Local Authority Children’s Services

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for securing this important debate and for his tireless dedication to ensuring that what happened to Sara Sharif never, ever happens to another child again.

We have heard a range of contributions today, and I want to start by saying that children’s services in local authorities across the country play a vital, statutory role in ensuring that all children, including the most vulnerable, receive the support and education that every child deserves and needs. Like the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer) and my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord), I pay tribute to those working on the frontline, who are often overworked, underpaid and under-thanked. They deserve our thanks, notwithstanding the systemic and structural failures.

As many hon. Members said, many local authorities face deep funding challenges. For some local authorities, that is exacerbated by what has been called the fair funding review. I fear we will see short-term decisions that ultimately cost the taxpayer more in the long run. The Liberal Democrats have always argued that we should see spending on supporting our children as an investment in our future—our society’s future and our economy’s future.

I will return to funding, but I now turn to where my hon. Friend the Member for Woking started. I listened to his powerful words about Sara’s story with tears in my eyes, and I was reminded that I felt similarly in May 2022, when the then Education Secretary—one Nadhim Zahawi—gave a statement in the main Chamber following the brutal deaths of Star Hobson and Arthur Labinjo-Hughes. As is always the case after such horrendous stories, we said, “Never again,” and he promised that lessons would be learned.

When the Children’s Commissioner gave evidence to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee last year, she said:

“Every time a child dies, we give exactly the same set of recommendations, including better multi-agency working and better join-up, yet time and again”—

including after Victoria Climbié, Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Sara Sharif—

“we find ourselves saying the same things.”—[Official Report, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 44, Q94.]

The Government must take action, and I welcome the fact that they are taking a number of steps in the right direction—I am very happy to acknowledge that. Last year, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) and I met Professor Alexis Jay to discuss the findings of her review into child sexual abuse. She impressed upon me two points: the importance of a child protection authority and the importance of data sharing.

I am grateful that the Minister has now announced a child protection authority, and I hope he will set out a bit more on the timelines and implementation. On data sharing, which was so critical in Sara’s case, I welcome some of the measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, not least the introduction of a single unique identifier. The Liberal Democrats strongly support that because we believe that proper data sharing between services will improve child safeguarding. I hope the Government will continue to address some of the concerns that have been raised about privacy and data sharing, given the Government’s record at times of data loss and being hacked. I raised with the Home Secretary a few weeks ago my fear that there are people outside this place who are scaremongering and suggesting that this is digital ID for children, when actually it is about how we safeguard children, provide better services, and commission better services and research to support them.

Another measure in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which is currently in the other place, is the children not in school register. As my hon. Friend the Member for Woking said, the Liberal Democrats have long supported such a register, so that vulnerable children do not disappear from the system. However, during the passage of the Bill we have repeatedly set out our concerns about the amount of information that has to be collected for that register. This is not just about the impact and intrusion on families; even the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, in oral evidence to the Public Bill Committee, was circumspect about the amount of detailed information that home-educating parents will be expected to supply. I have talked to councillors and local government officials, and they are worried about the huge burden this will put on local authorities in meeting their new duties. If the Government are going to put these duties on local authorities, funding needs to follow, so that they are properly resourced to collect the data and implement the register.

That brings me back to funding. As we have heard, underfunding is a consistent theme in children’s services. I talked about children being an investment. Unfortunately, politics is such that Governments think in electoral cycles. The return on an investment in a young child is often not seen for 15 or 20 years, so it is very hard to make the case for that investment to the Treasury. The Minister has my sympathy and support in that.

In his independent review of children’s social care, the Minister said:

“What we have currently is a system increasingly skewed to crisis intervention, with outcomes for children that continue to be unacceptably poor and costs that continue to rise.”

I recognise that the Government announced a children’s social care prevention grant last year, but I am afraid that money pales into insignificance when we hear so starkly today from my hon. Friends, many of whom represent rural constituencies that are seeing deep funding cuts through the reallocation of local government funding following the fair funding review, that the most vulnerable will lose out.

It is not just rural areas, but London constituencies, too. Government Members often say to me, “You represent an affluent area.” Yes, on the whole I do, but that does not mean that deprivation, need and vulnerable children do not exist. My local authority in Richmond is one of the worst hit in the country—it will lose about £47 million of Government funding over the next four years—and it is those vulnerable children who will miss out. The pots of funding the Government are making available for children’s services are welcome, but when we offset that against the losses, we are going to see children suffer. It is a real shame that we are seeing this money taken away in London, because between 2010 and 2023, London boroughs saw an 11% reduction in the number of looked-after children, while England as a whole experienced a 30% increase. The changes to the children and young people’s services formula in London risk undoing the very good work we have seen London boroughs do to give our children the best start in life.

Obviously, I will always argue for more money to be spent on children’s services, but I recognise that there is not a magic money tree, and we face a difficult fiscal situation, not least as a result of the previous Conservative Government. There are ways that savings can be made. Early intervention is one of them, and I know the Minister is very supportive of that approach. There are a number of great measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, such as family group decision making. I ask the Minister to look at the amendments tabled in the other place by my noble Friend Baroness Tyler, who wants to ensure that local authorities have a duty to support parents after a child is taken away from them, so that they not only overcome the trauma and grief but make a lasting change. The data shows that half of newborns in care proceedings are born to mothers who have already been through proceedings with another child. We need to take action early to prevent the same thing from happening again.

A number of Labour and Liberal Democrat Members have talked about the eye-watering cost of private social care providers and fostering agencies, which are bleeding local authorities dry. I welcome the backstop power in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill for the Government to put a profit cap on children’s social care providers. I urge the Minister, as I have again and again: please extend the profit cap to private special schools, which are also bleeding our local authorities dry. When one school charges more than £100,000 a year in fees plus transport, while state-maintained alternatives do it for £25,000 for the same cohort, that is an obvious place that the Government can save money. The answer is capital investment in state-run specialist provision, in the same way that it is in state-run children’s care homes. I know the Government have already started on that, but they need to go further.

[Edward Morello]

My hon. Friend is making a wonderful point. It reminds me of a conversation I had recently with my council about a group of 10 to 15 parents with autistic children who definitely did not need to be in specialist schools and needed local provision. Because of the different pots of money, it was easier for the council to pay a private provider £100,000 and have the children travel 20 to 30 miles, because it could not afford the capital cost of £1.5 million to set up a local school. It wanted to do that, but it did not have the money, which disadvantages parents who now have kids travelling vast distances.

[Munira Wilson]

It is a familiar story, and I completely agree with my hon. Friend.

