Oral Answers to Questions

Gagan Mohindra Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Catherine McKinnell]

The Department’s home-to-school travel policy aims to ensure that no child is prevented from accessing education due to a lack of transport. I am keen to understand how well home-to-school transport is supporting children to access educational opportunity. I am working closely with officials on that, and I will bear my hon. Friend’s comments and concerns in mind as that work continues.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I start by wishing you, Mr Speaker, and the House a happy Commonwealth Day.

Conservative-led Hertfordshire county council has done excellent work in supporting children with SEND, in my constituency and across the county, while seeing a 27% increase in requests for EHCPs in 2024. How is the Education Secretary directing her Department to provide further assistance to councils such as Hertfordshire, which is having to find more and more money from its budget to support students with SEND?

[Catherine McKinnell]

We recognise the challenges in the area that the hon. Gentleman represents. A SEND improvement board chaired independently by Dame Christine Lenehan oversees progress and provides challenge. We know that the system needs wholesale reform; we are working at pace and will make an announcement as soon as possible.

SEND Education Support

Gagan Mohindra Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) on securing this really important debate.

Education is, and always will be, one of my top priorities. I am lucky enough to have visited many of my schools in South West Hertfordshire to see the excellent work that teachers are doing to ensure that every one of the children in my constituency has a good or excellent education. However, the statutory framework around parent choice should be working for schools, not against them. In my constituency, 17% of children have special educational needs, and I regularly receive correspondence and surgery requests from parents and constituents who are going through the process of trying to get an education, health and care plan for their child, or are dealing with the implementation of one.

I am glad that Hertfordshire county council has made progress in this area and is continuing to do so. It is important that progress continues to be made. As someone who is dyslexic, I understand at first hand the frustrations posed by special educational needs and learning disabilities, and how important it is that those with SEND have the support they need to succeed in school.

From conversations with schools in my area and officers at Hertfordshire county council, it is clear that the parent choice framework needs to change. Schools are gaining reputations for being good at educating children with special needs. That is something that all schools should strive for, but it has led to a higher concentration of children with EHCPs in some schools and very low numbers in others, placing a financial burden and additional pressure on the schools that provide such valuable support for children who need it. That should not be the case. All schools should be able to support children with special educational needs; it should not be left to a select few. Every parent wants the best education for their children, and that would allow all schools to continue to provide a top-quality education for all. I urge the Minister to consider changes to the statutory framework.

--- Later in debate ---

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) on securing this important debate.

Another week, another debate on SEND. Since the start of this Parliament, barely a week has gone by when we have not had questions or debates, either in this Chamber or the main Chamber, on special educational needs and disability provision. From what we have heard today—I particularly thank the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Jodie Gosling) for her courage in sharing her constituent’s moving story—we know that every Member’s inbox is bulging with casework from constituents about the dire crisis in SEND, which is why these debates are so oversubscribed. We are also getting report after report. In the last few months, the National Audit Office, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Public Accounts Committee have all come out with the same damning verdict about a broken system, with money coming in but outcomes for children going down.

These are some of our most vulnerable children and young people, and we as a society must do our best to meet their needs. We know that families face a postcode lottery, with delays that can last months or even years and vulnerable children missing out on the support that they deserve and need. With special schools full, mainstream schools struggling to provide appropriate support because their budgets are so overstretched, and spiralling high-needs deficits leaving many local authorities on the brink of bankruptcy, it is clear that urgent reform is needed.

As we heard in a Westminster Hall debate just a few weeks ago, the process to get an education, health and care plan is often far too lengthy and far too adversarial. Families are increasingly forced to take their cases to tribunal, with the number of cases doubling since 2014. Local authorities lose almost all those cases, wasting annually over £70 million of public money that could be spent on supporting children and young people rather than fighting unnecessary legal battles. Given the huge rise in demand for support, and the previous Conservative Government’s failure to keep up with that demand, local authorities are too often struggling to meet their statutory responsibilities, forcing families to navigate a broken system to secure even the most basic support. As the former Education Secretary Gillian Keegan described it, it is a “lose, lose, lose” system for all.

