Education, Health and Care Plans

Marie Goldman Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for education, health and care plans.

I thank everybody for coming along to this really important Westminster Hall debate on a subject that fills our inboxes. The Government Benches are very full, and some of the Opposition Benches are reasonably full. I will try to keep my speech as short as possible, because so many people want to speak, but there are various points that I want to make.

The debate is about Government support for education, health and care plans. For the benefit of anybody watching the debate who does not understand the system, EHCPs are a fundamental part of the special educational needs system. They are responsible for providing the additional support that children need in school to help them through their educational life and beyond. The big problem is that children and parents do not get the support they need through the EHCP system. Even when EHCPs are granted, schools are sometimes unable to deliver the support set out in them, so parents end up in a ridiculous situation and in many cases have to take their local authority to court. Local authorities lose 99% of cases, but that delays and delays the process and costs parents and local authorities a huge amount of money.

On 3 September 2024, the Government published local authority-level figures on waiting times for a decision following an education, health and care needs assessment. That assessment is the first stage: the parent applies for an EHCNA, and the local authority has six weeks in which to decide whether it will accept it, and 20 weeks in total in which to issue the EHCP. So how long are people actually waiting? Well, there are huge discrepancies across the system. Hampshire county council issues EHCPs within 20 weeks 75% of the time, which does not sound too bad, right? Essex county council, where I am situated, issues EHCPs within 20 weeks 0.9% of the time. Both councils have more than 3,000 requests.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Ind)]

I thank the hon. Lady for bringing forward this important debate to the Chamber, as she is right to mention the timescales. As she knows, in 2023 only half of EHCPs were issued within the statutory 20 weeks, and whether children receive support depends too much on their postcode and how well their parents can navigate what can only be described as a chaotic system. Does she agree that the special educational needs and disabilities system is failing families? We cannot have a sticking-plaster solution; we need a root-and-branch review.

[Marie Goldman]

I wholeheartedly agree that the system is completely broken and needs complete reform. I gently say to the Minister and anybody listening to the debate that the longer that reform takes, the more harmful it will be for children. Children are suffering right now because they are not getting the support they need. Children keep getting older; they do not wait for Governments to decide what they are going to do or for root-and-branch reforms. Children and their parents need the support right now. Although I would absolutely welcome a wholesale review and change, there are things we can do now to alleviate the problems. If the Minister takes away only one thing from the debate, I hope it is the plea for more to be done now and for the reform and implementation to be sped up. I will come in a bit to the things we can do.

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this vital and important debate. She talks about inequality, and SEND funding is unequal across the country. Somerset council is part of the f40 group, which includes a number of the most poorly funded councils across the country. It received less than £8,000 in gross dedicated grant funding per mainstream pupil in 2024-25, which is more than £5,000 less than the best-funded local authorities. Does my hon. Friend agree that we must tackle this postcode lottery and urgently provide better support for some of our nation’s most vulnerable pupils?

[Marie Goldman]

Of course, and my hon. Friend raises an important point. We must tackle that inequality. The Government will say, “We put £1 billion of extra funding into special educational needs.” That is great—it is much better than no extra money for special educational needs—but it will not touch the sides. Local authorities are saying that they have a deficit in the high needs block of £3 billion, and some estimates say that that will go up to £8 billion in the near future. We are looking at a massive funding shortfall.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing today’s important debate. In Slough, attainment outcomes for children with special educational needs and disabilities were below the national average, and that is precisely why we need more funding and resources for Slough children. As a parent, I can only imagine the anguish of parents who have to navigate the complex and time-consuming process of gaining an EHCP, particularly given that only half of EHCPs are issued within the statutory 20-week limit and 98% of appeals are successful. Does the hon. Lady agree that, to improve EHCPs, we need first to regain the trust and confidence of parents?

[Marie Goldman]

Absolutely. Parents’ trust in the system is important, so we need to show that we are listening to them. We also need to show that we are giving them the information they need to alleviate their stress. Someone who has a child with special educational needs knows that their child needs extra support. This is already a stressful time in their life; they then have to sit and wait for an EHCP to land in their inbox, perhaps in week 19 —it is supposed to be 20 weeks, so of course it should land in week 19—but then it does not turn up, and keeps on not turning up. That is incredibly stressful, and it takes away parents’ trust in the system. We should be more transparent about that.

