that this Government are tackling this issue in a constructive way—parents have waited for these changes for far too long. As part of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s commitment to give every child the best possible start in life, I would be grateful if the Minister gave a clear reassurance today that the legal right to an EHCP or similar for those who need it will remain, and that the ability of families to enforce provision will not be weakened by reforms.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
The speaking limit is now three minutes, and it is highly unlikely that most people will get in. I call Andrew George.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. Interventions do not allow other colleagues to speak. I call Chris Coghlan.
Charlotte Cane
I agree; we must not set things up in competition.
I would like to ask the Minister three questions. First, what is she going to do to make sure that every school in every area has the specialist resources it needs to deliver for its children? How is she going to make sure that rural areas such as mine in Ely and East Cambridgeshire have access to those resources for all schools and all children? It takes longer and therefore it costs more to get those across the area. What is she going to put in place to make sure that parents retain the right to fight for and enforce their children’s rights?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I did not want to intervene, because I could see that the Member was going to speak very briefly, but interventions are not helping other Members in the Chamber.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) on securing this debate. We have heard varying views on the question of demand, with some people saying that it has not gone up at all and that others saying it has. I have relied on the House of Commons Library to tell me that since 2015 demand for EHCPs has ballooned by 140% and that in 2025 there were 13 times more people waiting for an autism assessment than there were in 2019.
Hon. Members across the House have described very effectively the extraordinary diagnosis of a system that has been unable to meet demand, so I will not replay the tape. The 98% tribunal success rate is symptomatic of that, and it is pretty shocking. It shows that the system is having to be fought against systemically, which is deeply worrying. Members across the House have replayed case studies from their own inboxes, but I do not have time to go into the cases of child Y, child L, child F, child D and the many others, all of whom have finally come to their Member of Parliament because they could see no way through and because the computer had said no. It has come to that, for them, but that should not be the case.
In the time remaining, I want to take a strategic approach and look upstream. In March last year, the Secretary of State for Health said that he was sold on the idea that overdiagnosis was at the root cause of mental health illness. On 1 June, I asked the Secretary of State for Education whether any work was being done between her Department and the Health Department on what was causing the increased demand on the special educational needs system. She said that she was very concerned indeed about that. I then waited until 1 December before asking what she and the Health Secretary had done in the intervening seven months. I think it was the Minister for School Standards who kindly said that she was very concerned about it. Five days later, the Health Secretary announced that there was going to be a six-month study into the causes of the increase in demand on the special educational needs system, and that it would report in the summer. I do not think anyone is covering themselves in glory here. As a nation, we need to increase our understanding of this phenomenon that we are experiencing—
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. We have run out of time for Back-Bench contributions. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
9.35 pm
Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) for introducing this debate. It is clear from the passionate contributions we have heard that the problems are widespread and the SEND system is completely broken. We have all heard the anguish of parents, and we have read the dreadful stories of desperate children who have lost their lives because of failures in this system.
In that context, I welcome the Government’s recent White Paper as an important step in the right direction. We have to address the growing need and, as the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) said so passionately, we cannot limit provision because there is too much need. The earlier we identify need and start addressing it, the better the outcomes will be for children, parents, families and society as a whole.
We have had to wait for this White Paper, but putting the delays to one side, we are here now and the Liberal Democrats welcome the central focus on inclusion through improving support in mainstream settings. If children with SEND can attend a local school, they can stay connected with their friends and be part of their local community, and their family can engage better with their school. Inclusion bases are welcome, and they include the one being opened at King Edward VI community college in my constituency, with a focus on bringing children back into school after dropping out, following a difficult transition into year 7, and helping them to become part of the school community again. This model has good potential to succeed if properly resourced. However, many questions remain about funding, children’s rights and staffing.