I am getting an indication from the Chair that I am already overrunning, so I will try to cut my last points short. The Minister is aware that I have long campaigned on kinship care. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill takes welcome steps forward, but there is much further to go. As he knows, putting a child with a family member in the short term is not just better for their long-term outcomes; it would save local authorities around 50% of the cost of putting them in care, even if they gave kinship carers allowances on a par with foster carers. That has to be an urgent cost-saving intervention. The Minister must also restore the adoption and special guardianship support fund grants, as we heard so clearly from my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello), who talked about the long-term impact.

I will conclude by quoting the Minister’s own words at him. In his review, he stated:

“How we care for our children is nothing short of a reflection of our values as a country.”

We have heard today that we are falling short on that. We stand ready to work across parties to ensure that his vision becomes reality.

Oral Answers to Questions

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

Shortly before Christmas, the Secretary of State announced to the media, rather than the House, welcome capital investment in specialist provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities, children for whom mainstream provision is simply not appropriate. However, digging into the small print, that included the forced cancellation of 18 free special schools and the jeopardising of a further 59, despite two thirds of state special schools being at or over capacity. With children being sent many miles away to privately run provision that is costing taxpayers eye-watering sums in transport and fees, why does she not give all local councils both the resources and the flexibility to decide whether they should go ahead with a special school in their area, because councils know what is best for the families in their areas, not Whitehall?

[Bridget Phillipson]

We are giving councils a greater role in this process because we recognise that many will be able to create places much more quickly through a different way of allocating funding. We want children and young people to receive the support they need in a local school, not a long distance away. In some cases, that can involve expanded specialist provision in mainstream schools, but I also recognise the critical role that the specialist sector plays—the needs of some children can be met only in specialist provision. That is why we have taken the approach of prioritising funding, and that runs hand in hand with much wider investment running through the system. The hon. Lady knows that I will work with her to make sure we get this reform right and to make sure that children and their education are right at the heart of it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

The evidence is undeniable: social media and the addictive algorithms that feed it are harming our children’s physical and mental health and impacting their sleep and their concentration and behaviour at school. With parents, children themselves and teachers crying out for change, and with cross-party consensus growing on this issue, will the Secretary of State work across Government, instead of launching a consultation, to ban under-16s from harmful social media through a film-style age rating system and approach the 42 children’s charities and experts—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Please, I am trying to help Members from the hon. Lady’s party and others. You have got to work with me. This is topicals.

Evacuation Chairs: Schools and Colleges

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Sir Alec.

I start by thanking all the people—over 104,000 in total—who have signed this petition, including 65 people in my own constituency of Twickenham. They are the primary reason why we are debating this important issue. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) for his speech. It was hard to disagree with a single word of it.

However, I particularly thank and pay tribute to 16-year-old Lucas for his #NoStudentLeftBehind campaign, which has included starting this petition and then gathering such a large number of signatures that we are now debating it in Parliament. It is an incredible campaign, and it is just brilliant and brave of him to lead it in the way that he has.

I was shocked to learn of Lucas’s case when I read about it. As a wheelchair user, he was left upstairs on his own when a fire broke out at his school. Although it was only a small fire and thankfully no one was hurt, Lucas described feeling petrified and even considering getting out of his wheelchair to crawl down the stairs, because there was no evacuation chair. No person should ever have to feel like that, and Lucas’s passion to ensure that no disabled child or staff member has to endure the fear and indignity that he had to go through is truly commendable. I was very moved by his powerful poem, which the hon. Member for Burton and Uttoxeter read out.

Lucas is not alone. According to Disabled Students UK, more than one in five students with physical or sensory needs do not feel confident that they would be able to exit on-campus buildings in case of emergency. That is unacceptable. Disabled people must be sure that, like all other pupils, they will be quickly and safely evacuated from schools during fires or any other emergency. Although there were no fire-related fatalities in schools in the 2024-25 financial year, we cannot continue to hope for the best and run the risk of somebody losing their life because of a lack of accommodation for the needs of disabled people.

Evacuation chairs are vital to meeting these needs. Not only do they provide a safe and effective means of escape for individuals with mobility impairments, but they ensure that everyone has equal access to emergency evacuation procedures. In the case of a fire or other emergency, individuals with disabilities should not be left behind or be unable to evacuate because of a lack of proper equipment.

As the Government’s response to the petition acknowledges, not all disabled people feel comfortable using such chairs, and it is not always possible for wheelchair users to transfer into an evacuation chair or to maintain a sitting position once seated in one. Evacuation chairs are incredibly important, but they are not an automatic solution to the escape requirements of all wheelchair users. However, it is essential that they are readily available and well maintained, and that staff are trained in their proper use to guarantee a smooth and efficient evacuation process when someone’s personal emergency evacuation plan requires an evacuation chair. It should also be checked that the evacuation chair is suitable for the person who will be using it, as different types of chair are available.

The legal framework for this issue has room for improvement. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, which applies to schools, does not mandate that evacuation plans for schools must include PEEPs. That is in contrast with the Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025, which were rightly brought in to mandate PEEPs for relevant persons in specific residential buildings in England from April 2026 following the recommendations of the Grenfell Tower inquiry.

The Liberal Democrats are calling on the Government to go further and to widen mandatory PEEPs beyond residential buildings to include schools. We believe that PEEPs should be mandatory for students and school staff with a disability who might require evacuation assistance, and that they should be developed in genuine partnership to ensure students’ needs and preferences are fully understood and acted upon, so that disabled children and staff feel safe and secure at school. This change to the regulations is common sense and clearly implementable, given the Government’s identical changes to fire safety regulations in residential buildings. This change to the regulations will ensure that every disabled person can safely evacuate schools during a fire or other emergency, whether with an evacuation chair or via another method.

It is vital that no disabled person is left behind during a fire or other emergency that could put their life in danger. If we are truly committed to equality of opportunity for everyone, especially for children and young people, we must ensure that every person is free from fear. We owe it to Lucas and many others like him.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Ms Barker. I thank the Petitions Committee for granting this important debate. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for so ably opening the debate. I pay tribute to the approximately 166,500 people who have signed this petition, including the 184 in my constituency.

There is much in this Bill that many of us can agree on, especially in part 1. During its passage there was cross-party support for the measures in part 1 to ensure that the Government go further in safeguarding and promoting the wellbeing of our children. Part 1 also includes the proposals for a single unique identifier, and I say to hon. Members concerned about it that I do not think it is the precursor to digital ID for our children. If hon. Members look at Professor Jay’s report of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, one of the biggest issues in the system—as I heard when I met her earlier this year—is the lack of data sharing between different service providers, such as health, the police and social services.

Some of the young women and girls who were victims of grooming gangs across the country were regularly turning up in hospitals with sexually transmitted diseases, but that data was not being married up with what the police and social services were seeing. If data had been better shared, those issues might have been picked up. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health strongly supports a single unique identifier for the same reason.