Ministers have repeatedly, and quite rightly, stressed the need for mainstream schools to be more inclusive in order to meet the rising need for special needs support. I recently visited Stanley school in my Twickenham constituency which, like two other nearby primary schools, has a specialist resource provision. Children with complex needs are able to spend time with dedicated teaching assistants for support, but they have the opportunity to play, socialise and participate, where appropriate, in lessons and other activities with children in the school who are not part of the SRP.

As the hon. Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper) referenced, we are seeing falling rolls in schools and space opening up. SRPs will be a key intervention in our approach to ensuring that mainstream schools can be more inclusive. However, finding and keeping the staff to support children in SRPs or other mainstream settings—or indeed in special school settings—is an ongoing challenge. SRPs need to be properly funded but, as things stand, the headteacher at Stanley explained to me, the maths just does not add up for him. He explained that his wider school budget is having to plug the shortfall in SRP funding. If we are to tempt schools to have SRPs, we are going to have to make sure that they have the resources to provide that SRP.

Support staff costs have risen over the past two years, with unfunded pay increases and increases in employer’s national insurance contributions on the horizon. We know that local authorities, health services and schools are all struggling to recruit the number of staff that they need to meet growing demand—both to undertake assessments in the first place, when a child might be eligible for an EHCP, and then to meet that need in school.

A national survey of headteachers found that only 1% of senior school leaders believed that they had enough funding to meet the needs of pupils with SEND. A report by London Councils on SEND inclusion in schools found that stakeholders from across the sector said that they would be able to be more inclusive if they had more funding. That is why the Liberal Democrats are calling for increased funding for local authorities to reduce the financial burden on schools. We know that the £6,000 per pupil notional SEND budget, which each school is meant to allocate before applying for an EHCP, is, frankly, a fiction in today’s school finances, given the pressures on budgets up and down the country.

When I visited Stanley the other week, and when I visited a beautiful new school, Belmont school in Durham, last week, I was told by both headteachers that for many mainstream schools, the disincentive to take on children with SEND is the way that standard assessment tests and other public exam results are reported. Frankly, certain young people in those mainstream settings are not in a position to sit their SATs or GCSEs, yet their results, which will essentially be nil, are reported in the schools’ performance measures, which are available publicly. In a competitive schooling environment, where parents vote with their feet for the schools that typically have the highest grades, that sadly results in an incentive for too many schools to actively avoid taking SEND children on to their rolls. There are schools that are doing the right thing and including those children, but, as the Minister is considering how to make mainstream school more inclusive, I wonder what consideration she and other Ministers have given to this issue.

I would like to spend a moment focusing on special schools. For children for whom a mainstream setting is not right, special schools should, and in many cases do, provide the necessary educational support. However, we know that in May 2023, two thirds of special schools were at or over capacity, and the impact of that is children with complex needs being inappropriately accommodated in the mainstream, where their needs cannot be met, which sometimes has a detrimental impact on other pupils and, indeed, staff. Many parents in those situations feel forced to home school. We know that parents who feel that they have had no option but to home school are concerned about what some of the provisions of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will mean for their being able to ensure that their child is in an appropriate environment.

The lack of specialist provision is being played out in the eye-watering SEND transport costs that local authorities are having to fund to send children out of area. Add to that the cost of private special schools, which are being funded by the taxpayer. I will return to that subject in a moment, but I want to take this moment to welcome the provision in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that will allow local authorities to open new special schools. For too long, local authorities that have identified a need, and that want to bid for funding and open special schools, have been turned down. A number of applications from local authorities that wanted to open special schools were turned down during the previous Parliament by the previous Government, so I welcome that change in the Bill.

Returning to private special schools, many private SEND schools provide an excellent education and are run as not-for-profit charities. However, the Minister is aware—I have raised this issue previously, not least in Committee on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill—that private equity firms and other profiteering companies are increasingly entering the special school market, as they see it, at an extortionate cost. Councils are spending £1.3 billion on independent and non-maintained special schools, which is more than double what they spent just a few years earlier. The cost of an independent special school place is, on average, double the cost of a state special school place. Some private equity companies running these schools are making a profit of 20%-plus. Typically, the private equity-owned providers, not the other private sector providers, have the highest level of profitability in the sector. I feel that our most vulnerable children and our local authorities are being held to ransom by some of these companies, which are not behaving in the best interests of our children.