On funding, the £4 billion pledge to accompany the upcoming reforms, plus capital spending and the council debt write-off, are welcome, but we are worried that the Government are holding councils to ransom by tying this debt relief to restrictions on special school expansion. The Government must also provide clarity on where the new funding, including the council deficit write-off, is coming from. The Liberal Democrats are very concerned that other areas of the wider schools budget may be cut, even though there is nothing left to give. The Government have introduced some good policies but have failed to fully fund them, including breakfast clubs, the expansion of free school meals, even teacher pay rises, and, today, the healthy school standards. That will be more expensive, so will it be fully funded for schools?
Caroline Voaden
I am sorry, but I do not have enough time.
Schools and local authorities are already at breaking point and are now being asked to deliver even more, including running two SEND systems in parallel during the transition period.
On parental rights, parents have expressed deep concern about changes to the tribunal system. Removing power from SEND tribunals to direct a local authority to name a specific setting will give parents even less opportunity to choose a setting that suits their child. Given that currently 99% of tribunal cases are won by families against the local authority, how can we trust that local authorities will suddenly start getting it right under the new system?
The Liberal Democrats are clear that stripping back parents’ ability to challenge the system is unacceptable. The anxiety of parents is understandable. Many are worried that their child will lose existing support or not receive the support they need under the new system. Will the Minister guarantee that legal rights will not be stripped away, that settled placements will not be disrupted, and that accountability, including meaningful routes of appeal, will remain strong and effective? It is absolutely vital that children and families remain at the heart of these reforms and retain the key rights that they have.
On staffing, we welcome the Experts at Hand service to embed specialists such as speech and language therapists and educational psychologists into mainstream schools, but we need a credible workforce plan to see how the Government are going to recruit and train all the staff needed and encourage trained specialists back into the profession. I am concerned about the need for more learning support staff—the people who are absolutely crucial to delivering these reforms and ensuring that mainstream inclusion works effectively. Schools are being forced to cut learning support staff due to the financial pressures they are facing, but a SEND system focused on inclusion simply cannot be implemented without them, so I would like to hear further detail from the Minister about how the Government believe schools can deliver an inclusive approach for all children without funding more support staff.
Away from budgets and staffing, there are other changes that we can make in the way that we run our schools that would make them accessible for all children. Curriculum reform is vital to inclusion. Learning how to express and process emotion through music, drama, creative arts, sport and outdoor play is vital not just for children’s mental health, but for their emotional development, and it simply must be given more space. We believe that the current direction of travel is the right one, but all these reforms must be fully funded, fully staffed and fully consulted upon with those who will be impacted most by the changes—the parents and the children with SEND who are so often not heard.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. Mr Vince, you have just stumbled into the Chamber—I don’t think so.
Saqib Bhatti
I will take your lead, Madam Deputy Speaker.
There is very little detail in the White Paper around deliverability. That concern has been raised to me by a number of council leaders, headteachers and parents. Even the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Government’s own independent watchdog, explicitly says that the impact of reform on underlying costs remains “uncertain”. It is for the Minister to provide that certainty, but the OBR is not convinced that the reforms will close the funding gap. When the Labour party was in opposition, it had 14 years to think about what it wanted to do, so I hope that the Minister can provide some of those answers today.
The issue of timelines was raised during the debate. We all agree that the reforms are urgently needed, but full implementation is not expected until 2028-29 at the earliest. Changes to EHCPs will not begin until around September 2030, so a child who is now six will be 10 or 11 before they and their family feel any difference from any reforms. For a family with a teenager, reform will never arrive in time. That point was made by the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Noah Law). Will the Minister tell the House, according to her analysis, how many children will have left school entirely before a single EHCP reform takes effect?
Georgia Gould
I do not have much time, so I am not going to take interventions. I want to be able to answer the points that have been put to me.
Too many children have been left without provision, and parents try to explain to their children why they are not at school alongside their friends. Too many parents are having to battle—we have heard the word “fight” time and time again in this conversation. I say to the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) and to everyone else in the Chamber that I am committed to working constructively and on a cross-party basis on this issue. It is too important to not take all views into account and work together, so I really welcome opportunities to talk to individuals about the issues that have been raised in the debate. However, I will not apologise for taking longer to develop these reforms, because that time has been spent talking to thousands of parents, young people and teachers around the country to make sure their voices were embedded in what we put out for consultation. I also make no apology for taking time to transition into these reforms. As we have heard from so many Members across the Chamber, trust is low, and it is really important that we build the new system with children and families.
