Children and Families Bill

Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

103: Clause 30, page 24, line 36, at end insert “including provision in institutions approved by the Secretary of State by virtue of section 41 of this Part”

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendments in this group each refer to a particular aspect of the local offer proposed in Clause 30. I shall speak specifically to Amendments 103 and 109.

Amendment 103 seeks to ensure that the local offer includes information on independent special schools and colleges, outside of a local authority, which have been approved by the Secretary of State under Clause 41. We tabled this amendment before we had seen the more extended draft code of practice, because that requirement was not in the original draft. I acknowledge that it is in the current code of practice but I should be grateful if the Minister could clarify on the record what the words in the draft code mean in terms of the local offer.

Page 47 of the draft code lists the kinds of issues that have to be included in the local offer. It says that it has to include:

“Where to find the list of non-maintained special schools and independent schools catering wholly or mainly for children with SEN, and Independent Specialist Colleges”,

and so on which have been approved by the Secretary of State under Clause 41. However, I am not clear about this. If what is in the local offer is where to find the list, does that mean that parents can expect their child to have access to one of those schools if they satisfy the criteria for any particular school? What the code of practice does not say is that the special schools in other local authority areas are part of that individual local authority’s offer; it is simply about where to find the list. That is not clear enough in terms of specifying such provision as a possible element in the local offer of that local authority. The Minister should state the Government’s intentions and not say, “We will wait until the consultation has ended and then give our response”. That would be helpful to everyone—people outside as well as inside this Committee.

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[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, the amendments in this group seek in different ways to put more detailed information in the Bill regarding the local offer. Let me deal with the issues that noble Lords have raised.

Amendment 103 of the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, seeks to ensure that the local offer includes specialist provision made in the independent sector, in particular that made by institutions covered by Clause 41. I thank the noble Baroness for acknowledging that this issue is in fact covered in the draft code of practice. I think she said that.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

Perhaps I may clarify for the noble Baroness that I acknowledge that there is a reference to the issue in the code of practice. However, as it requires the local offer only to contain information about where to see the list, that is not the same as including the provisions in the local offer. Can she clarify whether the code of practice does include them?

[Baroness Northover]

Indeed. We agree that such provision plays a valuable role in supporting children and young people with SEN. This is reflected in Clause 30 and the associated regulations. The noble Baroness said she recognised that the provisions were mentioned in the draft code of practice in terms of the information to be published, and she pushed for further details about that.

Schedule 1 of the regulations made under Clause 30 will require local authorities, as the noble Baroness noted, to publish information about the services they expect to be available for children and young people with special educational needs for whom they are responsible. I can assure her that this specifically includes provision by institutions approved under Clause 41 both within and outside its area. This is also made clear in chapter 5 of the draft code of practice. I hope that this provides the necessary clarification that she asked me for. Parents can request that independent and non-maintained schools be included in the list produced under Clause 41, and we make that clear in chapter 7 of the draft code at page 111. I hope that that reassures her on that point.

I turn to Amendment 106 from my noble friend Lady Sharp, which was also spoken to by my noble friend Lady Brinton. Schools play a vital part in making special educational provision and have a clear responsibility for ensuring that children with and without education, health and care plans receive appropriate and effective support. It is right that information relating to training, the sharing of good practice and local authority support is made available. We believe that this detail is best placed in the regulations and the SEN code of practice. We believe that Clause 30, the associated regulations and the guidance in the SEN code of practice provide a common framework for the local offer that is sufficiently robust and clear.

Schedule 1 of the local offer regulations states that local offers must include information on

“the special educational provision secured by the local authority in mainstream schools, mainstream post-16 institutions, pupil referral units and alternative provision Academies”,

and,

“how expertise in supporting children and young people with special educational needs is secured for teaching staff and others working with those children and young people”.

The draft SEN code of practice elaborates on this by making clear that the local offer should include information on,

“local arrangements for collaboration between institutions to support those with SEN (for example, cluster or partnership working between post-16 institutions or shared services between schools)”.

Noble Lords will know that there is a lot more detail in the code of practice, and I hope it will be of assistance to them.

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[Baroness Northover]

I will refer that to the department for it to look at further. The department will know, as do I, how determined the noble Lord is, so I am sure that it will look at that very seriously.

I remember the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, dealing with Amendment 117. I assure him that Clause 27 already requires the local authority to keep its education and social care provision under review. I believe that we talked about that in earlier groups, but if I have not addressed the noble Lord’s questions adequately, or he wants more information, I am very happy to add to that. I am sure that we will be coming back to that in due course, by the looks of the groupings.