[Mr Mohindra]

Is the hon. Lady suggesting that we ban private equity companies from being involved in the sector?

[Munira Wilson]

No. As a Liberal—I have said this many a time—I believe in a mixed economy in many of our public services. I was about to make the point that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill contains important measures to stop profiteering in children’s social care. When I proposed an amendment in Committee to extend the profit cap to special schools, I explained that the private equity companies that are making a ridiculous amount of profit in the children’s social care sector are also running private special schools. Some are not making a huge profit, but I do not think a 20%-plus profit margin in a taxpayer-funded system is acceptable, which is why my Liberal Democrat colleagues and I proposed an amendment to the Bill to extend the profit cap to special schools. I was disappointed that Labour Members and Ministers voted against it, but I again urge them to consider the proposal. We know we are in a cash-constrained environment—we hear every day from Ministers, not least the Chancellor, about how little money there is—but savings can be found in this area, and we can invest them back into our most vulnerable children.

My final proposal for Ministers, which the Minister has heard me talk about before, is that for our most complex children, we need a national body for SEND to fund those with exceptionally high needs who face a postcode lottery of provision across the country, and pose a particular risk to local authorities where those needs arise. That body could also have oversight of standards and budgets across the country.

I know that SEND is high on the Minister’s agenda. We are still waiting to hear how the £1 billion announced in the Budget will be allocated, but I fear that, given the £2.7 billion of local authority SEND deficits, it will disappear into a black hole. We have been promised reforms later this year, but our children cannot afford to wait. Children missing out on an education will never get that time back. Every child, no matter their needs or background, should be given the opportunity to thrive and fulfil their potential, yet too many children with SEND are simply not getting that right now.

Antisocial Behaviour: Hertfordshire

Gagan Mohindra Excerpts

Friday 24th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[David Taylor]

I entirely agree, and I would point to some of the visits I have made to businesses in my constituency because, as the hon. Member will know, there are similar themes. It is a slightly different point, but I am grateful that this Government are planning to bring in new measures to crack down on shoplifting, which is also a big problem and often goes unpunished.

Hemel Hempstead, my community, is in a tough position. In January 2024 we were the worst major town in Hertfordshire for antisocial behaviour, with more than 200 reported incidents. The town centre is one of the most dangerous towns in Hertfordshire. Local stakeholders told me just this morning that Dacorum has the highest number of vulnerable children at risk of exploitation from drug dealers and county lines in the county. The overall crime rate in 2023 was 95 crimes per 1,000 people. Damningly, between 2014 and 2024, the crime rate doubled. On the doorstep and at my surgeries, many Hemel residents have asked me why we are in this mess. I tell them that we had a Conservative Government and, until 2023, a Conservative borough council; we have a Conservative county council and Conservative police and crime commissioner, and we had a Conservative MP.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

The hon. Member’s party has been in government for over six months now. What has changed in that time?

[David Taylor]

The hon. Member knows that I try to work with him locally in a constructive way, and I will in future, but the problems that we have in Hemel Hempstead are 14 years in the making. Some of them go back 20 years, because of long-standing issues. It is fair to point out that the people in charge of those issues at the time could have done more to help resolve them. He will know that I am trying to find solutions together and not point the finger or look backwards, but the numbers do not lie.

It is impossible to ignore the indisputable fact that in the time that the Conservatives were in power—14 years nationally and longer locally—local crime has skyrocketed. They ignored anti-social behaviour, cut our police force by 20,000 officers nationally and took 60p out of every pound from local authorities. Objectively, that is why we are where we are. It is their mess, and people in my patch are the ones dealing with it. In the time that the Conservatives were in power, crime in Hemel doubled. I defy anyone to defend that record.