I fully agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) that there are concerns about data sharing, data security and privacy that need to be tackled, and they were explored in detail in the Bill Committee, particularly by the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). Whether it is the NHS number or a different single unique identifier, however, it is an important provision for safeguarding our children and ensuring that we can better research their needs and commission services to meet them.

As a number of Members have mentioned, part 2 of the Bill feels a bit muddled, particularly the clauses that deal with academies, and in a number of cases it puts the cart before the horse. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire looks back at the last decade of Conservative Governments with rose-tinted glasses, but I gently remind him—

[Damian Hinds]

David Laws!

[Munira Wilson]

David Laws was not in government for the last decade of Conservative Governments; he was there for the first five years and he did some excellent things, not least introducing the pupil premium. I would say, however, that Conservative Governments left us with crumbling schools that are unable to hire specialist teachers, a crisis in special educational needs provision, and a huge problem with persistent absence.

Given those major issues in our education system, I am not quite sure why the Government have chosen to tinker with academies and governance arrangements as their priority for education policy, when there is limited evidence to suggest that a mixed economy of governance arrangements in our school system is posing a major problem. With the promised schools White Paper hopefully being revealed in the new year, although I think it has been delayed twice already, there is a question as to whether part 2 of the Bill was somewhat premature. I am increasingly wondering whether the Government feel the same way, given that the Bill keeps being delayed in the other place. By the time the Bill returns to the House of Commons, it will have been well over a year since it was first introduced.

When the Bill Committee consulted education leaders in January, the one strong message that came through was about how the Government went about drafting part 2 of the Bill. As my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross set out, it was done with limited consultation and showed a lack of coherent vision for the school system; there was no White Paper and no consultation of those on the frontline or in leadership positions across the sector.

That lack of coherent vision and joined-up thinking seems to be a recurring theme for this Labour Government. They introduced free breakfast clubs, but they are not funding them properly. They have capped the number of school uniform items to three, but that will actually risk further inflating prices for hard-pressed families. They have proposed broadening the curriculum, which is something we welcome, and the Bill will make that statutory for all academies, but they have failed to set out the funds or a plan to recruit the necessary teachers to deliver it. During the Bill’s passage, they voted against Liberal Democrat proposals to widen eligibility for free school meals, but they subsequently decided to copy the policy and announced that they will introduce it next year.

Throughout the passage of the Bill, the Liberal Democrats have sought to engage constructively with the Government by tabling amendments and new clauses that aim to improve the Bill and to address some of the concerns raised by the petition that we are discussing today. Given that the Government have already copied at least one of our policies, I hope that the new Minister, who is here today, might listen to some other good ideas in my speech and in the other place.

There is a real fear that this legislation, which is seeking to safeguard children who go missing from education, will over-police home educators, most of whom are doing a great job. I have been very clear at every stage of the Bill—I think there was cross-party support for this—that the Liberal Democrats strongly support having a register of children not in school to ensure that vulnerable children do not simply disappear from the system. We also strongly support the right of parents to choose to home educate, where that is the best option for their child.

In oral evidence to the Bill Committee, however, even the Association of Directors of Children’s Services was circumspect about the vast amount of detailed information that the Bill will expect home educating parents to supply. That level of detail risks becoming intrusive and unnecessary. Many home educators choose to home educate their children not because they want to but because they feel forced to. There is a crisis in our special needs system, and so much special needs provision just does not meet the needs of those children, forcing many parents to give up work so that they can home educate their child. By virtue of their child’s need, parents tend to be much more flexible in how they home educate, but the very onerous reporting mechanisms will interfere with the flexibility that parents need to provide for their children.

I tabled various amendments to try to pare back the burdensome nature of the register, as set out in the Bill. One amendment called for, at the very least, a review of the register’s impact on home educators to be carried out within six months, to ensure that only reporting requirements that are strictly necessary for safeguarding purposes are retained. We also tabled an amendment that would have removed the requirement for parents and carers of children in special schools to secure local authority consent to home educate. Furthermore, we proposed that home educated children should not be excluded from national examinations because of financial or capacity constraints.

Sadly, the Government voted down all our amendments, but I encourage the new Minister to give serious consideration to relevant amendments tabled in the other place, because we must do more if we genuinely want to extend opportunity to every child. Our SEND system is letting down many children, and it is allowing a number of organisations with bad intentions to exploit the market failure in the system. I am talking about private-equity-run special school providers, which are making exorbitant profits, as they have with children’s homes. They are exploiting the lack of provision to hold local authorities and parents to ransom.

The latest revelation in the Budget is that the Government will absorb the costs of SEND provision from local authorities, and the projected £6 billion black hole only strengthens the need to start capping the profits of private special schools. The Bill already makes provision to cap the profits of the same companies that are running children’s care homes and fostering agencies, so I again ask the Minister to consider introducing the measure so that no child is left waiting because of a lack of resource, given that local authorities are being bled dry.

While I am talking about children being left waiting, I encourage the Minister to look at another Liberal Democrat proposal to automatically enrol every eligible child for free school meals, so that no one misses out on a hot, healthy meal. Durham county council, under its previous Liberal Democrat-led administration, auto-enrolled 2,500 children, whose schools benefited from an additional £3 million in pupil premium funding.

It is not too late for the Minister to improve the Bill, which I do not believe needs to be withdrawn wholesale. Instead, with the help of the other place, it can be amended so that there is a strong foundation to improve safeguarding for our children and strengthen provision for them in our schools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Olivia Bailey]

As the right hon. Gentleman will be well aware, the breakfast club represents 30 minutes of free childcare, as well as a healthy breakfast. That is how we calculated the estimated cost savings for families. We have also increased the funding for schools, as I have just said, having learned from headteachers and schools, which has been widely welcomed.

We are also limiting the number of branded uniform items a school can require, a measure that could save some parents up to £50 per child during the back-to-school shop. Together, these measures could save up to £500 per child per year. The hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) asked about school uniform costs. I would like to take the opportunity to clarify this point: we are introducing the policy deliberately because we need to reduce costly expectations on parents in this challenging time for the cost of living. There will be three branded items that schools may use as they see fit. The hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East mentioned sports clubs, and the Government are taking a common-sense approach here. If, for example, a school wants to loan some pupils its uniform or whatever it may be, it will be able to do that, as long as it is not a requirement for the child to wear it. We are taking a common-sense approach here, but it is important that we set out clearly that there are three branded items.

[Munira Wilson]

I strongly support the Government’s objective of driving down the cost of branded uniform for families. Will the Minister look at the proposals that the Liberal Democrat tabled in Committee and on Report? We suggested that, instead of capping the number of items, we cap the cost, which would then be reviewed in line with inflation every year. That way, we would help to bring down the cost, because if we reduce the number of items, suppliers will just push up their prices, as they are selling fewer items. They might charge £100 for a blazer instead of £50. Our proposal would free schools to set their own uniform policy and let the market do its job by driving down prices for families.