That does not mean, though, that we are not acting now. The investment we have been talking about is going into our communities straightaway, whether that is the £3.7 billion that we are already starting to invest in specialist places around the country or the £4 billion that we are investing in the services we have talked about today: Experts at Hand, the educational psychologists and speech and language therapists who will now be available to local schools; and the inclusive mainstream fund, which will be going directly into schools. Those are huge investments that this Government are making. The OBR made its projections before it had seen our reform plans and the huge investments we are making, including new investment going in during 2028-29, which I know the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East will have seen.
I agree wholeheartedly with everyone who has raised the importance of early intervention and of putting in as much support as possible as quickly as possible. So many families have told me that if support had been available much quicker, their needs would not have escalated—they would not be out of education and would not have needed to leave their local schools. We have also heard about the importance of inclusion. My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) spoke powerfully about why it is so critical that children with special educational needs and disabilities are at the heart of the education system. They have so much to offer, and every school should be an inclusive school, but that does not mean that we do not also need special schools, and the £3.7 billion of investment I have talked about will create new specialist places.
Let me turn to the points made by the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon. First and most importantly, our intention in these reforms is to improve outcomes for children. That is our guiding principle—our No. 1 outcome. The hon. Member mentioned the long waiting lists to which so many families are exposed. Addressing those waits is the point of the reforms. We are putting in place educational psychologists, speech and language therapists, and so many others, so that schools can draw on them and children can access that support without a lengthy wait or a battle for an EHCP and a diagnosis. Under our reform plans, that provision will be available as part of the mainstream system.
Critically, education, health and care plans will remain, and they will be available for children who need them. We know that too many children are forced to apply to get an EHCP because their needs are not being met in mainstream schools. The majority of children with special educational needs and disabilities in our school system do not have an EHCP, but are on the SEND register. They are the children who are often being badly let down. Our reforms will extend rights for those children, including new statutory duties on schools to develop inclusion plans and individual support plans. There will be new layers of support with targeted and targeted plus, new national standards, and new duties on teacher training. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Juliet Campbell) spoke powerfully about the importance of teacher training, with every single teacher trained to support children with special educational needs and disabilities, so that every class is accessible.
As ever, my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) talked expertly about the issue. We are grateful for the work of her Committee and the huge amount of time it put in to its report. I will address her points about transition and accountability within the transition. There are safeguards that I think will reassure parents: every child who is in a special school will remain in a special school, we will build the new system before anyone transitions into that new system, and somebody with an existing EHCP will move on to either an EHCP or an individual support plan, and that will be backed by the tribunal.
There were lots of questions about individual support plans and accountability. Ofsted will be looking at individual support plans and developing a new complaints process with an independent role. Importantly, if a family does not feel that their needs are being met by the mainstream system, they will still be able to request a needs assessment and that will be backed by the tribunal. There will still be access to the tribunal, and the tribunal will remain an important part of the system.
We do not want families to have to go to a tribunal, though. We want to deliver a system that works, where families’ voices are put at the heart of decision making and where accountability sits not on the shoulders of families, but that it is for us—the Department for Education, the Department of Health and Social Care, and the Government—to hold local authorities to account. I was asked why we are we going ahead with local SEND reform plans and asking councils to develop them. We are clear that councils need to deliver today for children with special educational needs and disabilities; as we have heard in the debate, there is too much failure and we are determined to hold councils to account.
We are committed to a full consultation. We welcome comments on every aspect of these proposals, and I ask everyone in this Chamber to make sure that you are holding events, talking to your constituents and pointing them towards the consultation, because this is a generational opportunity to change the system. Families have been failed for too long, and it is only by listening to them that we will get this right.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
There were far too many uses of “you” and “your” throughout speeches today. Members need to check the language they use. I call Gregory Stafford to wind up.