[Mr Mohindra]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous in allowing me to intervene again. Similar to parts of my constituency, Hemel has great transport links. County lines is a relatively new phenomenon, and one of the downsides of our road and train network is that crime is coming out of London. Has he worked with the London Labour Mayor to address those issues?

Government’s Childcare Expansion

Gagan Mohindra Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for giving me advance sight of his statement.

Labour Members may take this opportunity to create a fictitious narrative about the alleged failures of the former Government on early years and childcare, but it will not wash with us and it will not wash with the British public. That is simply because our record on childcare is strong, so let me take this opportunity to remind the Government and the House exactly what it is.

In 2010, we extended the three and four-year-old entitlement, commonly taken as 15 hours a week for 38 weeks of the year. In 2013, we introduced 15 hours of free early education a week for disadvantaged two-year-olds. In 2017, we doubled the three and four-year-old entitlement to 30 hours per week for working parents, as well as introducing tax-free childcare, which meant that for every £8 people paid in, the Government would automatically add £2 to support childcare costs—on top of the free-hours entitlement. In March 2023, we announced the biggest expansion of childcare by a UK Government in history. It was intended to give working parents access to 30 hours of free childcare a week, from when their children were nine months old until they started school, and to save families an average of £6,900 a year. Our reason for doing that was simple: childcare is one of the biggest costs facing working families today, as well as one of the biggest barriers to parents returning to work if and when they wish to do so. I want to take this opportunity to thank early years providers, local authorities, membership bodies, and other key partners who have made delivering this possible.

I welcome the fact that the Government have finally agreed that rolling out our childcare expansion will empower parents to make the choice that is best for them, and are committed to doing so. I am, however, disappointed that they did not do more to spread awareness among parents of the childcare entitlements that became available in September. Will the Minister tell us whether there was any unspent budget for this, and will he now commit himself to increasing the publicising of childcare roll-outs so that parents are rightly aware of their entitlements?

Of course the Opposition welcome the expansion of childcare and support the idea of utilising unused space in schools, which provides a single point of contact for parents with multiple children, but will the Minister tell us how many childcare places the first 300 new or expanded nurseries will provide? The Government previously pledged to deliver 3,000 nurseries to support 100,000 childcare places. What will be the timeline for the delivery of the rest of those nurseries, and are the Government still committed to the creation of 100,000 childcare places across the country in the long term?

The Education Secretary has confirmed that early years and childcare are her No. 1 priority, which I wholeheartedly support. However, the Government’s education tax will mean that children in classes in which one child is five years old, or is due to turn five by the end of the year, will be subject to the Government’s retrograde education tax regardless of their age. Will the Minister confirm that that is indeed a broken promise? How can the British public trust the Education Secretary’s word that she will prioritise early years and childcare when she has already broken a promise within the first 100 days of a Labour Government?

[Stephen Morgan]

I thank the shadow Minister for his response, and welcome him to his place. I know that he will want to be a keen champion for the early years sector, and I was glad to hear him welcome the update that I have given to the House.

As I said in my statement, Labour is committed to the delivery of expanded entitlement across Government. The last Government left significant challenges, but we are not shirking that responsibility. With Labour, the early years sector can rest assured that we will be working tirelessly to deliver a wider sea change in early education, as well as high and rising standards throughout the education system.

Let me now deal with some of the hon. Gentleman’s specific points. It is clear to me from my consultation and engagement with parents and providers so far that we have inherited a pledge without a plan, and the consequences of that are inherited delivery challenges relating to workforce and places. I appreciate the points that the hon. Gentleman made about the workforce; I believe by resetting the relationship with the workforce, we can have a much more positive relationship with the sector in the future.

Over 300,000 children have benefited from the entitlement offer since September this year, which demonstrates that we are actively engaging and working with parents to promote opportunities to take up the offer. We will continue to do so.