[Olivia Bailey]

I thank the hon. Lady for her positive and constructive engagement on this question. Of course, the Government carefully considered the amendments that were tabled. My concern with her proposal would be the bureaucratic burden on schools. The simplicity of requiring three branded items can help us in that regard.

Oral Answers to Questions

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Monday 20th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

We Liberal Democrats warmly welcomed the Government’s decision earlier this year to finally adopt our long-standing policy of extending free school meals to all children in households in receipt of universal credit. At the time, Ministers repeatedly refused to confirm how they were funding this extension; research from Northumbria University now shows that, on average, every primary will have to find £11,000 and every secondary about £25,000 to do so, at a time when they are already cutting teaching assistants and extracurricular activities to balance the books. Given that the Secretary of State has made this policy and the rolling out of school breakfast clubs the centrepiece of her bid for deputy leadership of the Labour party, will she confirm when she is actually going to fund them?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am grateful to the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for drawing attention to the fantastic Labour policies that this Government are rolling out.

We are expanding free school meals to half a million more children, backed up with an extra £1 billion of funding through the spending review. That is the difference that a Labour Government are making. I am delighted that we now have 750 new free breakfast clubs, and that from April next year another 2,000 will open, reaching half a million more children, lifting children out of poverty and backing families. That is the difference a Labour Government make.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

Esther Ghey, the mother of Brianna Ghey, is in Parliament today, campaigning to keep phones out of the classroom. Given that young people themselves are saying that they want a “break from the stress” of social media at school, and given the impact of phones on children’s concentration and focus, will the Secretary of State finally listen to her own Children’s Minister and put the Government’s guidance on mobile phones in schools into law, to give teachers and headteachers the back-up and, crucially, the resources that they need in order to restrict their use?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I too have met Esther Ghey, and heard from her about the incredible work that she has been leading in the face of profound personal tragedy following the loss of her daughter. I pay tribute to her for her campaigning efforts. Phones should not be out in schools—it is as simple as that. Schools have the powers, and headteachers have the powers, to enforce restrictions on their use, and in doing so they have my full backing. We can have no distractions when it comes to mobile phone use in our schools.

Children with SEND: Assessments and Support

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Monday 15th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank the Petitions Committee for granting this important debate and my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for opening the debate with such a powerful speech. I welcome the new Minister to her place, and I look forward to working with her. As I think she has heard today, she has her work cut out.

I start by paying tribute to the now over 125,000 people, including 323 in my Twickenham constituency, who have signed the petition and brought this important debate to the House. I pay tribute to the numerous campaign groups and charities that have been championing this cause, and I thank the many thousands of teachers and support staff up and down the country who are trying their very best to make our broken SEND system work in the best interests of our children.

Many of those who signed the petition will be parents, carers and family members of children with special educational needs or disabilities, who are deeply worried about the proposals that have been reported in the media over recent months. These are not families who are gaming or hijacking the system, as I think some Reform Members have suggested, or taking the system for a ride. They are simply parents and carers who are juggling advocating and caring for their children, while also being subjected to a drip-feed of rumours in the press about their children’s future and how their rights might be reduced.

MPs across the House know only too well from their inbox and mailbag, as we have heard so clearly and powerfully today, the many painful stories of how their constituents have had to fight for their child or children to get the support they need to learn and thrive. Sadly, some have struggled for so long that they have had no choice but to remove their child from school. Those are not decisions that parents or carers make lightly.

It is clear for many families that the current SEND system is not working. The Conservatives left a system that their own former Education Seretary, Gillian Keegan, described as “lose, lose, lose”. Despite increased funding, outcomes for children and young people have not improved, and far too many are left without adequate support. At the same time, as we have heard, local authorities are being driven to the financial brink.

The system is far too adversarial. Parents should not have to fight for their child to receive an education. We urgently need an overhaul of the whole system—but any reforms without children and families at their heart will fail. Scrapping EHCPs in a vacuum will not work; we need to see fundamental changes in how we deliver SEND support.

The Minister may be aware that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) and I wrote to the Prime Minister and the Education Secretary back in July, outlining five principles for SEND reform. We Liberal Democrats believe that these five principles should be the guiding light for any reform of our SEND system. First, we must put children and families first. Any reforms cannot be a repeat of the welfare reform disaster, which was a Treasury-driven, cost-cutting exercise. The voices of children and families should be at the heart of any reforms brought forward. However, it was clear from the rally today that many feel that their voices are not being heard. Children’s rights to SEND assessment and support must be maintained.

Secondly, as many hon. Members have said, early identification is key. We know that the earlier we act, the quicker we can prevent needs from spiralling. That means investing in early identification and intervention now. There are several educational and developmental checkpoints during a child’s early years and throughout primary school that could be expanded to identify additional needs; I would welcome information on what work Ministers are doing in that area. The Education Policy Institute has found that children with special educational needs who started reception last year were more than a year behind their peers. Staggeringly, those with an EHCP were already 20 months behind. We must work on narrowing that gap in the early years, and on giving children the help they need as soon as possible.

The former Minister for Early Years, the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), failed to answer this question when I asked him on the Floor of the House. I hope the new schools Minister will address how much of the £760 million for SEND transformation announced in the spending review will go towards early identification and intervention.

Thirdly, we need to boost specialist capacity. With 19.5% of pupils in England identified as having special educational needs, capacity in state school provision must be increased, alongside improvements to inclusive mainstream provision. That means investment in new school buildings and staff training. The Liberal Democrats urge the Government to proceed rapidly with the opening of the 67 special free schools stuck in the pipeline, and I welcome measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that will allow local authorities to open special schools. We know that applications were repeatedly blocked by the previous Conservative Government, despite the desperate need for our state special schools, which are bursting at the seams.

[Charlie Maynard (Witney) (LD)]

On the point about upskilling teachers, the Mulberry Bush school in my constituency does a fantastic job with outreach from specialist schools to regular schools. Does my hon. Friend agree that upskilling teachers and using skills inside the SEND schools to teach teachers in the broader environment would be a great thing?

[Munira Wilson]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I have heard about that hub-and-spoke model and would like to go and see it; I think it could be a good model to scale up.

I also implore Ministers to look at the bureaucratic hurdles that local authorities face in putting specialist units in mainstream schools. I think it was the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) who mentioned that London and other areas have falling school rolls. There is space opening up in our school estate for specialist units. My own local authority managed to take advantage of that in Nelson school, which is a primary school but, as of last week, has a specialist unit for secondary pupils with SEMH needs. That could provide a rapid expansion of specialist provision for children to be educated closer to home and among their friends and peers.

