SEND Provision and Funding

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Rob Butler

Thursday 11th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

Like everyone else, I will start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) on securing this important debate.

One of the key priorities in my campaign to be elected to this place in 2019 was to give children in the Aylesbury constituency a brilliant start in life—and that means all children, including and, indeed, especially those with special educational needs and disabilities. I am pleased to say that there are several specialist SEND schools in my constituency. I have had the privilege of visiting many of them, including Pebble Brook and Booker Park, Chiltern Way Academy, and the independent Pace Centre. The work they do is awe-inspiring, and I pay tribute to their staff, who constantly strive to give the children for whom they care the best possible opportunities and experiences.

Too often, however, the families of the children with SEND feel that they are being left to fight a ferociously complicated system to get their child into those schools and ensure that they have the support they need. Thankfully, they have local support from people in a similar position, including members of the GRASPS group, which is run by volunteers in Buckinghamshire, but they have told me at length of their concerns about delays in assessments, complexity in form-filling, and then the long waits for the EHCPs about which we have heard so much this afternoon.

The team at Buckinghamshire Council and I have discussed those concerns to try to find ways in which to help, and I know that the team are determined to do so, but it is no surprise that the council has highlighted funding as a major challenge. As we have heard, the cost of SEND education can be exceptionally high, and it is not unusual for the cost of residential placements for children with the most complex and serious needs to run to hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.

The SEND Green Paper and the SEND and alternative provision improvement plan, published in March 2023, made clear the need to update the funding model. The Government are not ignorant to this, and I am pleased with their direction of travel. We have an excellent Minister to drive that forward in the months ahead. I am pleased that £10 billion of high needs funding has been allocated for the coming financial year, representing a cash-terms increase of 12%.

It should be stressed, and it has been, that high needs block funding has nearly doubled in cash terms since 2013-14, which demonstrates this Government’s commitment to helping SEND pupils and their families. However, Buckinghamshire Council fares very poorly compared with many other local authorities, with much lower allocations of funding. The cost to all local authorities of providing support for SEND pupils is increasing dramatically, both because of the number of cases and because of the complexity of need.

Locally, since 2016, there has been a 101% increase in requests for EHCPs. Since 2020, the unit costs for children’s placements have increased by 30%. As a result, Bucks Council is looking at bringing some provision in-house to try to contain some of the costs, but that cannot happen overnight. In the meantime, it must try to find the extra money.

Members from all parties will know that I have a profound interest in youth justice. Having spent many years as a youth magistrate and as a member of the Youth Justice Board, I have always been struck by the disproportionate number of young people with SEND in the criminal justice system. According to data published in 2022 by the Department for Education and the Ministry of Justice, 80% of children cautioned or sentenced for an offence have been recorded as having special educational needs at some stage—80%. That is an appalling statistic.

It cannot be morally right that so many children with SEND wind up on the wrong side of the law and, all too often, behind bars. We must do more to give children with SEND the appropriate education and training so that they have the same potential to live law-abiding lives as their peers, and we must ensure that provision for those who unfortunately end up in the youth justice system is properly tailored and funded.

I end on a positive note. Many Members of this House run an annual competition for local schoolchildren to design their Christmas cards. For the past two years, I have done something slightly different. I have gone out to local SEND schools, one each year, to ask them to produce the design for my card, and the reason is very simple. All too often, children with special educational needs are airbrushed out or considered incapable of achieving the same as their peers, but I take a different view. I want local children with special needs to be celebrated for what they achieve. I want them to be visible, and I want to give them a showcase in the local community. The simple act of getting them to design my Christmas card has enabled me to do that, and I thank the children at Booker Park School, who designed my 2023 card, and the children at Chiltern Way Academy, who did it in 2022. Both cards had excellent pictures that carried real meaning. This emphasises that there is potential in every child, and we need to approach children with special educational needs and disabilities with a spirit of optimism and positivity.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Minister.

Approved Premises (Substance Testing) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Rob Butler

3rd reading
Friday 21st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rob Butler]

I do indeed: it is my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk who is often angry, because he is, I think, 10 years younger than I. I will move on, but I beg the indulgence of the House and apologise profusely for inadvertently misleading the House and Members.

First, I thank the Ministers in the Ministry of Justice. My right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) has been alongside me throughout much of this process, but today, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) has picked up the mantle with her normal expertise on the brief. I am very grateful to her for stepping in today, and to both Ministers for their help, assistance and advice. I echo my hon. Friend’s words and extend my thanks to the Ministry of Justice civil servants whom she has just named. They have worked incredibly diligently on this Bill, devoting many hours of work to its progress, and have been a constant source of information, advice and—at times—just calm reassurance. I also thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, Mr Speaker, and the other Deputy Speakers for your guidance and for ensuring that there was always a firm hand on the tiller.

On the parliamentary side, my thanks go to the Chairman of the Bill Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid), and all the Members who served under his chairmanship. If I may beg the House’s indulgence, for his expert knowledge of procedure, his willingness to answer even the most basic questions, and his warm, reassuring approach to a new MP potentially overwhelmed by the complexities of legislation, I record especial thanks to the Clerk of Private Member’s Bills, who sits at the table today. This would not have been possible without him, so I am deeply grateful to Adam Mellows-Facer. If I have broken protocol by naming him, I apologise, but I hope that all will understand the circumstances of doing so.