On school-based nurseries, the pilot during the testing phase is for 300 places from April. Our ambition is for 3,000 places over the course of this Parliament. I look forward to working with the hon. Member constructively to bring about the change that early years education so desperately needs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gagan Mohindra Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Samantha Dixon (City of Chester) (Lab)]

6. What steps she is taking to help ensure the availability of high-quality childcare.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

7. What steps her Department is taking to increase the number of childcare places.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)]

At the spring statement, we announced the single largest investment in childcare in England ever. By 2027, the Government will be spending in excess of £8 billion, doubling the amount that we do now and helping working families with their childcare costs.

[Claire Coutinho]

As I have mentioned, we are putting the single largest ever investment into childcare over the next few years, to provide funding to settings such as the one she mentioned. We are also looking at things such as workforce, which we know can be a challenge, making sure that we remove barriers to additional routes to entry.

[Mr Mohindra]

South West Hertfordshire is home to lots of young couples, particularly those who have moved out of London to start their families. Could the Minister tell the House how her Department is supporting new parents as they return to work?

[Claire Coutinho]

That is a huge priority for this Government. The funding that we are setting out will provide parents with support worth, on average, £6,500 a year from maternity leave right up to primary school. We are doing additional work to support things such as wraparound care.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gagan Mohindra Excerpts

Monday 17th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

One thing that we have tried to do in the reforms is get under the bonnet and find out why local authorities are struggling to deliver. That is why we are setting out a specialist workforce strategy and looking at initial teacher training: to ensure that we can catch things early and address them. I reassure the hon. Lady that we published the strategy in tandem with the Department of Health and Social Care, because we know that it is critical to achieving that.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

It was recently proposed that the caretaker’s bungalow at Bridgewater Primary School in Berkhamsted was to be used for adult social care purposes, against the wishes of the school and many parents, who wanted to use the space to provide wraparound care provision. Of course I recognise the need for adult residential care, but does the Minister agree that we should be jumping at such opportunities to provide on-site provision for SEND students?

[Claire Coutinho]

That particular decision will be one for the local council, but one thing I will say is that we are asking areas to set out local inclusion plans, not only so that they can assess all the need in their area, but so that we can assess whether they are meeting it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gagan Mohindra Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

Absolutely. We take the condition of schools very seriously, and we will be publishing data. We have collected a lot of data on schools—1.2 billion lines of data—and every time a school is identified as having a risk, it is acted on immediately.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

T4. My constituent, Ms Bhaduri Patel, came to speak to me at my recent surgery in Chorleywood. Her daughter Keya has special educational needs and is currently being kept at home, as she cannot get the support required to have a mainstream education. What is the Minister doing to work with councils such as Hertfordshire County Council, to ensure that pupils such as Keya can access the support they need?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)]

I am so sorry to hear about the position of Keya. There are things we are doing, including increasing access to specialist school spaces and improving the offer in schools, and I will be setting out more detail within the next week.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gagan Mohindra Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

Our high-quality apprenticeship do not just satisfy us; they satisfy the thousands of people undertaking them. There have been 130,000 apprenticeship starts in the first quarter of this academic year, which is up by 43% on the same period last year.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I am really proud of the many outstanding schools in my constituency, but it is important to remember that a degree is not the only route to a successful career. Does the Minister agree that apprenticeships are just as vital as university degrees, and will she arrange for the right Minister to meet me ahead of Apprenticeship Week, starting 7 February, to discuss what more can be done to promote apprenticeships?

[Michelle Donelan]

Both I and the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), who is the Skills Minister, will be delighted to meet our hon. Friend. I absolutely agree with him on the importance of apprenticeships, and that is why we have just launched our new skills campaign, Get the Jump.

Education (Careers Guidance in Schools) Bill

Gagan Mohindra Excerpts

Report stage
Friday 14th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mark Jenkinson) on bringing forward this Bill. As a former governor of a primary school, a chairman of governors of a further education college, and a governor at an autistic school, I have seen at first hand how important it is to ensure that children up and down this country understand the opportunities that they have. Part of our role as elected Members of this House is to make sure that children appreciate that they have opportunities that others around the world may not have. It is always a stark reminder when I am told that about 75% of women in the world are illiterate. For us, that should be a crying shame.