We talk about an EHCP being issued within 20 weeks, but across England 37.4% of decisions took six months or longer—that is just ridiculous—and 5.7% took a year or longer. That is completely unacceptable, and it leaves parents in a very difficult place. We need to be more honest with parents and to make that information much more available to them. My new clause 3 to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would help to make the system much more transparent for parents by making local authorities publish how well they are performing against those statutory deadlines. That would be much better for parents.

What is the impact on children? We must remember that we are not talking about random numbers or about figures on a spreadsheet somewhere; these are real children who have real lives, real parents and real families. They have aspirations in life, and we need to support them. What does all this mean for them? One SEND professional wrote to me about one child’s case:

“This child, who is autistic, non-verbal, and has sensory processing challenges, applied for an Education, Health, and Care Plan (EHCP) in October 2023. It is now January 2025, and they are still waiting for their EHCP to be issued. In the meantime, they are placed in a mainstream school with no tailored support. The result has been incredibly stressful for the child, their family, and the staff working with them. The school has now reached a point where they cannot cope, and the child is being home-schooled, isolated from peers and without access to the specialized education they need and deserve.”

One SEND co-ordinator, who is also a teacher, wrote to me:

“It is very frustrating with the length of time it is taking for EHCPs to be finalised. Although they are back-dating the funding (which is great), by the time the EHCP actually is agreed, it is often too late for parents to request school placements ready for a transition at the start of the school year, which is often what we need it for.”

There is a preference for mainstream, and I hear the Government say that we should educate as many children as possible in mainstream. I do not fundamentally disagree, but mainstream is not suitable for all children, and certainly not when mainstream schools do not have the resources they need to provide education and support.

Mainstream sounds good in principle. However, Contact—a charity for families with disabled children—wrote to me, saying, “Local Authorities like Essex”—again, that is where I am—

“are reducing the provision in section F for a child with an EHCP as they believe that a lot of the provision in section F comes under ordinarily available provision, which they say the school can provide as standard. All the special educational provision that a child with an EHCP needs is legally required to be stated in section F of an EHCP. It is through section F that there is a legal duty for Local Authorities to make this provision. Parents have been told by schools that there is no funding for SEN provision or ordinarily available support. How can children be reliant on SEN support when there is no funding for it?”

Schools are really struggling to deal with the situation. The idea of mainstream and of “ordinarily available” provision is great, but not if schools are not provided with the funding they need. I know that the Government can say, “Well, we have increased the funding for schools,” and they have also increased teacher pay, which is great— teachers absolutely should be paid more—but they have also told schools that teacher pay needs to be funded out of their budgets, which makes the situation very difficult.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I must congratulate my hon. Friend on her preparation for this debate, which has attracted so many people to Westminster Hall today—except, of course, from the party that created a lot of the problems we now face. On her point about mainstreaming and special school education, does she agree not only that many rural areas are underfunded but that people in those areas face the additional challenge of expensive home-to-school transport to access specialist provision, because there is insufficient budget for that transport? That issue needs to be addressed if we are to have an even playing field across the country.

[Marie Goldman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that really important point. I do not live in a rural area, so it is easy for me to overlook issues such as this. However, I do know that many councils have raised it; indeed, to be fair to Essex county council, it has raised it with me. When we talk about root-and-branch reform of the system, we need to make sure that we address the whole system and everything that goes with it, including transport. My hon. Friend raises an important point, and I thank him very much for that.

What is the impact on the school budget? One primary school is funding 90 hours of learning support assistant time a week because there is no EHCP, and it is having to find that funding out of its own budget. That is not through lack of trying to get EHCPs. The school said that it had applied for an ECHP for one child in January 2024, but that child has not even seen an educational psychologist yet.

Schools tell me that they do not have the buildings and the other resources to be able to safely look after these children using ordinarily available provision.

[Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important and timely debate. Even when plans are eventually put in place, children and young people struggle to get suitable school places. They face hours of travel each day, especially in rural areas, or they are left at home without appropriate education. Does my hon. Friend agree that funding needs to ensure that provision is local, meets needs and is well resourced?

[Marie Goldman]

Yes, and it is very hard to disagree with that point. Of course provision needs to recognise what the local challenges are, and those differ in different localities. I thank my hon. Friend for making that point.

