SEND Education Support

Tuesday 25th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Derek Twigg in the Chair]

14:30

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered SEND education support.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I am grateful for having secured this important debate, and welcome the opportunity to discuss special educational needs and disabilities support, especially how it is failing and how it can be improved. I am pleased too that so many Members are present to contribute. I have no doubt that those MPs who, like me, are new to this House will have been blown away by the scale of the SEND crisis in their constituencies. Parents are quite literally crying out for help, and we must listen to them and act.

In this debate we will hear about the national crisis, as well as the many local failures experienced right across the country, and the devastating human impacts that the crisis is having on young people and their families. But while I have the Minister’s attention, and before I get into the detail, I want to set out two important points. First, tackling our nation’s SEND crisis must be a national priority—much like rebuilding our NHS or tackling the housing crisis. We must be determined to rebuild our SEND support as a nation, and build a system that works for our children. Sitting alongside that, we must plan for the sustainable funding of the SEND system.

[Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)]

SEND children are falling through the cracks. I have been told by a school in my constituency that it is experiencing a crisis, and is self-funding its own education, health and care needs assessments. As a result, it is facing an incredible deficit in funding. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is crucial for the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education to work together to deliver EHC assessments to ensure that our schools do not end up in unsustainable financial positions?

[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter]

I agree, and I will talk about those points later in my speech.

Secondly, I will highlight the severe challenges for SEND that are faced in rural areas, such as my constituency of Suffolk Coastal. I am keen that the Minister visits my rural constituency to see, up close and at first hand, how rural education and the rural SEND crisis differs from that of our urban neighbours.

Let me start today’s debate by setting out the scale of the SEND crisis. As the recent report from the National Audit Office highlighted, the crisis is severe and growing. There has been a 140% increase in children with education, health and care plans—or an equivalent statement of SEND needs—from 2015 to 2024. The total number of children and young people with SEND today is estimated to be 1.9 million. Despite that growth in demand, the NAO has raised real concerns that there has been no consistent improvement in outcomes for children and young people with SEND since 2019. Without drastic action, a full belt-and-braces review of SEND and a real determination to see improvements, we will only see SEND provision get even worse.

Funding is one part of the problem. With growing demand we need a sustainable funding plan—one that is able to tackle, and grow with, that demand—but, much like the issues facing our NHS, the answer does not lie just in funding. We need a belt-and-braces review that seeks to get to the heart of the challenges and build provision around current and future needs. I would like to see a national conversation about SEND, bringing in the voices of parents and young people and giving them the opportunity to share their experiences. Far too many families and young people have felt marginalised, silenced and kicked to the sidelines when they have battled hard to get the support their children are entitled to.

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

In 2023, a report by Warwickshire county council revealed that only 9% of education, health and care plans in Warwickshire go to children with special needs in North Warwickshire, compared with 31% in Warwick, which has a lower rate of child poverty. A year later, Conservative Warwickshire county councillors made derogatory comments about SEND children and their parents. I am concerned about the effect of those councillors’ attitudes on the provision of support for SEND children across the county, especially in more deprived areas such as mine. Is my hon. Friend concerned that this is an example of a trend across the country, where families in more deprived areas are unable to get the support they need?

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind Members that they need to be succinct and short with interventions.

[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter]

I thank my hon. Friend for her timely intervention. I am about to give a similar example from my area. In Suffolk, the county council has failed to deliver 60% of outstanding care plans for SEND within the 20-week timeframe. Compare that with the national average of 50% and we can see that Suffolk is struggling.

The recent Care Quality Commission report for Suffolk, published last year, identified

“widespread and/or systemic failings”

across the local area partnership. It has the lowest possible rating, which means that the inspection identified failings that have

“a significant negative impact on the experiences and outcomes of children and young people”.

Suffolk county council responded with a blueprint, published in January this year, which it says is a forensic road map for change, but, as we sit here, there are parents in Suffolk and across the country who have been let down and are in desperate need of help. In January, I launched a survey in Suffolk Coastal asking parents and young people to share their experiences. That survey has shown some awful and tragic statistics, laying bare the true toll on families and young people of the SEND crisis in Suffolk.

More than 100 families from Suffolk Coastal filled in my survey and the report will be out next month. I would like to share some of that detail now. More than 50% of the children who filled in the survey have missed out on school because their SEND needs could not be met; 13% have been off school for more than a year. The impact that is having on young people’s education cannot be overstated. More than 30% who responded did not have an up-to-date EHCP in place, and one in 10 had been waiting more than a year to get that EHCP.

Six parents who responded to my survey have had to take their cases to a tribunal to attempt to get their children the right SEND provision. Many told me that they have had to use their personal savings, borrow money from friends and family or take out a loan to pay for legal support they need. That cannot be fair or right.

[Mr James Frith (Bury North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. She speaks to the heart of the issue. It is often only people with the means, resources and time who can become experts in the service they are trying to access, a right that is enshrined in the Children and Families Act 2014. Will she join me in encouraging the Government’s instinct that, in moving to a more inclusive mainstream education system, we cannot simply say, “Everyone in,” without protecting the necessary resources centrally when we issue those instructions?

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

Order. As time is tight, I remind Members to keep interventions succinct.

[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I believe it should be part of a wider conversation that includes today’s debate, and I hope the Minister will respond to it.

I submitted a freedom of information request to Suffolk county council and received information back yesterday. Over the past five years, between 2019 and 2024, 920 appeals were logged against Suffolk county council. It has not told me how many of those went to tribunal, but it did supply the breakdown of the figures. Except for a drop in 2020, which I suspect can be accounted for by the covid lockdown, the numbers have risen year on year. In 2019, there were 103 cases, and by 2024, there were 286 cases. The most staggering fact my survey revealed is the cost of the crisis to families. More than one in two families told me that the SEND crisis is affecting their families’ mental health. They are struggling as they battle to provide their children with the support they are entitled to.

I have two examples of families in my constituency. The first is that of Jacob, who is an example of how hard the situation is for so many parents in Suffolk Coastal. His parents are incredible, working two jobs each. They are young and doing everything in their power to provide for him. Jacob is just four and is already being let down. He has autistic spectrum disorder—ASD—and, though he has an EHCP in place, his parents have to fight “tooth and nail” to attempt to get him to the right school.

As his dad told me,

“We don’t choose to be parents of a child with SEN. However, this is our child, and I feel he is being treated like a number rather than a human being.”

It is equally tragic to say that Jacob has had a head start in many ways, because he has an up-to-date EHCP in place. I could tell countless harrowing stories about the delays and issues that parents in my constituency face just to get an EHCP completed.

The way the system is failing our children is equally highlighted by my constituent Tiffany, a young girl in year 6—another student with a brilliant mum advocating for her. She has struggled in the extreme with mental health issues. She has missed out on schooling for two years as she battled a serious and severe mental health breakdown, which caused her to spend long periods in hospital, all before she turned 10. It should be no surprise that, while she was battling for her health, she lost out on schooling. Despite having an up-to-date EHCP, she has been told that she cannot stay in the special school that has accepted her because she is too far behind academically. Somewhat absurdly, she is now expected to enter mainstream education in year 7, despite all the challenges that she has faced. Her mum asked me:

“Why should anyone with mental health issues be denied the support they require to access an education?”

