Schools White Paper: Every Child Achieving and Thriving

Ed Davey Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the leader of the Liberal Democrats.

[Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement. I declare an interest as my son, John, has an EHCP, which is critical to his education and to our whole family’s wellbeing. That is why we, like so many families, have been dreading today. We all know that the crisis in SEND must end—the fights, the exhaustion, the underfunding and the private profiteering all must change. It is why the Conservatives’ failure to apologise for the crisis really angered me and will have infuriated families across the country. However, as we fix the crisis, children’s rights must not be stripped away. As we consider the Secretary of State’s proposals seriously, we will continue to listen to and champion all the families whose lives could be impacted profoundly.

I have three questions for the Secretary of State. First, early intervention is critical to improving children’s lives and making the whole system affordable, and I worry that these modest changes will not shift the dial. Will the Secretary of State consider investing in universal screening and then active support for the child and their family earlier on?

My second question concerns the plans for EHCPs. Speaking for my family and for many others like mine, it is hard to believe that the range and complexity of needs and disability can be captured in a small number of predefined EHCP packages. Can the Secretary of State guarantee that her changes will mean that the voices of parents—the real experts on their children—will at long last be heard when decisions are made?

Finally, on changes to the pupil premium, which was devised, championed and introduced by our party, will the Secretary of State give a clear commitment that no individual child, wherever they live, will see their pupil premium funding reduced? Will she instead boost the pupil premium to put right the cuts and betrayals of the Conservative party?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who cares deeply about this matter as both a parent and a politician, for the approach he has taken, and I look forward to working with him and his party in the weeks and months to come. We share a commitment to ensuring that the move from one system—one that we can all agree is not working—to a better one is phased and done carefully. I agree that the voices of parents must be heard right throughout that process.

The right hon. Gentleman asks about early support. I completely agree with what he says, which is why we are investing £1 billion in rolling out Best Start family hubs, expanding early years education and school-based nurseries and investing in local authorities’ ability to develop early help. Colleagues will note in the material we have published that we will continue to see an increase in EHCPs in the years to come before we see a plateauing and then a reduction. The reason for that is that we want to do this in a managed way. I hope that we can reduce those numbers more quickly—not for any arbitrary reason or because we are chasing a number, but because we should be supporting children much earlier. The evidence from Sure Start was clear: if we step in earlier and support families, we reduce the need for SEND support later on in school, especially in areas such as speech and language support, because we have met that need more quickly.

I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s point around transition and education, health and care plans. We have already set out some detail on specialist provision packages, which will be shaped by an expert panel independent of Government—we will put that on the statute book. There will also be clear national accountability and national standards to move away from the postcode lottery that we have seen recently. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is also interested in how we can ensure that cases of high need and low incidence are addressed through regional models, which we have committed to considering through the consultation.

The voices of parents will be heard as we move forward. We have launched our consultation, which will run for 12 weeks. There will be events the length and breadth of the country to enable parents to take part in that conversation, and I urge parents, health staff, education staff and others to share their views on what we have published to make sure that we are getting this right.

On the pupil premium and the targeting of disadvantage funding, I am keen to address the fact that free schools meals are quite a blunt way to assess disadvantage in a family. We know that children who are on free school meals or who face persistent disadvantage and poverty right throughout their school career are far more likely to have bad outcomes than children who spend a period of time in poverty. We need a more nuanced approach to how we can better target resource to better improve outcomes for children. We will be consulting on that, and I look forward to discussing it with the right hon. Gentleman further.