Let me return to LSAs and the support they provide in schools. Often, there are several children with EHCPs in a class, so it is sometimes necessary to have more than one LSA to support them. However, it is hard to recruit LSAs, because, as schools have told me, the salaries do not match the skills that LSAs require. Also, LSAs are not suitable in all cases, because young people with severe special educational needs can—through no fault of their own; I want to make that very clear—be very disruptive and, unfortunately, endanger other children if they are not properly supervised. That is why it is really important that we have LSAs, teaching assistants and all the support staff necessary to support these children. One special educational needs co-ordinator told me:

“As much as the LSA children don’t need 1:1 support full-time, there are some children that really do require 1, or sometimes 2, adults with them throughout the day if everyone is to be kept safe and for the child to have their self-care needs met in a mainstream environment.”

We talk a lot about schools, but this issue also affects further education—for example, sixth-form colleges. They tell me that the annual reviews that are done as part of the EHCP process focus too much on educational attainment and on academic achievement and progress, when colleges in fact need to understand what special measures they need to put in place to best meet the needs of the children who are coming in. That is not necessarily about academic achievement; it is about how colleges can best manage the behaviour that pupils exhibit and keep them safe. Colleges say that, unfortunately, EHCPs do not place enough emphasis on behaviour, and their plea—I hope the Minister is listening—is that if we look at the EHCP process, we should encourage it to focus on that issue and not just on educational attainment. Colleges also say that some information in the annual review of behaviour is historical, and might put sixth-form colleges off accepting pupils, even though it would be perfectly appropriate to accept them because their behaviour had changed and they could be supported in different ways.

I also want to emphasise the importance of early intervention, because addressing issues early is key. Some children will not need support throughout their entire life or even their entire school life, but getting in early, especially with speech and language issues, can help children to progress just as well as children who did not need additional support. It is not necessarily always about long-term support; sometimes it is about early intervention, and then we can save money later.

[Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)]

It was good to hear yesterday from the all-party parliamentary group on special educational needs and disabilities about the importance of early intervention. We heard from the Lancashire and South Cumbria integrated care board, which showcased its really interesting work. On the back of that, I reached out to my ICB in Suffolk and North East Essex and I understand that the health response there on early interventions is quite good. Bearing in mind that the hon. Lady and I both represent Essex constituencies, it would be worth her looking at the ICB connected to her area. Perhaps we could work together on improving outcomes for parents and kids in Colchester and Chelmsford.

[Marie Goldman]

Of course, I would be delighted to work with the hon. Lady on that sort of issue. I was also at that APPG on SEND meeting, although I could not stay for the whole thing. I am glad she raised it, because at that APPG meeting, an example was given to us of a child who had situational mutism. The intervention they received early on meant that they were able to progress and achieve their full potential, which I thought was fabulous. Unfortunately, I have an example of exactly the opposite in my constituency, where a child with selective mutism did not receive that support and is now not in school at all. The importance of that support cannot be overstated.

We could talk a lot about why there has been an increase in EHCP applications, about covid and its impact, about the lack of socialisation and what that has led to and about the lack of early intervention. Maybe some parents are asking for EHCPs because it is the only way to get the support that might ordinarily have been available if schools were not feeling the pressure so much. Ultimately, this is a systemic failure, and I want to move on to some solutions.

We need to do this quickly—remember, every single day that children grow up without that support is another day they are suffering. Other than root and branch reform, we need better communication between schools and colleges, between local authorities and parents, and between schools and parents. The list could go on, but I remind everybody that communication is two-way. It is not just the local authority sending out a briefing pack—that is not good enough. We need them to listen, and we need the Government to listen.

We need more training. We need qualified and experienced people working with children. A qualified and experienced SEND professional told me:

“People like me, who are trained to work with SEND children and adults, often find there is no structured role for us within councils or government systems to support schools, families, or nurseries effectively.”

We need to do more about that. There are people who are willing to work and have amazing experience in the system, so let us help them get the qualifications to be able to help parents and young people. One SENCO said that SENCOS need more career path options. Could we have an option, for example, to fast-track some training? Could there be some kind of associate ed psych qualification? I do not know, but maybe that could be looked at. We need to make it easier for parents to understand what is going on.