I could give many more heartbreaking examples, but I want to give others Members time to do the same. Before I end, let me highlight again the complexities of SEND in rural areas such as my constituency of Suffolk Coastal. Rural areas are made up of small villages and tiny market towns. Such schools often teach mixed age groups, and teachers work across more than one year group. In one of my schools, years 6, 5, 4 and 3 are taught together. The transition from a tiny primary to a very large secondary school can be incredibly challenging for a child with SEND—or indeed any child. That produces a spike of SEND cases in year 7. Our SEND provision should therefore take the challenges in rural areas into consideration, and help schools and children with the transition from primary to secondary school. There are some great examples in my constituency of secondary schools working with feeder village schools from years 5 and 6 to try to bridge that transition and directly target children with SEND during that process.

[Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

For those who do not know, the hon. Lady is my constituency neighbour in Suffolk, and I think she is doing a fantastic job of highlighting the complexities faced by people such as Jacob and Tiffany—I see them in my inbox too. She has done a fantastic job of talking about the problems, and she is beginning to talk about the solutions. What does she think about universal early intervention programmes, which have been demonstrated to reduce cost at the acute end of the system in the long term? Will she join me in pushing for universal access to early language programmes in schools in Suffolk?

[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The example of Jacob, a small boy aged just four, shows that interventions need to happen in the early years—right from the very start.

The model of secondary schools working with primary schools should be looked at nationally. I again call on the Minister to visit Suffolk Coastal to see that in greater detail.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

Order. A lot of Members want to speak, so I will have to impose a time limit. I will first call Iain Duncan Smith, and then could Members bob for a few seconds longer than they would normally so that we can get everybody’s name on the list?

14:43

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

It is very good to see you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. I will obey your strictures and try to keep this brief. I want to focus on a very narrow aspect of special educational needs. I congratulate the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) on securing this debate. As we can see, many Members have issues with the supply of SEND education support.

I want to focus on something that originated in a special educational needs school in my constituency called Whitefield, which has calming rooms. I have been to see the Education Secretary about this issue, because I discovered, thanks to a BBC programme, that there is no regulation as to the nature of calming rooms in special educational needs schools and what happens in them. For the most part, those schools are very good, but when it comes to calming rooms there is a big variety of capability and, for that matter, quality. Children in that school were locked away in calming rooms. I would have thought that that was illegal, but it is not in special educational needs schools. What happens in those rooms makes the children’s behaviour worse. If they are suffering in one way or another, that suffering gets worse, particularly when they suffer from autism. What happens in those rooms becomes abusive, as has been captured on video.

A survey has shown that more than 500 schools use this kind of lock-in for children with severe autism. The videos I have seen show some of them in cages, and some of them being put in what we would consider to be padded cells, with no visits for long periods of time.

I simply want to put this point to the Minister. I have seen the Secretary of State and put it to her that this issue needs to be looked at and embraced in some kind of guidance or regulation, so that the rooms, if they have to be used, are used sparingly, and that there are regulations about the times that people should visit, to make sure that children are okay in them. Frankly, the rooms should be an absolute last resort, and should be used only very briefly. They are now definitely being abused in different schools. That is the one point I want to make.

I ask the Minister to take this issue up again with the Secretary of State, so that at the next legislative opportunity, Ministers can sit down and figure out how we regulate this. These children often have no voice for themselves, for obvious reasons, and their parents now find their behaviour even worse, and do not know whether their children have been locked into a calming room, such as I have seen and been horrified by. We must make that change so that those with very severe autism who go to special needs schools will not have to suffer as though they were criminals or prisoners—and in ways that we would not even treat those.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

Order. Before I call Andrew Lewin, I will put an advisory two-minute limit on speeches. If that is not followed, I will impose a two-minute limit. I am sure colleagues will want to ensure that time is available for all others present.

14:47

[Andrew Lewin (Welwyn Hatfield) (Lab)]

It is the nature of being an MP that we are rightly expected to manage a wide range of issues, but one constant since being elected has been the frequency with which I have been contacted by constituents about the crisis in SEND provision. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) on being a champion for families in her constituency, and I am pleased that she has secured this debate.

The themes are consistent: extremely long turnaround times to obtain an EHCP, compounded by even longer waiting times to secure a place at a desired school, and exasperated parents who are leaving employment to care for children who have not been found a place in the system. Most important of all, far too many children are suffering because the right support is not being made available to them. Constituents told me of a case in which Hertfordshire county council allocated a family seven different officers in the time it took to finalise a place for an EHCP. Another story was of a parent who had no choice but to give up their job to become a full-time carer for their child, as they wait for an appropriate school place. I could recite countless more examples from Welwyn Hatfield. My message to all local families is that we need concerted action at both local and national level to turn around the system.

I am conscious of the little time that I have today, so I put on the record how pleased I am that this Labour Government have recognised the scale of the challenge and made a £1 billion commitment to SEND across the country. It is imperative that Hertfordshire receives our fair share of that money. What gives me confidence is having met all the local school leaders who are doing everything in their power to help, from specialist providers at Lakeside and James Marks academy in Welwyn Garden City to Southfield school in Hatfield. The changes they are making are a source of hope, but we all have a moral imperative to turn the situation around both locally and nationally.

14:49

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) on securing this hugely important debate.

As has just been noted, this is an issue about which we all receive a huge amount of correspondence every day, from parents who are at their wits’ end. Supporting children and young people with special educational needs is not an act of charity; it is a fundamental responsibility of government, and yet we find that parents are repeatedly battling to access the complicated system. I will briefly give an overview of Dr Warwick-Sanders, a constituent I met in Winchester recently. He is a psychiatrist and his wife is also a medical professional. Their son was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in 2002 and referred to the child and adolescent mental health service. Despite being medical professionals, they said that they just did not know where to turn for help. Although CAMHS is the cornerstone for child mental health services, it has a shocking 150 week wait in our area. Dr Warwick-Sanders’ son is stuck in a system where the ADHD medication he needs is out of reach until an assessment is completed. He said, “If medical professionals like me cannot navigate the system, what hope do others have?”

If we are to give every child the opportunity to reach their full potential, we must prioritise our investment in SEND services. My question for the Minister is, how do we streamline this process for accessing support so that everyone—including medical professionals, but also people who have no experience of dealing with such organisations —can get the help they need, when they need it?

14:51

[Andrew Cooper (Mid Cheshire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) on continuing to keep this important issue on the parliamentary agenda. For many of us, this is a defining issue that motivated us to stand for election; to try and bring about meaningful change on behalf of SEND families who are living with a constant fight for recognition of the challenges they face, for a diagnosis, for mental health support and for the right educational setting.

I could use double or triple my speaking time today describing the cases that come across my desk week after week of children who are not just struggling to get the right support today, but whose lives could have been different if their needs had been identified and met early. Instead, I am going to go through some of the things that I believe—and that parents and professionals I have met with over the last eight months believe—will make the difference and start to bring this broken system under control. I will limit myself to two things, and I hope the Minister will respond and take it as read that I welcome the steps she has already taken to deliver a more inclusive system.