Anderson School (Chigwell)

Gagan Mohindra Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con) [R]]

I am grateful to be given the opportunity of this Adjournment debate to raise a matter about which I have been concerned since before I was elected to this House. For the sake of the record, let me say that I was a district councillor and a county councillor for Chigwell in Essex, in the constituency of Epping Forest, before I was privileged to join these Benches. The Anderson School is a specialist school for autistic children and young people situated in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Dame Eleanor Laing). Again, for the record, let me say that I became a governor of the school for a short period to actively help turn around its future. It was appropriate for me to stand down as a governor when I was selected as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for South West Hertfordshire, and it remains one of my few regrets that I had to relinquish that role when I moved to Hertfordshire. I know that my right hon. Friend has consistently shared my concerns. She has been in correspondence about this matter for well over a year with Essex County Council, the Anderson Foundation, the National Autistic Society and the Minister’s colleague, Baroness Berridge of The Vale of Catmose.

The matter has become sufficiently serious to require the attention of the House because if the National Autistic Society is permitted to go ahead with its plans to hand over the school buildings to the London Borough of Redbridge, the Anderson School as initially imagined will be destroyed, and with it the hopes and dreams of many autistic young people.

The Anderson School is not an ordinary special educational needs establishment. It was designed and built for a very specific cohort of people, for whom Essex County Council had identified a need that could not be met in any other school. It is not an exaggeration to say that the school is a pioneer in the provision of opportunities for autistic children who have the potential for high academic achievement but whose mental health issues would make it impossible for them to flourish in a mainstream school. I am led to believe that most of the children who attended the school were heading for university, college or meaningful paid employment. It is the only school of its kind in the area—indeed, it is one of very few in the whole country. It is about to be destroyed because of a series of unfortunate decisions taken by the National Autistic Society.

The Anderson Foundation, a charitable foundation, raised the funds to build this pioneering school on the land of the former Tottenham Hotspur training ground at Chigwell. The land on which the school is built is green belt, and the protection of green belt is very important to the planning authority, Epping Forest District Council, situated as it is between the urban sprawl of London and the Essex countryside. Strict conditions were therefore attached to the granting of planning permission, in the form of a section 106 agreement. That agreement specifies that the school is to be operated for children and young people in the very specific cohort that I have described.

The Anderson Foundation collaborated with Essex County Council, specialist charities, engineers and constructors in the design of the school, resulting in state-of-the-art, first-class provision. Once the school was occupied, its ownership was transferred to the National Autistic Society, which paid the Anderson Foundation £6 million. That is approximately one third of the actual value of the land and buildings, so the NAS benefited from a gift of some £12 million. The NAS was thus given a wonderful opportunity to run the school for the benefit of these highly achieving autistic children. In my view, it failed.

The Anderson School opened for its first pupils in September 2017. Within a year, safeguarding and staffing issues became obvious. Several colleagues have received complaints from their constituents about the way their children were treated while in the care of the NAS. Ofsted carried out an inspection in March 2020 and deemed the school to be failing, and in April 2020 the NAS closed the school. The incompetence of the NAS in not in question; it admits its failings and it admits that it could not run the school as it ought to have been run. It was decided that a new provider should be sought to run the school, and that such a provider should be put in place as quickly as possible, in order to restore the opportunity that had been lost to the Anderson students.

The power to appoint a new provider appears to lie with the NAS, because it owns the school. My colleagues and I question that assumption. It is difficult to understand why the Department for Education considers it acceptable that an organisation that, by its own admission, was a failure at operating a school should be considered fit to be the sole judge of who should succeed it as provider. If the NAS was not fit to run the school, in my view it is not fit to decide who should run it next.

The NAS put the contract for operating the Anderson School out to tender approximately a year ago. The tender process was carried out under a veil of secrecy, with neither Essex County Council nor the Anderson Foundation consulted. The NAS refused to disclose which organisations had submitted a tender, claiming commercial confidentiality for the tender process. It chose a preferred bidder but refused to disclose its identity, again claiming commercial confidentiality. I was shocked to discover that the preferred bidder is the London Borough of Redbridge. The NAS has chosen the London Borough of Redbridge. The NAS deemed it to have offered “best value” because it was a government body, and therefore a very good tenant, and was willing to pay the significant rent requested.