Returning to the issue of tribunals, when local authorities are losing 99% of cases, something is seriously wrong. I wonder whether some of those delays, where the local authorities are deciding to take parents all the way through to tribunal, are—to be very cynical—a way to avoid having to pay the costs of providing the support to the children during that time.

I welcome the Education Committee’s inquiry on solving the SEND crisis and advertise to everybody that the deadline to contribute is 30 January. I say to the Minister that, at the risk of repeating myself, we really do need some action now. I urge the Government to work on what steps they can take now to make children’s lives better because, at the end of the day, this is about supporting children’s futures. I look forward to hearing from colleagues across the House and thank them for taking part in this incredibly important debate.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

We are going to work out the time limit for everyone, because 34 names were submitted to speak, but I think there may be even more Members in this room now. The Clerk has done the calculation and it is 75 seconds each—one minute 15 seconds. We will start, as a model of brevity, with the Chair of the Education Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Marie Goldman]

Thank you, Dr Huq. I am not sure I thanked you for your chairmanship earlier, so I thank you now. I also thank all hon. Members who took part in this important debate and contributed, in some circumstances, harrowing stories. I do not have time to go through them all. I will simply say this.

I first heard about this subject and the terrible state that special educational needs provision was in at around this time last year. A parent raised it with me and told me what was going on. When I started digging into it, I learned that parents just did not feel heard; they felt that nobody was listening to them. Any parent and anybody involved in education who has been battling this issue can see in the debate here today that we are listening now. We will keep holding the Government’s feet to the fire and making sure that they make progress. I very much hope they do—indeed, I have faith that they do indeed want to make progress. I thank Members again for taking part. I hope we make progress very soon.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Government support for education, health and care plans.

Government and Democracy Education

Marie Goldman Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[John Slinger]

I will come to that point, because I think that the review is a golden opportunity.

The commission confirmed what I and others here know: too many young people do not understand how to participate in our democratic processes, and their lack of motivation is due to a lack of knowledge about parties and candidates. If we want young people to engage more in elections, for their sake and ours, we must work harder to ensure they understand and value our democracy.

[Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman pointed out that this is UK Parliament Week. Last week, I was delighted to visit Great Baddow high school in my constituency to speak to students who were preparing for a debate that they would be taking part in as part of UK Parliament Week. They asked me lots of wonderful questions on diverse subjects. I have often been into local schools to talk about government, but it often becomes apparent that students do not know anything at all about local government, and yet local government affects their lives on a day-to-day basis—sometimes much more than this place. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that local government, alongside central Government, should form part of this education?

[John Slinger]

I wholeheartedly agree. It is critical that we educate our young people about the different tiers of government and the responsibilities of elected representatives within them.

I will touch briefly on the history of citizenship in our education system. Since 2002, citizenship has been a statutory foundation national curriculum subject at key stages 3 and 4. Luke Brown, a teacher at Lawrence Sheriff school in Rugby, told me:

“A big concern is the increasingly limited time given to Citizenship and, therefore, politics.”

Citizenship remains a non-statutory programme of study at key stages 1 and 2—or primary, to use the old parlance—where, as teachers tell me, a similar situation ensues, and other priorities all too often drown out citizenship. According to the 2018 Lords report, citizenship peaked between 2009 and 2011, and declined particularly under the last Government’s curriculum review in 2013. The report found that

“citizenship was never fully embedded into the education system”.

The same happened with other subjects that were, in my view, wrongly regarded by the previous Government as subsidiary. The English baccalaureate, introduced in 2010, did not include citizenship. Furthermore, there has been a substantial decline in the number of students studying the citizenship GCSE and the number of specialist teachers.

With our new Government’s curriculum review, we have a golden opportunity to put that right. Like all MPs, I make a big effort to visit as many primary and secondary schools as I can. The biggest privilege and—dare I say it?—challenge of being an MP is not speaking in Chambers like this one but answering questions from young people in schools. When I visit schools, I find that young people are generally interested in politics. For example, the children of Paddox primary school in my constituency were hugely excited about the competition that staff are running about politics, with the prize being a tour of Parliament. A constituent of mine, Ian Dewes, the CEO of the Odyssey Collaborative Trust, said that Parliament’s education team “were fantastic” and pointed out that such visits helped to

“break down class and social barriers.”