First, there is much more to be done in partnership with the NHS. The time it takes to get a diagnosis for autism or ADHD varies wildly across the country and has vastly increased in recent years. Meanwhile, access to child and adolescent mental health services is now being rationed in a way that means only the most serious referrals are expected, with the perverse effect that children who are not seen get worse. There will be no fix to the SEND crisis that does not also address the crisis in CAMHS, so I urge the Minister to continue to work closely with her colleagues in the Department for Health and Social Care and get school-based mental health support rolled out as quickly as possible.

Secondly, although the fix to the SEND crisis is not all about money, that does not mean that money does not need to be spent—particularly on capital. The reality is, although we need more inclusivity, we also need co-located provision in mainstream schools and more alternative provision. In my constituency in particular, we have a big shortage in specialist social, emotional and mental health difficulties places which is affecting life chances today—the cost of which will be borne by other parts of the state in future.

14:53

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) on so passionately describing the issues for her constituents—but these are replicated for all of us. I will give some statistics from Northern Ireland to add to the support that I give to the hon. Lady and others. There are some 11,000 children in special education—an increase of 70% in the past 10 years—and 8% of those children have special educational needs.

I do not know how many meetings I have attended with parents who are worried about their children. It has become an incredibly important issue. It is a mammoth take for the Minister here—it is good to see her in her place and I wish her well—as it is a mammoth take for those back home as well. I honestly believe that every child is a precious gift from God, born with a unique personality and a purpose to fulfil—each is valued, is important and matters. That is why I support the Minister in coming forward.

I want to put it on the record that the Education Department in Northern Ireland, which I represent, has committed to a vision where,

“Every child and young person is happy, learning and succeeding.”

That aspiration is no different for our children who face additional challenges to accessing learning. Reform is urgent and essential to deliver that vision, ensure inclusion, and improve outcomes for learners who require additional support. The SEN reform agenda is an ambitious framework for change and takes a whole-system approach to tackling the issues underpinning current challenges in the system.

What do we need? We need two things: first, early diagnosis for those who have educational issues, and secondly, plenty of staff members who can take on the issues and can respond quickly. My request to the Minister is—I know she probably does this without me asking her—will she discuss with our Education Minister back home to see how best we can deliver this for all of those in this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? That was a five-minute speech done in two minutes.

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

Thank you for keeping to the two minutes, more or less. We should continue that trend.

14:55

[Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. Last week, I had the privilege and opportunity to meet with the parents of some students from Hexham Priory school, which supports children with severe learning disabilities in my constituency in the county of Northumberland. One thing that comes to mind when speaking to those parents—as one of them put it to me—is that they are constantly fighting for their child, not just for their education, but for their ability to access swimming pools, leisure centres and other provision that we all take for granted when we are speaking to other children in our constituency.

[Sarah Smith (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

On that point, I want to emphasise that the parents and carers who I speak to in Hyndburn and Haslingden are bruised and burnt out—my hon. Friend talked about the constant fight and the adversarial nature of the system. I also keep hearing concerns from the parents and teachers in the system about some fear around the reforms that are coming, because they feel that might happen without them. Would my hon. Friend agree that is really important that the Government work with parents, teachers and carers as they develop those reforms, and that there is a real two-way conversation as we bring forward what is needed?

[Joe Morris]

My hon. Friend knows, as I think we all do, the strength of feeling from SEND parents, staff and teachers, who have been burnt out over 14 years of failure on SEND. I certainly have my frustrations with Northumberland county council’s wrong-headed, misguided and deluded approach to the SEND crisis in my county. That particularly comes across with the lack of provision in the west of Northumberland, when I am constantly confronted by families travelling from Haltwhistle, which is—for those here who are not familiar with the geography of my constituency—in the extreme west of Northumberland, all the way to the coast to Ashington, which is often a journey that exceeds 90 minutes either way. Accessing that provision is incredibly hard and draining.

I want to put on record my thanks to the parents and staff at Hexham Priory school, who provide that supportive and caring environment, to local charities such as Mencap, and to individuals who constantly reach out to my office—I know that there were 11 places, for which 72 applied. This is a crisis that we must work to address.

14:58

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) on securing this really important debate.

Education is, and always will be, one of my top priorities. I am lucky enough to have visited many of my schools in South West Hertfordshire to see the excellent work that teachers are doing to ensure that every one of the children in my constituency has a good or excellent education. However, the statutory framework around parent choice should be working for schools, not against them. In my constituency, 17% of children have special educational needs, and I regularly receive correspondence and surgery requests from parents and constituents who are going through the process of trying to get an education, health and care plan for their child, or are dealing with the implementation of one.

I am glad that Hertfordshire county council has made progress in this area and is continuing to do so. It is important that progress continues to be made. As someone who is dyslexic, I understand at first hand the frustrations posed by special educational needs and learning disabilities, and how important it is that those with SEND have the support they need to succeed in school.

From conversations with schools in my area and officers at Hertfordshire county council, it is clear that the parent choice framework needs to change. Schools are gaining reputations for being good at educating children with special needs. That is something that all schools should strive for, but it has led to a higher concentration of children with EHCPs in some schools and very low numbers in others, placing a financial burden and additional pressure on the schools that provide such valuable support for children who need it. That should not be the case. All schools should be able to support children with special educational needs; it should not be left to a select few. Every parent wants the best education for their children, and that would allow all schools to continue to provide a top-quality education for all. I urge the Minister to consider changes to the statutory framework.

15:00

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) for securing this important debate.

Early in my career, I had the privilege of working for the disability charity Scope, where I successfully campaigned for increased funding for the schools access initiative to improve access to mainstream education. Ever since then, I have been a strong believer that, wherever possible, children with specialist needs should have them met in mainstream schools that support them and everything should be done to facilitate that. While I still believe in mainstream inclusion, I recognise that the demand is great and the complexity of need has increased and changed.

[Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)]

On the point about access, does the hon. Member agree that it is really important that children are able to get to school in the first place? Private providers of SEND transport have reported that the increase in national insurance contributions will greatly impact their ability to get children to school, because they will have to run at a loss and might have to relinquish some of the contracts. That will put local authorities at risk of not meeting their statutory duties to ensure that children with SEN can access that transport.

[Ms Minns]

I am sure that the Minister will address that point in her closing remarks, but I want to focus on the need, and the ability to get into a specialist school in the first instance.

James Rennie school in my constituency is rated outstanding and does incredible work for children aged three to 19, but not everyone who needs a school like James Rennie is able to access one. The school has seen a huge increase in demand in recent years from families whose children have specialist needs. At the moment, it is already operating well above its published admission number, something it has achieved only by converting spare space into classrooms, and there is still more demand. For this September, it already has 43 known applications—25% of the children already in the school.

James Rennie is not alone. Department for Education figures from March last year show that there are approximately 4,000 more pupils on the rolls of specialist schools than their reported capacity. Will the Minister address the need that we now have for more specialist schools? Let us be clear: there are 1.5 million SEND children in this country, including the 202 at James Rennie in Carlisle. All of us, in every part of the House, have a duty to ensure that we do not fail them.

15:03

[Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) on securing this vital debate. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am an NHS optometrist. I rise to highlight two critical issues: the severe gap in transport provision for post-16 students, and the additional challenges faced by children with visual impairment in the SEND system.