I hope that I have addressed most of the issues that noble Lords raised and that the noble Baroness will be happy to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her comprehensive response to the various and important points of detail that Members of the Committee raised in relation to Clause 30.

I will make two comments. First, I thank the Minister particularly for the clarification in respect of Amendment 103. That is now written into the record. Although she said that it is made clear on page 111 of the draft code of practice that parents can request a school in that sector, I think that Chapter 5 could be clearer. However, I am glad that she has put that on the record.

Secondly, the Minister said that Amendment 106B, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, would be taken back and considered in the round in the context of the longer debate that we had about inclusion of all disabled children. That is welcome. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has raised some important points in the publication that most people will have received in the last day or so on aligning the Children and Families Bill with the reasonable adjustment duty in the Equality Act. I believe that was the main point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. That is another angle from which to come to this issue about the inclusion of disabled children, and we will consider it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 103 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 112, standing in my name; to Amendment 118, tabled by my noble friend Lady Wilkins, to which I have added my name; and to Amendment 114, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Ramsbotham.

All the amendments reflect the strong view that the local offer should be strengthened to ensure that it is a statement that parents, children and young people can rely on and for which, particularly—the noble Lord, Lord Low, stressed this—the local authority can be held accountable. In order to do this, the amendments would create the minimum standards that have been called for both by the SEN sector and by the Education Select Committee.

It is right to acknowledge that in the lead up to the Bill arriving in this House, and, indeed, while it was in the other place, there was considerable debate across the sector as to whether minimum standards for the local offer were a good idea. People tried to evaluate the impact of having minimum standards or not. It is also fair to say that the broad and strong consensus now is that minimum standards are necessary to ensure reliability and accountability, otherwise there is a danger that we may end up with a postcode lottery of services. Again as the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, this is not about being prescriptive with local authorities but rather ensuring that no child or young person is left behind or suffers from a poorer service because of where they live.

The Government have said, and probably will say again, that they feel that minimum standards will create a race to the bottom, that they will constrain parents’ and young people’s ability to influence the local authority to increase service provision, and that that is to be avoided. The opposite is true. Equally one could argue that if you do not set a minimum there is a risk that councils will deliberately weaken their offer and undercut other councils to avoid families moving in because of resource constraints. There is a real risk that the quality of service locally will be entirely dependent on budgets and will be reduced.

Some organisations within the sector, for example, the RNIB, NDCS and Sense, have said that in the absence of any expectations on minimum standards, local authorities with better provision could reduce it in line with poorer neighbouring provision, and that too many services—I agree with this—are already at the bottom or below what parents should reasonably expect. The Government should move on this.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I seem to be a lone voice in the Committee today as I support Clause 30 in its current form. We should resist making any further amendment to the clause that would make the measures more prescriptive than they are already. To do so would needlessly hinder local provision for local issues that are not foreseeable from a national point of view. I therefore cannot support Amendment 118 and the others in the group which seek to introduce minimum standards for the local offer.

It is of concern to me that by introducing central prescription we would reduce the flexibility of local authorities to allow for local solutions. Government departments are unable to see the detail that is based on the daily contact and conversations with parents and young people and are unable to respond to individual and local needs. They cannot do that in the way that a local authority can. With a variance in funding for education, including SEN provision, across the nation’s local authorities such prescriptive measures could damage in a very real way the ability of local government to cater for the needs of local residents.

SEN provision varies between local authorities due to the nature and size of the local population, with greater needs for levels of service in some areas and much less requirement in others. By allowing local authorities to control their own provision, which these amendments would restrict, those authorities will be better able to provide those required specialist services. I always think of the example of a child with severe autism, who may require ballet lessons which would not be part of an offer. If a local authority is stretched to provide financial support for the things that it has to do, this removes its flexibility to deal with individuals on the basis of their need.

A serious concern regarding these amendments is that they would place duties on local authorities to secure a minimum level of health provision, when the body responsible for this is not the local authority but the National Health Service. It is entirely understandable that local authorities should be very wary of being responsible for provision over which they have no direct control. I agree with the references made earlier to the Minister’s view that too much prescription can severely limit flexibility and innovation in service provision.

We often heard negative comments today about local authorities’ provision. There is of course always room for improvement but with so many good quality provisions being made and so much work going on with parents and children in local authorities, our view should be that the aim of local authorities in this area is to provide a good service. We should not set expectations at a level that just will not be available but allow flexibility, and allow local authorities to create the right services for the people in their locality.