I thank my Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson). I also thank the Whip in charge of private Member’s Bills, my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) for her military-like precision and firm guidance, which right now extends to waving me to sit down. I will do so in 15 seconds after I finally, and most importantly, pay tribute to the staff working in approved premises, working alongside people at an incredibly sensitive moment in their lives. As the Minister has summed up so well, we owe a great deal of gratitude to them.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Occupants of the Chair have great sympathy when Members are confused with other Members. It is particularly difficult when the largest part of a person’s physiognomy is hidden: it can sometimes be very difficult, especially when people hide themselves at the far ends of the Chamber, but the hon. Gentleman got through.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Prisons (Substance Testing) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Rob Butler

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 16th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

I rise to speak in support of this excellent Bill, and I must declare my interest: immediately prior to my election, I was a non-executive director of Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and previously spent four and a half years as a member of the Youth Justice Board. In those roles, I visited many prison establishments in England and Wales, and I should add that HMYOI Aylesbury is in my constituency. I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the staff of custodial establishments up and down the country for their work, especially during the coronavirus crisis.

Drugs are the scourge of prisons. Indeed, in one that I visited, I was told that drugs now outranked escape as the main threat. We have heard some of the figures on drug testing, but behind numbers, as always, lie human experiences. I well remember being in a workshop of one category B prison and being overwhelmed by the brilliant craftsmanship of the offenders working there each morning. They would carve or sculpt intricate designs. They were doing work that is in great demand in the outside world. They were motivated and skilled. I asked one of the prisoners what he did in the afternoon, once the vocational training had finished. His answer was simple: “Get high to forget—take drugs so the time goes faster.” That is because, as the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) said, in many prisons the main driver of drug use is boredom. Other prisoners take drugs because they cannot cope. Drugs in prison provide escapism, albeit in an extremely dangerous way. That means that drugs in jail are big business. They generate substantial amounts of money for criminals, both inside and outside the prison estate.

Psychoactive substances, or PS, are of particular concern. They are often harder to intercept on the way into prisons, not least because they can be hidden on ordinary sheets of paper. There have even been cases of fake legal letters that are soaked in psychoactive substances being sent to prison, where they are then cut up into tiny pieces and sold on to other criminals to give them a fleeting high. In a category A prison, I was told that one A4-sized piece of paper soaked in PS can be worth £400.

The criminalisation of possession of psychoactive substances in custodial establishments is a very good thing, but there are always unintended consequences, and it has led to a boon for organised crime gangs operating inside the prison estate. PS are still relatively easy to come by outside prison, meaning, as one prison officer put it to me, that “everyone can now become Pablo Escobar.” It is a terrifying thought. One of the biggest dangers of PS is the unpredictable impact on different individuals. Some prisoners become catatonic. Others engage in extreme behaviours that almost defy imagination. Others still are humiliated.

What all this illustrates is the challenge that faces our prison staff day in, day out, and we as parliamentarians should do anything we can to help. However, our current legislative process to update the list of illegal substances is no longer fit for purpose. Making repeated amendments through secondary legislation to add each new formulation of a substance is cumbersome, slow and inefficient. Adopting the generic definition of a psychoactive substance, as proposed in clause 1 of the Bill, will mean that small alterations to the chemical formulation will not provide a loophole such that prisoners can claim they took nothing illegal. I submit that the proposed change is a necessary and sensible step to improve the ability of HMPPS to tackle PS in the estate.

It is important that we provide HMPPS and all its staff with the right tools to stay one step ahead of the criminals. Prevalence testing is one way to do that, enabling staff to identify new substances that are being taken. Creating an express statutory footing to do so, as proposed in the Bill, is therefore not only wise but necessary. There are also, unfortunately, cases where prescription and other pharmacy medicines are abused by prisoners, and I therefore welcome the intention in the Bill to widen the range of such substances that can be tested for, in order to clamp down on the illicit economy that arises from their misuse.

It is absolutely essential that we have a process of testing for drugs in our prisons and our youth offender institutions that is thorough, effective and able to respond to rapid changes in the market in both illicit and legal substances that are abused in our jails. This is a short Bill, which, on the face of it, makes relatively minor changes to the regime of drug testing, but its impact could be profoundly beneficial. I warmly congratulate my constituency neighbour and good friend Dame Cheryl Gillan on her efforts to make it more straightforward to tackle the curse of drugs in prison, and I thank the hon. Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden) for bringing it to the House on her behalf.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Will the hon. Gentleman reiterate that bit, instead referring to the right hon. Lady as—

[Rob Butler]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan).

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Thank you very much.

Counter-Daesh Update

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Rob Butler

Wednesday 22nd July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I hope we can go just a little faster. I appreciate these are important matters—I am not trying to hurry them—but if we go a little faster, we can have proceedings concluded by 3 o’clock.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

I welcome the Defence Secretary’s statement and particularly the progress that has been made on degrading Daesh. Can my right hon. Friend update the House on what steps the international coalition is taking to ensure that foreign terrorist fighters do not simply move their fighting elsewhere to locations beyond Syria and Iraq?