No parent of a SEND child willingly chooses to send them miles away for education. They do so because there is a lack of local provision. Until the age of 16, local authorities cover the cost of transportation, but beyond that, families are expected to finance it themselves —an expectation that is, frankly, unrealistic. I have spoken to parents who are on the brink of crisis, including Ruth and Esther from Still SEND 16+. Some are considering giving up their work to personally manage their child’s school commute, pushing them into benefits and ultimately costing the state more than simply providing transport would. A consultation has already shown that 29% of affected young people may be forced to abandon education. Will the Government consider making post-16 SEND transport statutory, ensuring that young people do not have to choose between education and affordability?

I also wish to raise the additional challenge faced by children with a visual impairment within the SEND framework. Across the UK, 41,000 children and young people rely on specialist visual impairment education services. Half of them have additional SEND needs, yet local disparities in provision mean that many do not receive the support they require. The Royal National Institute of Blind People has called for urgent reforms. I echo that. The curriculum framework for children and young people with visual impairment must be embedded in all SEND policies. The Government commitment to recruit 6,500 expert teachers must include funding for additional registered qualified habitation specialists and qualified visual impairment specialist teachers, and all teacher training and special educational needs co-ordinator courses must include mandatory visual impairment awareness training to improve inclusivity in mainstream schools.

15:05

[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) on securing today’s debate. I draw the attention of the House to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in respect of support from support staff unions. I also wish to make a non-financial declaration of interest, which is that my partner is a member of the Department’s expert advisory panel on SEND. However, the views I express are my own.

In the House we often talk about SEND funding and funding is important, but we also need to talk about SEND spending. The reality is that much money in the system is not spent well and that there are providers who charge too much for too little. In other aspects of education —children’s homes and other parts of the sector—we look at overcharging. The pirates of the high needs exist in SEND as well. I see it in my constituency and I see it in the cases parents and families bring to the SEND surgeries I run. I hope that when legislation is brought forward in this area, those problems will be addressed.

In a former role, I submitted a freedom of information request to all local education authorities. Two thirds could not answer a simple question about average spend on EHCPs in their area. Indeed, no such duty exists under the 2014 Act. If we are to drive up standards we need accountability for the money that is being spent, because parents are furious at the money that is not available to their children.

I will make just one more brief point, because time is so short. Much could be done in schools to improve the sensory environment—I believe this point has been partially raised already. When I was a SEND pupil, such simple adjustments as flexible lighting and variable noise levels would have made a huge difference to classroom management and learning support. I hope that when school design standards are next looked at, minimum expectations for inclusion by design can be set.

15:07

[Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) for securing this important debate and for powerfully setting out so many of the failures that families in my constituency will be all too familiar with.

There is nothing more heartbreaking than speaking to people in my constituency who have been let down by the national failures of the SEND system: the young person who has been out of school for far too long, with all the impact that has on their mental health and development, just because there is no school suitable for them in our local area; the family who have often had to step back from work to fight for the bare minimum legal entitlement of support that their young person needs to thrive at school; or the far too many of our schools that, despite going above and beyond, know they are not being set up to succeed when it comes to supporting far too many pupils with additional needs.

When she described the system as “lose, lose, lose”, the last Conservative Education Secretary could not have been more right. In my local area, those painful failures are absolutely present at the local authority level too, whether in Hertfordshire county council’s shocking failure to deliver EHCP plans, laid bare by Ofsted in recent years, or in Central Bedfordshire council’s planning failures when it comes to specialist places, which is causing chaos for some of my local schools. From Ivel Valley school, whose redevelopment is now in doubt, to local schools that found out that their inclusion centre was being paused when developers did not turn up when they were meant to, it is clear that councils need to do much, much better with the tools already in their grasp.

As a former teacher and local authority lead, I know that national change is needed too. The extra money prioritised in the Budget—£1 billion for the high needs block and £750 million for adaptations—is crucial, but much wider work is needed. We need clear accountability frameworks for local authorities and schools that hold them much more accountable for SEND and inclusion. Whatever the school structure, driving up standards should never come at the expense of an inclusive approach to admissions and exclusions.

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern that far too many children in our part of the world miss out on years of education as a result of this crisis. In setting out many of the reforms we need to see, will he join me in urging the Minister to bring forward those reforms as swiftly as possible and to provide a clear timeline so that parents in our constituencies can look forward to them?

[Alistair Strathern]

Absolutely. It is really welcome that this has been a priority, right at the heart of the Government’s early decision making on education, and we need the pace to continue.

It is clear that much further work will be needed on workforce planning. It is fantastic that we finally have a Government who are taking an interest in this issue and commissioning a survey to understand where the workforce shortages are, but it will be crucial for them to put in money to support the resolution of the challenges, especially in edge-of-London constituencies like mine, where all too often the resource is dragged into other authorities as a result of London weighting. We need to make sure that health partners are playing an ambitious role, too. Deprioritising health budgets is a false economy that only leads to increased pressures on education budgets.

15:10

[Alice Macdonald (Norwich North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your leadership, Mr Twigg. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) for securing this important debate. My area of Norfolk has unique challenges as well as the common challenges we have heard about from many Members. Between 2019 and 2024, we saw a 74.5% increase in the number of EHC plans issued, and it is rising faster than the national average.

I want to touch on a few of the systemic problems I see in my area. Hon. Members have mentioned health. In Norfolk there are more than 10,000 children on waiting lists for an autism or ADHD assessment, and the average waiting time is seven years. That is totally unacceptable. Can the Minister tell us what is being done with the Department of Health and Social Care to expedite that process?

When members of the public contact me, whether because they are being told that, since the specialist provision is within 3 miles, they must walk there and transport will not be funded, or whether it is to tell me about the thousands of pounds being poured into tribunal processes by Norfolk county council, my feeling is overwhelmingly that the system is failing them. We have an adversarial system in which parents and children are not being listened to. We also have a real challenge in Norfolk with the expense of transport, which costs the local authority a huge amount but forces children to travel miles.

There is a school sitting empty in Norwich North that could be turned into a special school. I have been campaigning for that with local councillors for almost four years, but bureaucracy seems to be getting in the way. I do not understand why the simple transfer of a lease is impeding the provision of an extra specialist school for our children. We really need to look at how we can expedite the use of facilities that could be repurposed.

I also hear from constituents that when they are told there is no place for their child in a specialist resource base, they are not told the reasons why. My constituent Joanne was told that there is no right to appeal, so she has been left with no understanding of why her child cannot have the place she desperately needs. I agree that we need clear guidelines for families. We also need a co-production model, so that parents are not just talking to a system, but being included in the system right from the very start, through delivery for our young people.

I welcome the steps that the Government have taken so far. I know that we will take so many more. Ultimately, speed is of the essence.

15:12

[Sonia Kumar (Dudley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) for securing this important debate. This issue resonates deeply with families in Dudley and across the nation.

We all know that too many families are navigating a SEND system that is too difficult. Assessments are taking too long, support is inconsistent, and local authorities are under huge pressure to meet the increasing demand. Schools are struggling with managing children with no diagnosis and supporting those with a diagnosis. In the 2024 autumn Budget, £1 billion of specifically allocated SEND funding was announced. That investment is vital to tackle the challenges that parents and schools face every day.