Fourthly, we need support for local government. We have heard today that local authorities are racking up billions of pounds of deficits. Some of those costs are driven by the eye-watering fees charged by private equity-run special schools, some of which have a profit margin upwards of 20%. That is just wrong and immoral, and it is bleeding our councils dry. Local authorities are also spending £2.26 billion on SEND transport.

In the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the Government have proposed a potential profit cap on private social care providers. I was disappointed that every Labour MP voted down Liberal Democrat proposals earlier this year to cap the profits of private special schools; I hope that, with the new Minister in her place, they will think again on their stance on that amendment while the Bill is in the other place. Liberal Democrats are also calling for a new national SEND body to oversee and fund some of the most complex cases, where needs exceed a particular cost, to put an end to the postcode lottery of support, so that no child is left waiting and no council is left with unmanageable costs.

Finally, we need a fair funding arrangement. We need to get rid of the perverse incentives enshrined in the £6,000 notional budget that schools are given for SEND support. The performance and accountability regime should not penalise schools for accepting SEND pupils. Mainstream inclusion is vital, but it is not a silver bullet; for inclusion to work, it must be properly resourced. Teachers need training, classrooms need resources and schools need the capacity to meet needs, but we know that budgets are already stretched to the max. I hear in my own constituency that teaching assistants are among the first to go, yet they are the ones supporting the children with special needs.

Reform must be rooted in improving children’s lives, not simply managing down costs or limiting access to support. As we have heard today, some of the local authority funding reforms will significantly penalise local authorities—particularly my own, but also authorities across London and other parts of the country.

In conclusion, it is abundantly clear that the SEND system in its current form is too slow, too inconsistent and too adversarial. We need and want a system in which children get the right support at the right time, regardless of where they live. Change is urgently needed for families across the country. They cannot afford to wait.

I sincerely hope that the Government reshuffle will not cause further delay to the White Paper. We Liberal Democrats have offered to work constructively with Ministers on getting this issue right, with our five principles for reform. The Government cannot afford to sleepwalk into another Treasury-led disaster. They have to get this right, because every child, no matter their background or their needs, deserves every opportunity to thrive.

Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I warmly congratulate my friend and colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) on securing this debate and for so brilliantly outlining the issues at the start. I pay tribute to her tireless campaigning, alongside that of all the carers and parents who are here today and those who are not, who have been filling our inboxes and cannot afford to be here because they are busy looking after vulnerable and traumatised children who need our help.

There have been many powerful and moving contributions today from hon. Members across the House. I salute the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) and his partner for stepping up to adopt, and I hope they get the support they need from the ASGSF that they have applied for. However, I was disappointed by his party political swipe, because until now, there has been cross-party consensus in all the debates I have been in on this issue that the changes made in April were short-sighted and extremely damaging.

It is no accident that when I secured my urgent question in April, the day after the fund had expired, the Minister came forward and announced its extension. It is no accident that we are having this debate today, and that a written ministerial statement has come out with this fig leaf of an extension of the fund into next year. The reality is that, yes, there has been cross-party consensus, but we Liberal Democrats have led the charge on this and dragged the Minister, kicking and screaming, to make the announcements.

I really hope that we do not end up being blindsided once again, as we were in April. We all welcomed the announcement in the Chamber that day but then, quietly, in the middle of the Easter recess, the announcement was snuck out that the fair access limits were to be reduced, the assessment grants slashed and the matched funding cut. These parents, carers and families deserve far better. I really hope that Ministers and officials have learnt the lessons from earlier this year.

It is worth repeating and reminding ourselves who we are talking about today: some of the most vulnerable children in our communities, who have suffered unimaginable trauma, including abuse and neglect, sometimes witnessing unspeakable violence in their homes. Their carers—both adoptive parents and kinship carers—have made the most amazing commitment to step up and provide a loving, stable home to help heal and give them a second chance in life. The impact of these short-sighted cuts to the grants has been utterly devastating. The decision has resulted in a backlog of applications, delaying assessments and therapeutic support, and leaving already deeply traumatised children with a heightened sense of abandonment.

I received this email from a parent in June:

“My youngest daughter has recently had her sensory therapy put on hold for two months, due to all the delays by the government. My daughter started her new therapy at the beginning of February this year, had 4 therapy sessions and then had to stop due to the uncertainty around the funding.

We were just starting to see real progress when the therapy stopped abruptly. It was what I can only describe as ‘opening Pandora’s box and violently slamming it shut again’. The regression we saw was severe. We experienced behaviours (including feral screaming), which our daughter had not displayed in over 4 years. This regression not only affected our youngest daughter, but also her older sister (who is also traumatised).”

The charity Home for Good and Safe Families recently surveyed parents and carers to understand the impact of the recent changes to the fund. It found that the loss of therapeutic support is already affecting many families, particularly those without the means to pay privately, leading to increased inequality in access to services, with financial vulnerability closely linked to greater disruption.

In mid-July, one adoption support provider reported that only 50% of their families waiting for support had any funding from the ASGSF in place. That has raised serious concerns about the impact on children’s mental health, with the vast majority of parents and carers saying that they are “extremely” or “very concerned” that their children’s mental health will be negatively affected. For some children and families, long periods without support have caused extreme difficulties—declines in mental health, suicidal thoughts, self-harming, school absence and an escalation of violence in the home. These are children whose lives have been characterised by loss and separation, for whom trusting and consistent relationships are vital.

The cuts have meant that the Purple Elephant Project, which is now in the constituency of the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), right on the border of mine, has reduced its yearly programme of support to just 26 weeks. Six months is a long time in a child’s life. For some children and young people, gaps in therapy greatly risk their willingness to engage in therapy in the future. The Government’s failure to communicate their planned changes has also led to providers reporting substantial financial losses, particularly small providers such as Purple Elephant, which is relying on crowdfunding and emergency funds to stay afloat. Some, including Purple Elephant, are already having to cut their staff, and they are concerned that some therapists will leave the profession altogether. We cannot afford that when we look at the scale of the mental health crisis not just among children in adoptive and kinship care, but more broadly across society.

The irony and the frustration is that the Government have sabotaged a tool that works. An evaluation of the fund in 2022 found that at the end of funded support, the mental health difficulties of school-age children improved, and there were also significant improvements in family functioning. Some 94% of parents say the fund is “absolutely vital” or “very important” to their family and is a need that could not be met elsewhere.

The ASGSF helps families to stay together and prevents family placement breakdown. It also helps children to stay and thrive in school. One adoptive parent I met in my constituency was very clear that her child would not have been able to stay in school without the supportive therapy provided by the ASGSF. As we have heard, there is anecdotal evidence of potential adopters being put off going through the process because of concerns about a lack of post-adoption support. We know that for every child adopted, £1.3 million-worth of value is created through improved outcomes from adoption, and there are the lower financial costs of adoption compared with care. The economic case is unquestionable.

