Armed Forces Bill

Andrew Snowden Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Francois]

There has been a leak: the hon. Gentleman has clearly had access to my speech. He has put a lot of work into this issue, so perhaps I can meet him halfway with what I am about to say.

In fairness, there are already DFE guidelines that can facilitate the portability of an EHCP from one local education authority to another. The crucial point, however, is that that is by voluntary agreement, and there is no guarantee that if service personnel are transferred at the behest of their commanders, the LEA into which they will move will accept the EHCP on transfer. The essence of amendment 2 is that it would ensure that that process does take place, rather than leaving it as a matter of discretion for the receiving LEA, which itself may be under considerable pressure to meet the demand for SEN support.

Amendment 3, which relates to adoption and fostering, is similar in spirit. It would mean that service personnel who have begun the fostering and adoption process under one local education authority would not have to go again to the back of the queue, as it were, if they were to transfer to another. The spirit of both amendments is the same.

[Mr Andrew Snowden (Fylde) (Con)]

I place on record my thanks to the shadow Minister, the APPG and others for their work on this matter. I have constituents—I am very proud to represent Weeton barracks—who have had to make that choice because of the postcode lottery to which my right hon. Friend refers. Whether an LEA accepts the transfer is down to its discretion. That is such an important point, and I thank him for making it.

[Mr Francois]

My hon. Friend is bearing out the point that there are real-world examples of this issue coming into play, and he has done the Committee a service by reiterating that.

The Minister for Veterans and People kindly met me and my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst) last month to discuss whether the Government might be able to do more on this subject, and in fact the Minister for the Armed Forces referred to that meeting in his remarks a few minutes ago. During the meeting with the Minister for Veterans and People, we suggested—here is the leak—that, given the announcement in the King’s Speech that there would be a new Bill on the whole topic of special educational needs, one way of achieving the aim of the amendment might be to include such a provision in that Bill—in a DFE Bill, rather than an MOD Bill. That would still, at the end of the day, achieve the same desirable outcome. The Minister undertook to go away and look at the matter, including potentially in consultation with colleagues from the DFE. Having received her letter of yesterday, I have to say, more in sorrow than in anger, that I was extremely disappointed in its tone. It was a classic civil service boilerplate reply that bore little relation to the discussion that we had in the Minister’s office. I can only ask her to look at this again, perhaps in the context of the new DFE legislation, as I have just suggested.