When children of Long Lawford primary school welcomed me and the early years Minister for a visit, it was clear that their teachers had educated them well about the political system. Those are exemplars of best practice, but they should be standard across the whole country.

I would be grateful to hear from my hon. Friend the Minister about how her Department will ensure a more coherent, better resourced system that gives these subjects the higher priority that they deserve. I hope, first, that she will consider confirming citizenship as a statutory subject in the national curriculum at all stages, not just key stages 3 and 4; as with literacy, the younger we start, the deeper the understanding. Secondly, will she provide guidance to all schools about what they are expected to teach and resources to do so, including lesson packs and training for non-specialist teachers? Thirdly, will she ensure coherence and common standards across the entire maintained sector? Fourthly, will she reform progress 8 to ensure that any new system of measuring schools gives the same value to citizenship as to other national curriculum foundation GCSE subjects? Finally, will she take action to incentivise the training of specialist citizenship teachers?

Another part of learning about government and democracy should, of course, be participating in it within school and the wider world, as other hon. Members have said.

SEND Provision: East of England

Marie Goldman Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) for securing this very important debate today. It is my absolute pleasure to represent the Liberal Democrats on this important issue. It is filling up my inbox, and I know that it is filling up the inboxes of other hon. Members, both here and not here today.

I would like to start by expanding on an issue that has been raised in this debate, but I think a bit more information needs to be put out about it. That is the issue of tribunals and what is happening with them. We have talked a lot about how difficult it is for parents to get EHCPs for their children, but having to take a local authority to the first-tier tribunal is such an arduous task that no parent should have to go through it. They have to wait on average a year to get an appointment at a tribunal and it is costing them tens of thousands of pounds, in many instances, to get to that point in the first place. They are employing solicitors who have to battle with the local authorities, and they get to the point where they have given up and have to go to a tribunal. Then they wait their year and get their tribunal date, and then they are often faced with legally representing themselves, because they have exhausted their own resources, but they are battling against local authorities that are not just using solicitors or barristers but King’s counsel in many cases, to fight against parents who are just trying to get what their children desperately need.

[Clive Efford in the Chair]

Even worse is the figure that has already come out in this debate but is worth underlining. Despite parents not being legally represented and despite local authorities using barristers and KCs to fight parents—what sort of system is it where that is happening?—local authorities lose 98% of cases. Local authorities are using public money to fight parents and losing. Then even if a judge, through the first-tier tribunal, has made an order about what the EHCP should contain—if a parent is lucky enough to even have an EHCP at that point—in cases in my constituency and, I am sure, in other constituencies, that provision is still not being delivered, even when ordered by the tribunal. We have examples of parents who have to go to judicial review to make the local authorities do what they are legally bound to do but are not doing. We have to strengthen the consequences for local authorities that are not doing what they are supposed to be doing as set out in law, because the system is not working in that situation at the moment. I ask the Minister to address that.

This matters because while we are waiting for judicial review and for tribunals, the children who are affected are growing up. Children have this uncanny knack of getting older, and as they get older, they need more resources and different resources. However, a parent in my constituency said, “But Marie, when I went to the annual review, the officer at the council said to me, ‘Every time we meet, you ask for something different.’” And she said, “Well, yes, because my child has grown up, he is now older, and he needs something different from what was in the last review.” As much as we may be shocked by comments like that from officers working for local councils, there are many, many officers who want to do the very best for children, but they are stuck in such awful situations, in which they are not provided with the resources that they need.

Although a lot has been said about EHCPs, the special educational needs system is not just about EHCPs. There are about 1.6 million children with special educational needs or disabilities in the east of England—we must remember that we are talking about disabilities as well, not just neurological conditions—and only 4.8% of them, or just under 48,000, have EHCPs. The rest of them are living with SEND but do not have EHCPs. We must make sure that we cater for them as well.

I am conscious of the time and want to mention the funding cuts that have happened since 2010. The School Cuts website is instructive on the subject. It tells me, for example, that one high school in my constituency has received a funding cut of £1,201 per pupil since 2010. Another has seen a cut of £1,174 per pupil. It goes on and on. A special school in my constituency takes the biscuit, with a cut of £4,815 per pupil since 2010. Schools are having to do more with less, and we must address that.