The Government keep telling us—the Minister with responsibility for early years, the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), just told us this in the main Chamber—that giving the children the best start in life is one of the Government’s biggest priorities. If they really mean that and want to break down barriers to opportunity, this Minister needs to understand the outrage and despair not just of Members here, but of families and carers up and down the country. The Government have sabotaged a supremely effective fund.

Aside from today’s announcement, there are rumours about the Department reforming the fund, and a paper has been released by Adoption England that proposes devolving funding to regional adoption agencies or local authorities as grants. A whole host of organisations are publicly opposed to those proposals and are concerned that the model will compromise fair and equitable access of funding for all children, regardless of where they live or the agency they have been adopted through.

Furthermore, regional adoption agencies are typically responsible only for adoption services. We are not sure what this would mean for special guardians or those who have child arrangement orders in place and how the funding would be split between kinship families and adoptive families. The Government desperately need to consult families and sector experts. I note that today’s written ministerial statement alludes to engagement—not before time, because people were not consulted or engaged with when the changes were made at Easter.

I believe, and I have told the Minister this privately and publicly, that she and her Department deeply care—as I and my hon. Friends do—about the lives of children and families. But I think that the failure so far in joined-up policymaking and engagement is actually being driven by the Treasury, not by her or her Department. If she needs help with the Treasury, which is desperate for savings, she has support here in all parts of the Chamber, and we will continue to bat for children up and down this country.

I reiterate the calls that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex made at the start of this debate. We need to see a permanent ringfenced fund restored to the previous full amount in terms of grants per child. That will mean extending and expanding the size of the fund. I have told the Minister this before: she can find the money in the £46.5 million budget that the Department had for advertising, consultancy and marketing costs in the past year. She should halve that budget and instead expand the ASGSF by 50% so that the fair access limits can be restored to what they were. There needs to be an end to the surprise annual announcements. As my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean) said, children are not adopted or taken into kinship care for one financial year. That is done for life, and with love, and this Government should honour that.

I hope that the Government will start to engage properly with the sector and families up and down the country. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex, I ask for a two-year moratorium on further changes so that the reforms are evidence-based. It is incumbent on all of us as corporate parents to ensure that our most vulnerable children are properly supported and given the best second chance in life, which many of these children are being offered. This is a tiny budget in the context of huge Government spending, but it has a massive impact on those precious and fragile lives. It is time to think again. It is time to do far better. It is time to put children, who are our country’s future, first.

Early Education and Childcare

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

High-quality early years education is the best possible investment we can make in our future. Whether we are serious about tackling the SEND crisis or the attainment gap, or are simply concerned to give every child the best start in life, proper investment in the early years is one of the strongest levers we have.

We all know that for far too long the previous Conservative Government neglected the early years sector, leaving a legacy of sky-high fees and childcare deserts in their wake, particularly in disadvantaged areas. We Liberal Democrats therefore welcome the Government’s announcement of more school-based nurseries, alongside the extension of funded childcare hours—but let us not forget the deep problems facing the private and voluntary sector. Without addressing the massive financial strain on those nurseries and childcare providers, we can never hope to deliver for families. Their survival is absolutely central to supporting families up and down the country to thrive.

The Government’s jobs tax, I am afraid, has only added fuel to the fire. The financial pressures of underfunded hours, the national insurance contributions rise, and inflation have left many providers on the brink. Indeed, some nurseries are already telling parents that they may be unable to sign the new contract due to financial pressures. Earlier this week, in a letter published by the Early Years Alliance, a survey of more than 800 providers found that 44% could not meet demand this September, while one in six has already cut funded places. That is coupled with a crisis in recruitment and training of staff in the sector; if the providers and the staff are not there, how can the Minister expect his expansion to deliver for parents up and down the country?

Will the Minister commit to urgently reviewing the funding rates, so that they reflect the real cost of delivering high-quality early education? At the same time, will he work with his colleagues in the Department for Business and Trade to ensure that we extend and fully fund parental rights so that families up and down the country have a real choice between whether they want to stay at home for a longer period in the early months, or go out to work full time?

[Stephen Morgan]

I thank the hon. Lady for welcoming our expansion of childcare. I note again that nine in 10 parents received one of their first choice childcare places. We are determined that our childcare expansion will deliver safe, quality care for children. I know that the whole House agrees that the safety and wellbeing of children is of paramount importance. That is why alongside this expansion, which will support hard-working families, we are increasing the frequency of Ofsted inspections and enhancing recruitment checks to prevent unsuitable individuals from working with children, alongside new whistleblowing requirements. The strengthened safeguarding requirements have been added to the statutory framework from this month, giving parents greater confidence that as we expand childcare access, it will be of high quality.

The hon. Lady makes a number of points about the challenges faced by the sector. The number of people working in the sector has increased by 18,000, and as I mentioned in my statement, there are now 5,800 new private providers delivering the entitlement. We will review funding distribution later in this academic year. I welcome the opportunity to continue to work with the hon. Lady on these issues, as we continue to increase access to high-quality education across our country. I look forward to meeting her in due course.

Oral Answers to Questions

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

May I join Ministers in thanking our school and college staff up and down the country for their dedication? I wish them happy and restorative summer holidays.

Children with special educational needs who started reception last year were over a year behind their peers, according to the Education Policy Institute. Staggeringly, those with an education, health and care plan were already over 20 months behind—the widest gap that the EPI has recorded since it started monitoring in 2013. Given the importance of the early years in narrowing the gap, it is crucial that we give every child the help that they need as soon as possible. Will the Minister confirm how much of the £760 million for SEND transformation announced in the spending review will go towards early identification and intervention?

[Stephen Morgan]

The Government are committed to ensuring excellence for everyone so that children have the support, skills and opportunities that they need, and that starts in early years. We are actively working with parents and experts on solutions, including more early intervention to prevent needs from escalating. Any changes we make will improve support for children and parents, stop parents having to fight for support, and protect current effective provision.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Please, we have to try to get in as many Members as possible. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I echo the Secretary of State’s remarks about the tragedy in Minehead. My thoughts and prayers are with all those affected.

Every parent who puts a baby into childcare wants to know that they are safe. In the light of the crucial role that CCTV played in the harrowing case at Twickenham Green nursery in my constituency, which resulted in a nursery worker being convicted of 21 counts of child cruelty last month, and in the tragic case of Gigi Meehan in Cheadle, will the Secretary of State commit to issuing fresh guidance to nurseries on the use and regular monitoring of CCTV footage?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)]

The hon. Member will know that I met the family of Genevieve Meehan recently. That was a tragic case. We need to make sure that we are doing everything we possibly can to protect children in nursery settings. That is why I am pleased that in the “best start in life” strategy, published just two weeks ago, we committed to have early years settings inspected within 18 months and, indeed, within four years. I have offered a meeting with the hon. Member, and I am very happy to discuss these issues further.

Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I welcome this opportunity to talk about giving every child the best start in life. I suspect there are not many people in this Chamber who would disagree that every child, no matter their background or needs, deserves the very best start in life. It is our duty as elected representatives and policymakers to ensure that parents and carers have access to the help and support they need to ensure that every child gets that best start in life.

The Best Start family hubs announced last week are very welcome and present a great opportunity for the Government to address the growing inequalities across our education system that were left behind by the previous Government. If resourced properly, the Best Start family hubs expansion could help to achieve many of the things that we on the Liberal Democrat Benches have been calling for, including: the early identification of special educational needs and disabilities; contact time with mental health practitioners; and access to nutritional advice. However, the Government’s ambitious aims must be matched with effective delivery. Children and families cannot afford for the Government to get this wrong, after many years under the Conservatives when early years provision really started to disintegrate.

The strategy states that

“high-quality early education and childcare boosts children’s life chances and enables parents to work”.

I warmly welcome plans to invest in training and qualifications to raise the skill levels of the early years workforce, but I am afraid that the Government’s rhetoric does not quite meet the reality on the ground. The funding promised by the Conservative Government for their 30 hours childcare proposals fell far short of what it actually costs to deliver that provision, and I am afraid that Labour’s current proposals are also insufficient for nurseries.

Labour’s ill-advised national insurance hike has not only hampered economic growth, but put hundreds of charitable and private nurseries at risk of collapse. Indeed, the Early Years Alliance reports that nearly one third of providers are at risk of permanent closure in the next year, and that four in 10 would reduce the number of funded places for three and four-year-olds. When coupled with damaging new guidance to local authorities on funding agreements, the Government risk expanding the childcare deserts left behind by the Conservative Government. What is the point of expanding early years entitlements for children if parents are not able to access them because providers are simply unable to fulfil them?

With the expansion of childcare provision, keeping our children safe is paramount. I welcome confirmation last week that the frequency of Ofsted inspections of early years settings will increase and that work is being done to develop an effective approach to group inspections. However, as the Minister knows from some of our conversations, if we are to prevent tragedies, such as the case of baby Gigi Meehan in Cheadle and the recent shocking case in my own constituency that last month saw a nursery worker convicted of 21 counts of child cruelty at Twickenham Green nursery, Ministers must go further and they must go faster.

The early years foundation framework urgently needs to be strengthened, and better guidance needs to be put in place for how we keep babies in particular safe in early years settings. That is particularly important as we see the expansion of childcare provision for the under-twos. I hope we will see clearer guidance on safe sleep practice, but also on the use of CCTV, which proved critical in the cases I cited, and on the regular review of that CCTV footage. The strategy points to a

“golden thread of evidence-informed practice”,

so I hope the Minister tell us whether she will work with health authorities and expert charities to co-ordinate national safe sleep standards for use in early years settings. We must ensure that that goes hand in hand with multi-agency safeguarding training.

Giving children the best start in the early years also means giving parents genuine choice on whether to spend more time at home or go back to work full time. I am immensely proud that it was the Liberal Democrats in Government who introduced shared parental leave—yet, years later, take-up remains far too low because of low rates of statutory maternity and paternity pay, and shared parental leave pay. I am aware that the Government have started their review into parental leave and pay, which I warmly welcome.

The Liberal Democrats have long called for statutory maternity and shared parental pay to be doubled to £350 a week, and for fathers to be entitled to a month of paternity leave, as well as a “use it or lose it” month of shared parental leave, because we know just how valuable the first months of a child’s life are and the importance of the involvement of both parents. I hope the Minister and his colleagues in the Department for Business and Trade will heed our calls. I also want to press him again on the strong economic and moral case for granting statutory paid leave for kinship carers, so many of whom are forced out of work when they take on caring responsibilities to provide a safe and stable home for children.

We must acknowledge that despite all efforts, some children simply will not get the best start in life due to unimaginable trauma, which can mean that the only safe course of action is to separate them from their birth parents. It therefore falls to us collectively as corporate parents to ensure those children get the very best second chance at life. Family hubs must be more than signposting services; they should offer trusted relationships and trauma-informed practice embedded within staff training and service design as part of the Government’s commitment to rebuilding trust with families.

Continuing on that theme, the adoption and special guardianship support fund, as many Members will know, provides funding for vital therapy to help the most vulnerable children to process their trauma. These sessions are not easy, with some children taking months to even step through the door, but it is vital that these children are given the space, time and support to relearn how to trust adults. Slashing the funding for each child from £5,000 to £3,000 means that many will stop their therapy sessions just as they get through the door and start to make progress. Not only is this incredibly frustrating for the adoptive parents and special guardians; it sadly compounds the child’s tragic belief that all adults do is let them down.

Both the Minister who opened the debate and the Minister for Children and Families, who is sitting next to him on the Front Bench, know that I am determined to see the full £5,000 grant funding restored for every eligible child. I press the Minister again to go to the Treasury and demand the additional funds to meet the growth in demand for those grants so that the next generation can believe that there are adults, and even Governments, worth trusting. I have pointed out previously that halving the Department’s advertising and consultancy budget would enable the ASGSF to grow by 50% from £50 million to £75 million to meet that additional demand.

Short of that, I urge the Minister not to leave parents, carers and children in limbo again by waiting until the last minute to announce whether the fund will continue next year. Instead, I hope that Ministers will commit to announcing the future of the fund by September, now that we have had the spending review, so that families and providers can plan and have certainty for the future.

Finally, parents and carers have for far too long been subjected to an adversarial special educational needs system where they have had to fight tooth and nail to secure their children’s right to learn. A good education helps children to discover who they are and what they are good at, but sadly far too many have been denied the help they need. As the Chair of the Education Committee has pointed out, the rumours that have been swirling have left many families up and down the country deeply concerned. We met a number of those families in Parliament yesterday, and I know that the inboxes of Members across the House have been filled with worried emails on this matter.

It is clear the system is broken and needs reform, but any change must have children at its heart, not a Treasury drive for savings by removing rights in a vacuum. I am glad to see that inclusive practice for children with SEND will be embedded in early years teaching; early identification is crucial in ensuring that children can get the help they need when they need it. However, it remains to be seen just what that help will be. The Government have failed continuously to communicate with those directly affected by their decisions, but they have the chance today to tell parents whether education, health and care plans will be removed from any child.

