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Debate between Tom Hunt and David Johnston

Thursday 14th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tom Hunt]

I am pleased to hear that. I would be interested to sit down with the Minister and the Chair of the Select Committee to interrogate and understand that in more detail.

[David Johnston]

I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friends on that point.

There is then the question of what the Labour party would do differently. I did not hear anything that the Labour party would do differently. The only thing we know that it would do differently is to charge families with a child at a special school having their special needs met an additional 20% on the cost of that place. It can often be a huge struggle for families to meet the cost of a place in the first place, yet Labour will add 20% to that on the spurious grounds that otherwise—and I quote—“any school could claim it’s a special school.” That seems to me a particularly poor way of making education policy, not that there is much of it from the Labour party. I wonder how many Labour MPs, when they sit with constituents in their surgeries, tell those parents that they will hike their fees by 20%. I suspect not many, but every parent in the country deserves to know that.