I want to bring out the voices of parents. Recently in my constituency I met 24 parents and grandparents who turned up to a meeting to tell me about their problems with the special educational needs system. They told me many things. They told me what could be done to make the system better in ways that would not cost the earth. We know that there are economic challenges ahead, so let us look for solutions that do not necessarily have to focus on money.

One of the things the parents and grandparents raised was the transition when a child goes from primary school to secondary school. We need to make that transition easier for pupils with SEND who need that bit of extra time to settle in and understand the new system. Can we put in place a better system of transition that gives them extra time without all the other children around?

The parents and grandparents told me about the blanket approach to attendance that many schools take. They told me about 100% attendance awards and how cruel they are for children with special educational needs and disabilities, who often have to attend medical appointments during school time. They can never get that 100% attendance rate and never receive the award that they see their fellow pupils getting. It is cruel and discriminatory.

The parents and grandparents told me about schools that are locking toilet doors during class times so that children cannot go to the toilet. That makes it very difficult for someone who has a physical condition that means they have to go to the toilet.

One of the people who came to speak to me was a special educational needs co-ordinator. They told me that it is not mandatory to have SENCOs on the senior leadership team, and how they are often teaching full time while also doing the SENCO role. They told me that they have no protected time to look after children with special educational needs, work out what is best for them and help them. In fact, parents told me that they believe SENCOs are just a name on a piece of paper for local authorities.

How does all this impact children? Children are often demoralised when they leave school. A parent told me that all their child’s energy was going into school and it left nothing—no energy afterwards for anything else. One parent said, “SEND shouldn’t just be a bolt-on.” I echo what other Members have said: SEND should be an integral part of education.

I could go on and on about local authorities not doing annual reviews, not replying to parents when they write to them, or sending encrypted emails that disappear after 40 days so that parents have no permanent record of what they have been told. I could talk about evidence disappearing and about dyslexia not being accepted as a diagnosis—as if that is not a thing—but I want to spend a little time talking about solutions.

One solution, which could be cost-free, is being more transparent. EHCPs should be issued within 20 weeks. In my local authority, Essex, 1% are issued within 20 weeks. When parents are waiting, in week 19, for that email to drop in their inbox, anxious and stressed, after having fought so hard to get to the point where they will finally get the provision their children need, deserve and are thankfully entitled to, and it does not arrive, that is incredibly stressful. Yet the local authority knows that there is no chance of that email arriving in that time. They know that the average wait time is probably 30, 40, 50 weeks, or even longer in some cases. Tell parents that. Alleviate their suffering just a little bit. It will not fix the problem, but it is a free option. Local authorities already know the figures—make them publish them.

The Liberal Democrats want to see a centralised national body for SEND, which would end the postcode lottery of funding. Lots more can be done, but there are things we can do without having to provide funds.

SEND Provision

Marie Goldman Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Richard Burgon]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend, because early intervention is so important, both in giving adequate and timely support to young people and, in the long run, in keeping the costs down; without early intervention, the problems that children face can only get worse and worse. The number needing more support through an education, health and care plan has more than doubled, but the required resources have, as others have said, simply not followed.

[Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for this debate about an issue that is so important and has filled my inbox over many months, as I am sure is the case for other hon. Members here. The hon. Gentleman mentioned that the eligibility changed in 2014 with the Children and Families Act; it added an extra 11 years when it comes to the children and young people who could be included. Does he agree that it was a complete failure of subsequent Governments not to put in the extra resources to match the additional number of years? That has led to a perverse system in which we now see local authorities battling with parents—using not just normal barristers but King’s Counsel, so sure are they of their righteousness in their battle. With the help of barristers, including KCs, they are battling parents who are often not represented legally and have to represent themselves. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is perverse and should never have happened?

[Richard Burgon]

I thank the hon. Member: that is a very important point, and I certainly agree. I will turn later in my speech to the subject of the tribunals. When we look at the statistics on the outcome of the tribunal hearings, that underlines her point very strongly indeed.

I will make a bit of progress if that is okay. If others wish to seek to intervene, I will take some interventions again later, before the end of my speech. Greater need and inadequate funding are a recipe for disaster, and a disaster is exactly what has happened. In my 10 minutes, I cannot touch on every example of this crisis—