Dudley is no exception to the issues that have been raised. The number of children with education, health and care plans has risen significantly, reflecting the growing need for specialist support. We must confront the fact that too many families and schools feel that they have to fight the system just to get the right support for their children. My constituent Catherine Beaman has had to set up her own SEND support group in Sedgley, as there is no wraparound service. That simply is not right. While funding is increasing and reforms are under way, families want to feel that our children will get the support they deserve. I ask the Government to move faster and more efficiently to improve the system.

I believe that an early diagnosis is key for our children to get the best start in life, but support is required throughout an individual’s lifetime. I ask the Minister to develop a cross-departmental strategy on SEND for the future of our children.

15:14

[Alex McIntyre (Gloucester) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) for securing this important debate. I have been contacted time and again by parents in Gloucester who are desperate for support for their children. They have been failed by the system and their children have been left to suffer as a result. The message from parents is clear: they want more support, a reduction in the waiting times for EHCPs, and a system where every plan is processed quickly, fairly and effectively.

It is clear that the last Government failed to invest, failed to plan and failed an entire generation of our children and their parents. They created a postcode lottery whereby parents are forced to battle the system rather than being supported by it. That is one of the biggest challenges facing parents in my area: a system that denies their child’s needs and puts the presumption on saying no, rather than asking how it can best support children.

The repercussions are staggering. In the past decade, decision times on EHCPs increased by 140%, with two in five taking more than six months to process. In Gloucester, only 35% of EHCP decisions were issued within the 20-week target. That is a disgrace, and it is yet again up to the Labour Government to fix the Tory mess.

I understand that there are no quick fixes and there is no magic wand that can undo 14 years of neglect, but I welcome the Government’s £1 billion uplift in SEND funding and the £740 million to create new specialist places in mainstream schools, as well as the commitment to train 400 new educational psychologists and retain these professionals. Will the Minister outline the steps the Government are taking to improve the EHCP process so that families feel supported through it? These measures will ensure that we do not repeat the failures of the last Government. We will be the voice of change, breaking down the barriers to give SEND children better support. These children face so many hurdles in their lives, and it is time we ensured that they have a brighter future and are supported.

15:16

[Baggy Shanker (Derby South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) for securing this incredibly important debate. When we came into government we knew we were going to inherit a mess after years of chaos under the Conservatives. Unfortunately, special educational needs provision has been a particularly shocking example of the real consequences for families and individuals who are lost in a system that has been mismanaged, neglected and starved of funding. Put simply, SEND provision was at crisis point.

I pay tribute to the incredible teachers and teaching assistants who work so hard to support every child, in every school, in every classroom. Whenever I visit schools in Derby, I see how dedicated they are to helping children, despite their limited resources. But teachers feel guilty because while they focus their attention on the children with special educational needs, they are unable to support the rest of their classes who, with a little more help, could go on to achieve so much more. Every child deserves the tools they need to succeed, but children cannot succeed when they are deprived of the basic support they need in the classroom.

In my constituency, one of the challenges we face is the availability of appropriate SEND school placements. I welcome the steps that the local council is taking to address that shortage. It is creating 70 more SEND places at the Kingsmead school in Alvaston, as part of a broader plan to create more than 200 additional specialist places for the city’s schools over the next two years.

But there is only so much that local authorities are able to do. Funding, support and reform from central Government is crucial, and I am pleased that we have an Education Secretary who is committed to sorting out SEND as one of her top priorities. It is the Conservative party that broke our SEND system, but I say to every parent who is currently struggling to advocate for their child to access the support they need: it is the Labour Government who will work to fix it.

15:19

[Jodie Gosling (Nuneaton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) and congratulate her on securing this debate. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and to my partner’s interests.

Given the time limit, I will focus on one case in my constituency, out of so many. It is not new, but a decade-long issue on which we have been fighting for one child. We tried to submit this child’s assessment when she was three years of age, but it was unsuccessful. Only following an Ofsted intervention at Warwickshire county council did she finally get a diagnosis of autism, six years later. No directives were made for other special needs.

She is now in secondary school and, eight years on, she is still awaiting diagnosis of and support for ADHD and other complex needs. Her mum constantly has to fight, and has engaged proactively with every intervention she has been offered, such as early help. When her mum last inquired to find out how long they would have to wait, she was told the waiting list is still measured in years, not in months or weeks. After first displaying diagnosable traits at three, there is every chance that this child may leave her education without fully understanding her needs.

The impact on the family has been profound, and the impact on the mental health of this child has been traumatic. Her mother found a notebook detailing her suicide plans when she was in year 6. After sleepless nights worrying, she finally got a mental health assessment weeks later and was told that she did not present a risk as she had not identified the tree or rope she would use to hang herself. This is disgusting and a complete failure. No family should have to go through this.

[Jim Shannon]

Everybody brings a personal story to this place, and the hon. Lady has brought a very personal story. It is obvious to all of us here that the hon. Lady is a compassionate MP and understands the issues for her constituents, and she has portrayed that very well. She is assiduous and honest, and we thank her for that.

[Jodie Gosling]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me a moment to compose myself. Children should not be seen as a tick list of diagnosis criteria. We need a SEND system that deals with children and families holistically, that listens to their voices and that tackles the root causes.

15:22

[Terry Jermy (South West Norfolk) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) for securing this debate. I know she is doing all she can to improve SEND provision in her constituency and in the wider county of Suffolk.

SEND issues in my South West Norfolk constituency are a constant in my inbox. After 14 years of neglect, families are at the end of their tether and are desperate for support. The size of the task facing the Government in repairing trust in the SEND system is clear and frankly daunting. As my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal mentioned, we must not forget that in areas like Suffolk and Norfolk the challenges are exacerbated because of rurality and difficulties accessing services that are often miles away.

I have been here before to speak about SEND, and have spoken to the Minister a number of times, but today I want to make a particular point about tribunals. Many county councils are losing scores of tribunal cases. In Norfolk, the Conservative-controlled county council is losing 98% of all tribunal cases—there seem to be no real consequences to the failure to act in the first place—and has racked up a bill of almost £1 million in legal costs in one financial year fighting SEND cases. Money that could have been spent on providing services for families is used to pay legal bills. Local authorities usually engage solicitors and barristers, which was never the intention for SEND tribunals. The way they were set up was supposed to mean that neither side needed legal representation.

I urge the Minister to speak to the concerns about tribunals specifically. I recognise that solving the crisis in SEND will not happen overnight, but I am encouraged by the Government’s action so far and by the additional money.

15:23

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) for securing this important debate and for her excellent speech.

As colleagues from all parties have said, the system for young people with special educational needs in England is not working for schools, for councils and, most importantly, for the young people who so desperately need support. This is yet another area where, as the commentator Sam Freedman who worked at the Department of Education put it, the previous Government

“chose to go slow in coming up with solutions so as to avoid difficult or expensive decisions before the election.”

It has been left to the new Labour Government to fix it. I welcome the steps taken so far, with £1 billion infused into the SEND budget in October and £740 million announced to create thousands of specialist places, including in mainstream schools.

