Oral Answers to Questions

Alistair Strathern Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

5. What steps she is taking to improve support for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

[Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

7. What steps she is taking to improve support for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

[Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)]

18. What steps she is taking to improve support for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gillian Keegan]

We need to do all we can to support children with special educational needs; they are vulnerable and need the support as early as possible. We have programmes in place to support local authorities, but the biggest thing that we are doing is increasing the number of special educational needs school places. This will be the largest increase in a generation—60,000 more school places—and it is in stark contrast to when Labour was last in power, when the number of places reduced by 4,000. That is something we are very focused on doing. Many of those have already been delivered, some are work in progress and some will be in the hon. Member’s area.

[Alistair Strathern]

Far too many families know what a battle it can be to secure an EHCP assessment for their child, but for forces families this battle can become a recurring nightmare, as they are forced to restart the process all over again if required to move base before it completes. It cannot be right that those who sacrifice so much for our country are so let down by the current assessment system. How can we put this right?

[Gillian Keegan]

Of course, we are always looking to improve the system and we do have an improvement plan in place. I will take away the hon. Gentleman’s specific point about people who move around from place to place, but the most important and fundamental thing is that we have increased the budget, which has now gone up to £10.5 billion—a 60% increase in the last few years. We are also investing in building the right provision, the number of educational psychologists and the workforce. We have a thorough plan in place and we are working to deliver it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

My right hon. Friend issues a timely and important reminder and we are very clear on that with schools. We also, of course, part-fund Educate Against Hate, which has materials available, and I know that schools also seek to go to lengths in most cases to make sure that when tackling controversial current affairs, they are doing so in an entirely impartial way.

[Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

T10. While it is welcome that Ministers are finally investing in childcare, the scheme just is not working, with local providers telling me it falls far short of what they need to meet demand, exacerbated by the especially low rate paid in central Bedfordshire. Will Ministers change course to make sure that central Bedfordshire families can finally access the childcare they need?

[David Johnston]

Again, the first stage of this roll-out has gone incredibly well, with more than 200,000 children now benefiting. Labour MPs should spend less time criticising our roll-out and more in asking their Front Bench what their plan is, because it is supposed to be like the creation of the NHS.