SEND Provision

Debate between Harriett Baldwin and Robin Walker

Thursday 14th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

I congratulate my hon. Friend for making the case for his constituents. The question he asks is one for those on the Front Bench, and I hope the Minister can further clarify the process of allocating those resources.

At the last spending review in 2021, the Department secured £2.6 billion over the review period for a mixture of new specialist settings, expansions of existing ones and delivery of bases in mainstream schools. In total, that was designed to deliver 30,000 new school places. Will the Minister, in his reply, update the House on progress on spending that substantial capital investment? Can he update the House, too, on the total number of specialist places already delivered? Will he explain how deliverable the Government have found this programme, at a cost of about £86,666 per place, and the rationale for the Budget announcement being so much cheaper?

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his exceptional work in this area. He shares my passion for the new Malvern-based autism free school, which will benefit children across Worcestershire and more widely. Can he update the House on how he sees progress on delivering the new free school?

[Mr Walker]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her intervention and for her campaigning to secure those vitally needed places in south Worcestershire, which I hope will benefit my constituents as well as hers. I want to more places delivered for autistic students in Worcestershire as swiftly as possible. That is being done through a combination of the provision that she has rightly championed and campaigned for, a new base in my constituency in a mainstream school—which the county council is commissioning—and the provision recently created for an AP, or alternate provision, school in the north of the county. There is some welcome progress there, but as I will touch on later, I do not feel that it is quite enough to meet need.

Back on that £2.6 billion, I have some concerns about the progress of that much needed capital investment. Careful examination of the supplementary estimates for the Department reveals a £300 million transfer from the capital to the revenue budget. I ask for reassurance that none of that has come out of the £2.6 billion originally targeted for investment in SEND. If any has, will the Minister tell us how much? Can he provide figures for how many places have been commissioned in each of the three categories set out in the 2021 spending review and how many more are in the pipeline?

From long experience and from my work on the Select Committee, I know that the DFE has routinely underspent its allocated capital, but at a time when the need for SEND placements is so high and we have the urgent challenge of RAAC—reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—affecting many mainstream and specialist schools, I hope that the Department is protecting the precious investment that Ministers, including me and my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), fought so hard to secure.