In my Dartford constituency, Kent county council has been unable to respond properly to the families seeking the help that their children need. I hear regularly of EHCP annual reviews taking many times longer than the 12 weeks they should take, including one case in which an annual review is yet to be processed over a year after it took place. I hear of caseworkers leaving the service and families not being told, leaving parents asking for assistance but not being heard. I hear complaints about EHCP decisions going months without an answer. There are frustrating waits to correct errors and multi-year waits for other forms of assessment.

Too many vulnerable young people are missing crucial years of education when they are needed most. There are no quick fixes, but the Government have an opportunity, as we all do, to bring forward much-needed reforms that will improve outcomes over time. So many families are depending on it. Let us work with the Government to ensure it happens.

15:25

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) on securing this important debate.

Another week, another debate on SEND. Since the start of this Parliament, barely a week has gone by when we have not had questions or debates, either in this Chamber or the main Chamber, on special educational needs and disability provision. From what we have heard today—I particularly thank the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Jodie Gosling) for her courage in sharing her constituent’s moving story—we know that every Member’s inbox is bulging with casework from constituents about the dire crisis in SEND, which is why these debates are so oversubscribed. We are also getting report after report. In the last few months, the National Audit Office, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Public Accounts Committee have all come out with the same damning verdict about a broken system, with money coming in but outcomes for children going down.

These are some of our most vulnerable children and young people, and we as a society must do our best to meet their needs. We know that families face a postcode lottery, with delays that can last months or even years and vulnerable children missing out on the support that they deserve and need. With special schools full, mainstream schools struggling to provide appropriate support because their budgets are so overstretched, and spiralling high-needs deficits leaving many local authorities on the brink of bankruptcy, it is clear that urgent reform is needed.

As we heard in a Westminster Hall debate just a few weeks ago, the process to get an education, health and care plan is often far too lengthy and far too adversarial. Families are increasingly forced to take their cases to tribunal, with the number of cases doubling since 2014. Local authorities lose almost all those cases, wasting annually over £70 million of public money that could be spent on supporting children and young people rather than fighting unnecessary legal battles. Given the huge rise in demand for support, and the previous Conservative Government’s failure to keep up with that demand, local authorities are too often struggling to meet their statutory responsibilities, forcing families to navigate a broken system to secure even the most basic support. As the former Education Secretary Gillian Keegan described it, it is a “lose, lose, lose” system for all.

Ministers have repeatedly, and quite rightly, stressed the need for mainstream schools to be more inclusive in order to meet the rising need for special needs support. I recently visited Stanley school in my Twickenham constituency which, like two other nearby primary schools, has a specialist resource provision. Children with complex needs are able to spend time with dedicated teaching assistants for support, but they have the opportunity to play, socialise and participate, where appropriate, in lessons and other activities with children in the school who are not part of the SRP.

As the hon. Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper) referenced, we are seeing falling rolls in schools and space opening up. SRPs will be a key intervention in our approach to ensuring that mainstream schools can be more inclusive. However, finding and keeping the staff to support children in SRPs or other mainstream settings—or indeed in special school settings—is an ongoing challenge. SRPs need to be properly funded but, as things stand, the headteacher at Stanley explained to me, the maths just does not add up for him. He explained that his wider school budget is having to plug the shortfall in SRP funding. If we are to tempt schools to have SRPs, we are going to have to make sure that they have the resources to provide that SRP.

Support staff costs have risen over the past two years, with unfunded pay increases and increases in employer’s national insurance contributions on the horizon. We know that local authorities, health services and schools are all struggling to recruit the number of staff that they need to meet growing demand—both to undertake assessments in the first place, when a child might be eligible for an EHCP, and then to meet that need in school.

A national survey of headteachers found that only 1% of senior school leaders believed that they had enough funding to meet the needs of pupils with SEND. A report by London Councils on SEND inclusion in schools found that stakeholders from across the sector said that they would be able to be more inclusive if they had more funding. That is why the Liberal Democrats are calling for increased funding for local authorities to reduce the financial burden on schools. We know that the £6,000 per pupil notional SEND budget, which each school is meant to allocate before applying for an EHCP, is, frankly, a fiction in today’s school finances, given the pressures on budgets up and down the country.

When I visited Stanley the other week, and when I visited a beautiful new school, Belmont school in Durham, last week, I was told by both headteachers that for many mainstream schools, the disincentive to take on children with SEND is the way that standard assessment tests and other public exam results are reported. Frankly, certain young people in those mainstream settings are not in a position to sit their SATs or GCSEs, yet their results, which will essentially be nil, are reported in the schools’ performance measures, which are available publicly. In a competitive schooling environment, where parents vote with their feet for the schools that typically have the highest grades, that sadly results in an incentive for too many schools to actively avoid taking SEND children on to their rolls. There are schools that are doing the right thing and including those children, but, as the Minister is considering how to make mainstream school more inclusive, I wonder what consideration she and other Ministers have given to this issue.

I would like to spend a moment focusing on special schools. For children for whom a mainstream setting is not right, special schools should, and in many cases do, provide the necessary educational support. However, we know that in May 2023, two thirds of special schools were at or over capacity, and the impact of that is children with complex needs being inappropriately accommodated in the mainstream, where their needs cannot be met, which sometimes has a detrimental impact on other pupils and, indeed, staff. Many parents in those situations feel forced to home school. We know that parents who feel that they have had no option but to home school are concerned about what some of the provisions of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will mean for their being able to ensure that their child is in an appropriate environment.

The lack of specialist provision is being played out in the eye-watering SEND transport costs that local authorities are having to fund to send children out of area. Add to that the cost of private special schools, which are being funded by the taxpayer. I will return to that subject in a moment, but I want to take this moment to welcome the provision in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that will allow local authorities to open new special schools. For too long, local authorities that have identified a need, and that want to bid for funding and open special schools, have been turned down. A number of applications from local authorities that wanted to open special schools were turned down during the previous Parliament by the previous Government, so I welcome that change in the Bill.

Returning to private special schools, many private SEND schools provide an excellent education and are run as not-for-profit charities. However, the Minister is aware—I have raised this issue previously, not least in Committee on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill—that private equity firms and other profiteering companies are increasingly entering the special school market, as they see it, at an extortionate cost. Councils are spending £1.3 billion on independent and non-maintained special schools, which is more than double what they spent just a few years earlier. The cost of an independent special school place is, on average, double the cost of a state special school place. Some private equity companies running these schools are making a profit of 20%-plus. Typically, the private equity-owned providers, not the other private sector providers, have the highest level of profitability in the sector. I feel that our most vulnerable children and our local authorities are being held to ransom by some of these companies, which are not behaving in the best interests of our children.

[Mr Mohindra]

Is the hon. Lady suggesting that we ban private equity companies from being involved in the sector?

[Munira Wilson]

No. As a Liberal—I have said this many a time—I believe in a mixed economy in many of our public services. I was about to make the point that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill contains important measures to stop profiteering in children’s social care. When I proposed an amendment in Committee to extend the profit cap to special schools, I explained that the private equity companies that are making a ridiculous amount of profit in the children’s social care sector are also running private special schools. Some are not making a huge profit, but I do not think a 20%-plus profit margin in a taxpayer-funded system is acceptable, which is why my Liberal Democrat colleagues and I proposed an amendment to the Bill to extend the profit cap to special schools. I was disappointed that Labour Members and Ministers voted against it, but I again urge them to consider the proposal. We know we are in a cash-constrained environment—we hear every day from Ministers, not least the Chancellor, about how little money there is—but savings can be found in this area, and we can invest them back into our most vulnerable children.

