Academies Bill [Lords]

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Vernon Coaker]

I very much agree and it is important, given that the Government will not amend the Bill, for the Minister to read into the record the criterion that will be used to assess whether a young person has low incidence special needs. I say this as someone who thinks that it is very brave of the Government to propose the measure. But as the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock) said, if there is no defining criterion, we will have a well-intentioned measure, but what will it mean? That is extremely important.

There was a big discussion in the House of Lords and the measure was included in the Bill. A large number of Lords spoke about it and said that it was important. The Government accepted that but the situation has moved on. The hon. Member for Portsmouth South is right; for a local authority or school to be obliged to support a young person with low incidence special needs, do they need a statement? If not, there is no legal obligation—I am not an expert on these laws—on the school or authority to provide anything for that child. Yet everybody, including the Government—they have included it in the clause—thinks that there are young people with low incidence special needs who need additional support that they are not getting through the system.

This is a real problem for the Government to address; it is crucial. I am not trying to be smart or trying to attack; I am just saying that if we want to improve the Bill and we want to make a difference to those with low incidence special needs, as the hon. Member for Portsmouth South said, we have to try to define that, at the very least by the Minister reading it into the record.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

I wanted to add to the points about low incidence special needs, as there are other reasons why it is important to spell out the protection of services provided centrally. In those councils where the cancellation of centrally provided services has taken place on the assumption that schools would buy services back in, there has been a failure to take up that buy-back option, which affects SEN in particular but also other services. That is an important reason why we need that protection to be in the Bill. If not, as my hon. Friend says, Ministers need to take the matter on board so that there is robust protection for centrally provided services. Otherwise, those services will disappear.

[Vernon Coaker]

I agree with my hon. Friend who re-emphasises my point. This is part of the tension within the Bill; independence is to be given to schools. Some may agree with that; we have difficulties with the haste with which it is being done. But what mechanism is there to ensure that local authorities provide for these young people in a way that gives them the support they need?

--- Later in debate ---

[Vernon Coaker]

That is right. The issue is not only the quantity of support services for children with special educational needs, but their quality. There is also the issue of the effectiveness of some interventions. This big area of debate is no doubt outside the scope of what we are discussing at the moment, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the provision of quality.

[Bill Esterson]

Whether we are talking about SEN provision, looked-after children, educational psychologists, behavioural support or other issues, what concerns me and many other Members is how we guarantee that the support will be there when it is needed, whether at school or centrally. There is also the matter of whether that can be legislated for or not. The Minister was beginning to drive at that point in his last intervention. That is what I want to hear about and I am sure that other Members are thinking the same thing.

[Vernon Coaker]

I agree with my hon. Friend; no doubt the Minister will try to pick up that issue in his remarks.

How will special educational needs be monitored? What is the role of the Young People’s Learning Agency? How will schools get help? How effective is the YPLA in respect of the quality of local, centrally provided services? What experience and expertise does the agency have? How will we ensure that all these things are effectively fulfilled? How much will it all cost? Who will be responsible for intervening if a school is not offering effective provision? How will the Secretary of State know that something is not being done? Who would make the decision about any of these failures? There is a huge raft of questions that I hope the Minister can begin to address.

Our amendment is simple. It tries to ensure that a decision is made about the effect on the provision of centrally provided services of decisions about what money should go to individual schools. At the heart of that is the need for better information from the Government about where the balance should be. The amendment seeks to clarify the situation by saying that we must retain sufficient resources at a central level within the local authority to provide the necessary level of support and help for children with special educational needs, notwithstanding that the Bill will delegate large sums to them. What will be the impact of that? It is a leap in the dark—we simply do not know. Frankly, the Government have not provided the level of detail that the Committee requires because they have not had time to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pat Glass]

I accept that that is what the data suggest. I stand here with 25 years of experience and I am simply giving the Committee the benefit of that experience.

[Bill Esterson]

Not only do I agree with my hon. Friend that some academies are artificially changing the arrangements—I am choosing my words carefully, and perhaps the Select Committee should look into this—but many maintained schools have been doing the same thing. That is something that I am familiar with from where I used to live, where schools would artificially depress the number of children described as having SEN, under pressure from local authorities, for financial reasons. There is a danger that this legislation would see that continuing with the academies. That should be looked at in greater detail, as the Chairman of the Select Committee suggests.

[Pat Glass]

I agree with my hon. Friend.

The biggest body blow to centrally supported specialist low incidence SEN services came from delegation targets. In order to reach delegation targets, which were mandatory, local authorities arbitrarily put over the side into schools anything that would take them to the magical 96%. In some local authorities, specialist services were lost and they have never recovered.