The problem is—this is the point that I believe has been totally misunderstood by ministerial colleagues at the Department for Education—that the London Borough of Redbridge does not intend to operate the Anderson School for academically high-achieving autistic children. What Redbridge wants to do is to use the buildings at the Anderson School to decant the children with a wide range of special needs, some of whom are autistic, from two existing special needs schools in Redbridge—in other words, we will lose provision in the area. We can all understand the position of Redbridge. It has been presented with a golden opportunity. It can move its children, who have a range of complex special needs, from the old school buildings that it currently operates into the new building in Chigwell.

The land on which the two current schools stand is prime development land. Redbridge desperately needs to build more homes for its residents. In one fell swoop, Redbridge can rehouse its special needs schools, make a potentially large profit by selling the land and provide much needed additional housing. Who can blame it for using this financial strength to outbid everyone else for the use of the Anderson School buildings? Redbridge’s motives may be admirable but it should not be allowed to pursue its plans by destroying the Anderson School.

It is simply unacceptable that the NAS should be allowed to hand the Anderson School over to Redbridge. The NAS has openly told officials at the DFE that its intention in handing the school over to Redbridge is to secure the best financial return for the charity. We all appreciate that, as a charity, the NAS has an obligation to fulfil its charitable purposes and to maximise its financial resources, but which comes first? It surely cannot be right for the NAS to sacrifice the Anderson School by handing the buildings over to Redbridge simply to maximise its profits. Making money for the charity is surely a means to an end, not an end in itself. The NAS is not fulfilling its charitable purpose. It is letting down the academically high-achieving autistic children it ought to be serving.

To put it simply, if the plans of the NAS to enter into a contract with the London Borough of Redbridge are allowed to proceed, the buildings will still bear the name of the Anderson School, but the Anderson School will no longer exist. It will have been destroyed by the incompetence and the avarice of the NAS.

In a letter dated 6 April to my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest, the Minister’s colleague, Baroness Berridge, stated that the Department for Education was satisfied with the current plans of the NAS and that the NAS

“is now in a position to offer a lease to the successful party”.

That is simply not true. The NAS is not in a position to offer a lease to Redbridge because Redbridge cannot, and will not, comply with the terms of the section 106 agreement. Epping Forest District Council and Essex County Council have refused to amend the section 106 agreement. They are adhering to the principle that planning permission was granted specifically for the purpose of educating a narrow cohort of autistic children. It was not granted for the purpose of educating special needs children in general.

The Minister’s colleague goes on to say in that letter that Redbridge is

“unable to operate any provision on the former Anderson site until the Section 106 agreement is amended”—

“until”, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Minister’s colleague did not say “unless”—she said “until”. The DFE has made the assumption that the NAS will be able to appeal against the decision of Epping Forest District Council and Essex County Council not to amend the section 106 agreement. Such a stance is not only arrogant in the extreme; it is undemocratic.

Epping Forest District Council and Essex County Council are democratically elected bodies that act in the best interest of their whole community. It is simply wrong for the NAS, the Minister’s Department and the London Borough of Redbridge to cast aside their concerns, to ignore the aims of their education policy and to override their decisions. The section 106 agreement was put in place only a few years ago for a very good purpose. It should not be overturned simply to maximise the financial position of the NAS. It is scandalous that a newly built school has been left lying empty for a full academic year. It is appalling that the NAS plans would reduce the general capacity of special educational needs education in the Essex area by 78 school places. It is tragic that simply in order to maximise its own financial advantage the NAS wants to hand over the Anderson School to Redbridge Council.

Redbridge simply wants to use the buildings. It would completely destroy the ethos and the purpose of the Anderson School, and with it the hopes and dreams of the children it was built to benefit. I fully understand the limitations of the Minister’s powers to take action in this matter, but I implore him to intervene in whatever way he can to break the impasse between the various organisations involved in this terribly difficult situation, and to help to restore to the autistic children for whom it was built the opportunity of a bright future, which was the vision of the Anderson Foundation.