Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend on securing this debate and pay tribute to the fantastic work that she does as chief executive of Cerebral Palsy Scotland, in addition to her duties in your Lordships’ House. As someone who has spent time in state mainstream and special schools, and also a mainstream independent school, I completely agree with her about the urgent need to address the damaging culture of low aspiration.

My noble friend speaks with great authority; I speak, if not with authority, certainly with the experience of someone who has lived with a disability since birth and, more specifically, as someone who provides proof of the way a mainstream independent education can transform the life chances of a disabled child who does not come from a privileged background. My remarks this evening therefore focus on this crucial question: does the Government’s proposed extension of VAT to private schools support the 99,000 children with SEN and disabilities who do not have an EHCP? Clearly, it does not. Indeed, if the Government proceed as planned, I am afraid that they will begin next year—the 30th anniversary year of the Disability Discrimination Act, or DDA—by in effect discriminating against disabled children.

I had the privilege of working with Labour parliamentary giants such as the late, great, Lord Ashley of Stoke and Lord Morris of Manchester. Labour played a pivotal part in securing the DDA; it was as much to Labour’s credit as to the Major Government’s that the DDA became law. So I am bemused that this Labour Government should be about to mark such a disability rights milestone by failing to take these children’s SEN and disabilities into account and exempt them.

The Minister may say that these are tough choices. I have to say that that would be a wholly inadequate and insensitive response to these children and their families, which serves only to underline the extent to which the Government have lost sight of one simple fact: these are innocent, vulnerable, disabled children, whose education will, because of their disability, quite literally be—as it has been for me—their salvation.

I conclude by pleading with the Minister to urge the Secretary of State and the Chancellor to begin the 30th anniversary year of the DDA not by discriminating against these children but by taking their SEN and disabilities into account and exempting them. They and I look to this Labour Government to show them some understanding and compassion, and to give them hope. Otherwise, some of these innocent, vulnerable children will be facing the worst Christmas of their young lives.