My final proposal for Ministers, which the Minister has heard me talk about before, is that for our most complex children, we need a national body for SEND to fund those with exceptionally high needs who face a postcode lottery of provision across the country, and pose a particular risk to local authorities where those needs arise. That body could also have oversight of standards and budgets across the country.

I know that SEND is high on the Minister’s agenda. We are still waiting to hear how the £1 billion announced in the Budget will be allocated, but I fear that, given the £2.7 billion of local authority SEND deficits, it will disappear into a black hole. We have been promised reforms later this year, but our children cannot afford to wait. Children missing out on an education will never get that time back. Every child, no matter their needs or background, should be given the opportunity to thrive and fulfil their potential, yet too many children with SEND are simply not getting that right now.

15:38

[Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) on securing this important debate. As Members have said, we seem to discuss SEND in this House pretty much on a weekly basis, and rightly so.

I am the vice-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for special educational needs and disabilities, and I do cross-party work with colleagues in this Chamber and beyond to ensure the experiences of constituents are heard in this place. I, too, have a number of special schools in my constituency—both state and independent.

Hon. Members will have to forgive me for not talking about every single contribution that was made today. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) for his comments about sensory and calming rooms, and I hope the Minister will take them into account. Likewise, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra), whose commitment to education in his constituency is obvious. I hope the Minister will consider the statutory changes that he asked for. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Jodie Gosling), whose moving and heartbreaking story touched us all and will have resonance with all our constituents.

Clearly, special educational needs and disabilities are extraordinarily important. That casework fills my postbag, and a lot of it comes from my predecessors, which demonstrates how long some of these cases can go on for. The Conservative Government’s reforms, through the Children and Families Act 2014, marked a significant shift in raising awareness, changing the narrative and addressing educational shortfalls in the system that, under a previous Administration, had failed to adequately make legislative changes for SEND children. The Act created EHCPs, a vital tool for allowing parents to receive the support that they need for their children in the education system.

Only a minority of SEND pupils actually have an EHCP. According to data from the Department for Education for 2023-24, 1.6 million pupils in England had SEND conditions. Of those, 1.2 million received SEND support without an EHCP, meaning that 400,000 had an EHCP. Therefore, my first question to the Minister is: in her plans, what happens to the other 75% of SEND pupils?

Nearly 17% of independent school pupils are receiving SEND support, but only 6% of those have a formal EHCP. I want to quote the Prime Minister, who shared the Government’s supposed plan for SEND pupils who do not have an EHCP, or are in the process of acquiring one. In June, the Prime Minister told LBC listeners that:

“Where there isn’t a plan, then that exemption doesn’t apply.”

Will the Minister confirm that the 93,000 children in the independent system who receive SEND support with no formal EHCP are not included in her plans, as the Prime Minister outlined in June?

The 2014 Act was a step change. Now, we need a further step change from this Government. In the Public Accounts Committee’s recently published inquiry into the SEND emergency, it was revealed that the Department for Education does not fully understand the root causes behind the surge in demand for EHCPs. In my area, between 2019 and 2024, EHCPs increased by 63% in Surrey and 93% in Hampshire—well above the national average. In the Committee’s inquiry, the Department admitted that it had not adequately examined the barriers to promoting inclusivity in mainstream schools.

That is particularly concerning for the three SEND schools in my constituency—the Ridgeway school, Hollywater school, which is currently expanding due to Hampshire county council’s funding, and the Abbey school —which are now under extreme pressure from the exodus of children, once educated in the independent sector, who are now entering the mainstream system. I am also worried by the lack of provision and support given to independent special educational schools, which is affecting three schools in my constituency: More House, Undershaw and Pathways. Those three schools educate nearly 1,000 children with complex SEND needs, and, without these independent schools, my local state schools will crumble under the pressure.

While the Government’s £1 billion for SEND is entirely welcome—this funding injection will be a positive boost for local authorities—we have seen that the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Education are not listening to those parents of children who do not have an EHCP and are educated in the independent sector. Therefore, I ask the Minister—

[Alistair Strathern]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gregory Stafford]

I am under a lot of time pressure, and I want the proposer of the motion to be able to get in, so I will not. I have to leave time for the Minister too, and I really want to hear her answers to my questions.

As I was saying, I would therefore be grateful for the Minister’s confirmation that she has engaged with parents and teachers in this situation. And what steps is she taking to ensure that vulnerable children do not suffer the greatest because of this Government’s policy?

Despite the—I have to say—utter nonsense we heard from the hon. Member for Gloucester (Alex McIntyre), the Conservative Government launched a review of the SEND system in 2019 to end the postcode lottery, and committed an extra £700 million in the year 2020-21, an 11% increase on the year prior. Moreover, to ensure that children and young people received the most appropriate support for their needs, the national SEND and alternative provision implementation board was established.

[Alex McIntyre]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Gregory Stafford]

I am not going to give way, sorry. That created a national system with new, clear standards under the Green Paper, and a consultation that set out the Conservatives’ commitment to delivering the support that children with SEND truly need.

To oversee those vital changes, the SEND system leadership board brought together sector leaders across education, health and social care to drive improvements. The Local Government Association has warned, however, that without proper reform, SEND provision will deteriorate and become financially unviable. A 2024 National Audit Office report echoed those concerns, highlighting the 140% rise in EHCPs since 2015 and warning that the system will become financially unsustainable if unchanged.

Information from the Children and Young People Select Committee last year indicated that there were 2,784 children and young people waiting for autism and ADHD assessments in East Hampshire in my constituency, with waiting times averaging around two years. During that time, children and their families are unable to access the necessary provisions, and that negatively affects their quality of life and puts pressure on local schools. That situation increases the risk of adverse outcomes in educational attainment, mental health and future employment.

I am working closely with local organisations such as SEN Talk CIC, which is a charity founded by a constituent of mine. I have seen its profound impact: 92% of children participating in its programmes report a positive change in their lives, and 80% gain valuable lifelong skills. That is just one of the great initiatives that support many children in my constituency, particularly SEND pupils who are home educated. Although home education is not right for every child, it is a fundamental right that is employed by parents across the UK to give them a hands-on approach to their children’s education.

I have spoken to Kate from Nurtured Neuro Kids and others who have expressed their considerable concerns about the impact that the Government’s rushed Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will have on SEND children who are educated from home. They are very upset by the lack of positive acknowledgment from the Education Secretary of the important work that they do to take the strain from the mainstream system, and the lack of consultation or consideration for Conservative amendments that would have protected their work. It is therefore important for constituents such as Kate to be assured that the Government will take steps to ensure that all children with speech and language needs get the help they deserve.

It is clearly a wise and welcome decision for the Government to continue the Nuffield early language intervention programme, which provides crucial support to children with speech and language needs. We must acknowledge, however, that there remains significant disparity in access to funding and support, regardless of the region or the individual specialist needs of the child. Every child who struggles with speech and language must have access to support, regardless of where they live.

