Education, Health and Care Plans

Debate between Andrew George and Marie Goldman

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Marie Goldman]

Absolutely. Parents’ trust in the system is important, so we need to show that we are listening to them. We also need to show that we are giving them the information they need to alleviate their stress. Someone who has a child with special educational needs knows that their child needs extra support. This is already a stressful time in their life; they then have to sit and wait for an EHCP to land in their inbox, perhaps in week 19 —it is supposed to be 20 weeks, so of course it should land in week 19—but then it does not turn up, and keeps on not turning up. That is incredibly stressful, and it takes away parents’ trust in the system. We should be more transparent about that.

We talk about an EHCP being issued within 20 weeks, but across England 37.4% of decisions took six months or longer—that is just ridiculous—and 5.7% took a year or longer. That is completely unacceptable, and it leaves parents in a very difficult place. We need to be more honest with parents and to make that information much more available to them. My new clause 3 to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would help to make the system much more transparent for parents by making local authorities publish how well they are performing against those statutory deadlines. That would be much better for parents.

What is the impact on children? We must remember that we are not talking about random numbers or about figures on a spreadsheet somewhere; these are real children who have real lives, real parents and real families. They have aspirations in life, and we need to support them. What does all this mean for them? One SEND professional wrote to me about one child’s case:

“This child, who is autistic, non-verbal, and has sensory processing challenges, applied for an Education, Health, and Care Plan (EHCP) in October 2023. It is now January 2025, and they are still waiting for their EHCP to be issued. In the meantime, they are placed in a mainstream school with no tailored support. The result has been incredibly stressful for the child, their family, and the staff working with them. The school has now reached a point where they cannot cope, and the child is being home-schooled, isolated from peers and without access to the specialized education they need and deserve.”

One SEND co-ordinator, who is also a teacher, wrote to me:

“It is very frustrating with the length of time it is taking for EHCPs to be finalised. Although they are back-dating the funding (which is great), by the time the EHCP actually is agreed, it is often too late for parents to request school placements ready for a transition at the start of the school year, which is often what we need it for.”

There is a preference for mainstream, and I hear the Government say that we should educate as many children as possible in mainstream. I do not fundamentally disagree, but mainstream is not suitable for all children, and certainly not when mainstream schools do not have the resources they need to provide education and support.

Mainstream sounds good in principle. However, Contact—a charity for families with disabled children—wrote to me, saying, “Local Authorities like Essex”—again, that is where I am—

“are reducing the provision in section F for a child with an EHCP as they believe that a lot of the provision in section F comes under ordinarily available provision, which they say the school can provide as standard. All the special educational provision that a child with an EHCP needs is legally required to be stated in section F of an EHCP. It is through section F that there is a legal duty for Local Authorities to make this provision. Parents have been told by schools that there is no funding for SEN provision or ordinarily available support. How can children be reliant on SEN support when there is no funding for it?”

Schools are really struggling to deal with the situation. The idea of mainstream and of “ordinarily available” provision is great, but not if schools are not provided with the funding they need. I know that the Government can say, “Well, we have increased the funding for schools,” and they have also increased teacher pay, which is great— teachers absolutely should be paid more—but they have also told schools that teacher pay needs to be funded out of their budgets, which makes the situation very difficult.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I must congratulate my hon. Friend on her preparation for this debate, which has attracted so many people to Westminster Hall today—except, of course, from the party that created a lot of the problems we now face. On her point about mainstreaming and special school education, does she agree not only that many rural areas are underfunded but that people in those areas face the additional challenge of expensive home-to-school transport to access specialist provision, because there is insufficient budget for that transport? That issue needs to be addressed if we are to have an even playing field across the country.

[Marie Goldman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that really important point. I do not live in a rural area, so it is easy for me to overlook issues such as this. However, I do know that many councils have raised it; indeed, to be fair to Essex county council, it has raised it with me. When we talk about root-and-branch reform of the system, we need to make sure that we address the whole system and everything that goes with it, including transport. My hon. Friend raises an important point, and I thank him very much for that.

What is the impact on the school budget? One primary school is funding 90 hours of learning support assistant time a week because there is no EHCP, and it is having to find that funding out of its own budget. That is not through lack of trying to get EHCPs. The school said that it had applied for an ECHP for one child in January 2024, but that child has not even seen an educational psychologist yet.

Schools tell me that they do not have the buildings and the other resources to be able to safely look after these children using ordinarily available provision.

Holiday and Second Homes Regulation: Cornwall and Isles of Scilly

Debate between Andrew George and Marie Goldman

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Andrew George]

The hon. Member is absolutely right. On the one hand, we are trying to address the desperate housing needs of local families. We have in excess of 20,000 families on the local housing register, and we know that is merely the tip of the iceberg—the need is a great deal more. On the other, a lot of local families are being evicted from their private rented accommodation to make way for yet more holiday lets. If we do not recognise that, we are failing to grasp the full picture, so he makes a strong point.

I acknowledge that this is an important part of the Cornish economy, but it is worth noting that when one looks for accommodation in places such as Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, the hotel and guesthouse sector is just as—if not more—important, in the sense that it competes with the holiday letting sector without many of the incentives and benefits that the self-catering sector enjoys. For example, many operate above the VAT threshold, whereas those in the holiday letting sector, if they take it down to a single property, do not. Of course, they face many other regulations as well.

[Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that second and holiday homes have a big impact on the hospitality sector, because businesses find it difficult to find accommodation for their staff, especially in places like Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly where there is limited accommodation, which then makes it difficult for them to run their businesses?

[Andrew George]

That is absolutely the case. As a visitor to the Isles of Scilly, my hon. Friend knows that that is a significant problem, because people cannot commute to the Isles of Scilly to work. It is difficult to commute to work for businesses providing those kinds of jobs in many of the coastal areas around Cornwall, and many people find themselves living in very informal settings, including caravans, because nothing else is available to them.

I will rapidly run through some of the regulations concerned: council tax; small business rate relief; the furnished holiday lettings scheme; holiday business registration, which the last Government proposed, and the planning use class changes. First, on council tax, going back to the pre-history where this all originated, when the Conservatives originally introduced the council tax system—what they called the community charge—they introduced a 50% council tax discount for second homes, because they said second home owners were not using all the services and therefore should not have to pay for them. That was the justification back in the 1990s.