Despite a relatively collegiate debate, a number of Members—I pick out the hon. Members for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) and for Gloucester—have seen fit to blame the Conservative record and point out Conservative councils’ record in this area. Of the three councils with the highest appeal rates for EHCPs, however, two are Liberal Democrat and one is Labour, so I gently say to Government Members that this is a nationwide problem. Rather than point scoring, it would be better for hon. Members to work together, so that those unfair decisions, and the impact they have on families, are quickly resolved. The comments from the hon. Member for Dartford (Jim Dickson) were particularly uncharitable. I point out to him that in the spring Budget statement, the last Government committed to 15 special schools, with which this Government are not continuing.

I urge the Minister to address the root causes of the problems in the SEND system, including funding and the decision to tax independent schools. Proper reform of the system, including reform of the EHCP process, would give children a proper educational choice. Without it, we risk what the Public Accounts Committee called a “lost generation of children”.

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

I ask the Minister to leave a minute or so at the end, so that the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal can wind up.

15:49

[The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) on securing this incredibly important debate, and on the way in which she set out her constituents’ case. Like many other hon. Members in the Chamber, she clearly has a keen interest in the support and services that are made available to children and young people with SEND.

I also thank hon. Members from both sides of the House, including the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for recognising that work is needed to put right the terrible situation currently faced by far too many children in the system, and that we need to improve it. Doing so is a vital part of the Government’s opportunity mission. We want to break the link between background and opportunity, and that means giving every child, including children with special educational needs and disabilities, the very best start in life.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

On the point about giving children the best start at the earliest stage, what are the Minister’s thoughts on properly integrating family hubs into education, health and local authorities, to ensure seamless support for children with SEND?

[Catherine McKinnell]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. The Government are committed to expanding the work of the family hubs to ensure that every community has support to create that earliest intervention. Many hon. Members have mentioned the importance of early intervention. We agree that it is vital, but I will come to that in more detail. She tempts me down a different path from the one I was going down.

I reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal that addressing challenges in the SEND system is a priority for me, for the Department for Education and for the Government. We recognise that this is a whole-Government effort, including the Department of Health and Social Care, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Department for Transport. Many hon. Members raised challenges around school transport. It is a priority to fix that system and get the best outcomes for every child. I also reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal that I would be delighted to visit her constituency, which I hope can be arranged.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

More than one in three SEND children in Oldham is diagnosed with autism or a neurodivergent condition, which is above the national average. We know that there are implications for educational attainment and work. Has there been an assessment of the increase in children with autism or neurodivergent conditions? If so, what were its conclusions?

[Catherine McKinnell]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. The additional recognition of special educational needs and disabilities has highlighted not only the extent of the challenge to ensure the best offer for all children, including those with SEND, but that we should give every child the best education, regardless of their special educational needs and disabilities. Our ability to identify aids us to have the infrastructure and support in place to ensure that every child has the best start in life. I will talk in more detail about how we do that, as many hon. Members have asked.

We have reached the point of recognising the challenge, although the surprising contribution of the Conservative Front Bencher, the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford), was a caveat to that. In the context of this debate, where we recognise that there is a shared challenge, his contribution seemed to skip from 2014 to the present day, as though the previous 10 years had not happened. It bore no recognition of that, despite his former Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan, acknowledging that the system presided over in the10 years prior to 2024 was “lose, lose, lose”. I agree that we should not be arguing about who created the challenges; we should be getting down and resolving the challenges together. I did not think that the hon. Gentleman’s contribution was respectful of the positive contributions that other Members from both sides of the House had made.

[Alex McIntyre]

I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for having the confidence and courage to accept interventions, unlike some hon. Members. Does she agree that the shadow Minister’s comments showed how out of touch the Conservative party is? Parents have been in tears in my surgeries due to the system that the Conservatives left behind.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I appreciate what my hon. Friend says. I am happy to take interventions, but I have to cover a lot of issues that hon. Members have raised. I hope that, in the time we have left, I have the opportunity to do so.

I know we all agree that every child deserves the opportunity to achieve, thrive and succeed. Where possible, as highlighted by a number of hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns), that should be within a mainstream setting with their friends. However, we are aware that there are significant challenges currently in achieving that. That is why we are prioritising early intervention, which a number of hon. Members have raised, and inclusive provision within mainstream settings.

We know that providing early intervention prevents unmet needs from escalating and supports children to achieve their goals and thrive alongside their peers. We are really committed to working to deliver that for every child in every community. We are doing so by increasing high needs funding by £1 billion, which brings the total funding to £11.9 billion. Suffolk county council is allocated £124 million through the high needs funding block. That is an increase of £10.3 million and a 9% increase per head for two to 18-year-olds.

We know that the high needs funding formula needs to be looked at. It has been largely unchanged because we needed to prioritise making sure that we create a fair funding system, and direct funding to where it is needed and can make the biggest impact. That is why we are allocating funding towards capital to ensure that we have places available where they are needed. The £740 million of high needs capital can be used by local authorities—we will announce the allocations in due course—to deliver new places within mainstream settings, special schools and other specialist settings, and to improve the suitability and accessibility of current buildings. It will also help to tackle the issue of transport, which many hon. Members have raised. If we have mainstream availability of specialist support within a local community, there will be no need to travel such distances.

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Catherine McKinnell]

I am sorry; I will not be able to respond to hon. Members’ queries and concerns if I give way again.

EHCP timeliness was raised by a number of hon. Members, including by my hon. Friends the Members for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern) and for Dartford (Jim Dickson), whose contribution was excellent, and the hon. Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra). We monitor the timeliness of ECHPs, but there is a balance to be struck between issuing them within the timeframes required, which we need to see, and making sure that they achieve the outcome that we want—namely, better opportunities for the children that they are intended to serve. We will continue to monitor that and work with local authorities to improve it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal will be aware of the key role that alternative provision settings such as pupil referral units play in supporting vulnerable children and young people with SEND. We want them to work together with mainstream settings to make sure that we have targeted interventions and support to improve behaviour and attendance and to reduce the risk of exclusions, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin raised.

Speech and language is an important opportunity to intervene at the earliest possible stage for children. We know that children need to find their voice and that an increasing number of children are starting school without having had the support to do that previously. That is why we have prioritised the early language and support for every child programme. We are trialling new and better ways to ensure that we can reach communication needs in early years and primary schools.

I am very conscious of time. I want to let the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) know that I take on board the concerns that he raised. The abuse that he described is abhorrent and disturbing, and not within the current regulations or rules. We are running a consultation on the use of reasonable force, which is open until 29 April 2025 and contributions are welcome.

I am afraid that I have to draw to a close. I thank all hon. Members who have contributed; they made the case for their constituents well. I recognise the work of all those in our education, health and care systems who work with our children and young people with SEND in Suffolk and across the country. We need to deliver the very best for our children and young people, and to give them the best start in life. I am sure that, together, with this determined effort, we can do that.

15:59

[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter]

I thank the Minister for her comments. It is great to hear that this issue continues to be a national priority. Members on both sides of the House will continue to work with the Government to ensure that each of our regions can deliver and help to fulfil that goal. I thank all hon. Members for contributing and look forward to welcoming them to Suffolk Coastal to see it at first hand.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered SEND education support.