I reiterate what my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) said to the Prime Minister last week, and what my right hon. Friend and I said in the letter we sent to the Education Secretary and the Prime Minister, in which we set out the Liberal Democrats’ five principles for SEND reform. We are very happy to work constructively with the Government on that reform, because we know that all these children—whether they have special needs and whatever their background—deserve the very best start in life.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Snell]

My hon. Friend has made the point excellently. Although she and I will talk passionately about the experiences that we see in our own city, I am sure that in every city like ours across the country—including, I would wager, Bradford, Madam Deputy Speaker—there are good teachers who go above and beyond to support local communities, and schools that act more as hubs for social support, community involvement and neighbourhood engagement than simply as places for young people to be educated.

We are very fortunate in Stoke-on-Trent, because we already have some family hubs. I have two in my constituency. There is one at Bentilee, which does exceedingly good work, supported by Simon French and the Alpha Academies Trust, and Thrive at Five; multi-agency activity there is genuinely looking at the direct causes of the attainment issues and at what can be done practically to support families. We also have the hub at Thomas Boughey children’s centre.

The family hubs model is not particularly revolutionary, because it replicates what happened with Sure Start. My daughter is now 14, and her mother and I had to access the Sure Start system when she was born. There were things that, as new parents in our mid-20s, we simply did not know. My family and hers both lived far away, and our network of support was really quite small, so we naturally turned to our Sure Start centre, which was based up the road in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee), who is no longer in his place—I have denied him the opportunity for another intervention. We walked into the Sure Start centre, spoke to a lovely woman and explained our problems, which were about latching and trying to understand routines.

Unless people have someone who can sit them down and talk them through it, they do not really know what they are doing. As a new parent who did not really know what I was doing, my instinct was to think, “I’m probably doing it badly and wrong.” We went to the Sure Start centre, and it was lovely and welcoming. We sat down and had a conversation with somebody. We went through what we were worried about, and we were reassured that the anxiety we were experiencing as new, young parents was perfectly normal and in line with everybody else’s expectations and understanding. Somebody there was a lifeline for us, and we were signposted to a room down the corridor and told when we could pop by again and have another conversation with somebody who had a level of expertise and who could offer support.

The model that we are now rerunning in Stoke-on-Trent has benefits. Looking at some of the data coming out of Bentilee in particular, we can see that there are improvements in the attainment levels of children starting school who have been through the programme, who have interacted with some of the schemes and who have accessed the maintained school nursery at the same site. I know the Minister will be aware of the importance of maintained nursery schools—those teacher-led facilities that really get to the crux of the problem in some of the communities that are the hardest to deal with.

Alongside the family hub, I welcome all the work that the Government are doing in this area. There is a breakfast club at the Co-op Academy Grove school in Northwood. Mrs Carrigan and I were there one morning as it was starting, and I noticed not just that children were coming in to have a hot breakfast, which was reassuring and welcome, but that they were interacting and talking to each other. In fact, the staff told me that the most popular thing that the young boys do after they have their breakfast is to go and play with the playdough. They do not want to play electronic games; they want to build and model stuff. As a result, the staff are looking at setting up a science, technology, engineering and maths group, because they can see that that is where some of the young people want to go.

Mrs Carrigan told me that the children were also more settled; because they have come into school slightly earlier, have had their breakfast and taken off their coats, when the day starts they are ready to start learning from the moment the bell goes, which means those vital minutes in the morning are used for teaching, not for trying to calm down a class of 30 children who are a little bit all over the place. We cannot underestimate how much those minutes accrue over the course of a year and how much time can be brought back for education purposes.

Fundamentally, the challenges I face in Stoke-on-Trent, and that other Members have eloquently articulated in their own communities, stem from the fact that the attainment rate for the best start to life in places like Stoke-on-Trent is not as great as for children in other areas because of the poverty levels. Whether we call it furniture poverty, food poverty or child poverty—whatever we call it—it is poverty: young people growing up in households that simply do not have enough coming in to meet all their outgoings.

The best start in life is not only an educational issue. I appreciate that this debate is being led by the Department for Education because that is where the policy area sits, but if we want to give a child a good start in life, they need a safe, warm home that is not draughty; they need somewhere where they have the space to grow, develop and learn; and they need secure play areas where they feel comfortable to socialise and interact with their peers. They also need access to good-quality dentists, as the huge levels of tooth decay in Stoke mean that children are missing school; access to those vital health services is crucial.

Let me turn to the parenting aspect. Too many of my constituents tell me that they had a really bad experience at school, so they do not want to go back into school to get help, advice and support. For them, school was a moment of trauma—a time that they did not particularly enjoy—so being asked to go back to school, in some cases to see the same members of staff who taught them 20 years earlier, gives them the sense that they are being judged.

We need to think much more holistically and about what levers we can pull, through Government and local government, to see our aspiration of improved outcomes for young people. Education is one of those levers, but we also have to make sure that parents can access good-quality support for their own health and mental health, and good-quality jobs so that they can afford to have a good work-life balance and to spend time with their children. We need to have a think about the way in which we establish networks for young people so that, as well as the formal education setting, they can access necessary social activities, whether through formal organisations like the scouts or through sporting clubs. There has to be an opportunity for young people to socialise in the way that they are happiest to do.

Fundamentally—I know the Minister gets this because I have spoken to her about it—we have to think about the nuances for individual groups of young people, who need specific support. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) rightly pointed out that the removal of the adoption and special guardianship support fund is a particular challenge for a small but high-need group of young people. I have made my views on that known to the Minister, and I hope that her Department will look at what more can be done to support children growing up in kinship care arrangements, like I did, because they face specific challenges. This is not necessarily a poverty-related issue, but it is about accessing support services that allow them to live a fruitful childhood.

Finally, on SEND, I am proud to be a governor of the Abbey Hill special school, which is in the constituency of my neighbour my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South. One of the biggest challenges we face relates to EHCPs and how to give young people a particularly good chance in life. Under section I, parents can identify the particular school they want their child to go to. I agree with the Government’s plan on this; if we can keep children who have additional needs—whether that be SEND or social, emotional, and mental health requirements—in the mainstream setting with the right help and the right support, we should do so. That frees up places for the children who need that specialist, bespoke support in special schools, to a level that means everyone is in the right place.

We need to stop those mainly alternative providers, which are running huge profits, marketing their schools to children and families who are desperately in need of help and support, and saying to them, “Tell your local authority, under section I, that you want to go to this particular school”, because that means the money flows out. Hundreds of thousands of pounds are spent on alternative providers, normally outside of the area, and those providers get that money through marketing; they sell young people and their parents a dream of a particular type of education that they can access, regardless of the standard of that education.

[Munira Wilson]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches tried to put forward an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to extend the profit cap that the Government have proposed for children’s social care homes run by private equity firms to the special schools creaming off profits from our local authorities and denying vulnerable children the education they need. However, I am afraid that Labour Members voted against it, so will he join me in convincing Ministers to think again while the other place is considering the Bill?

[Gareth Snell]

I would not say that the hon. Lady’s intervention was helpful to me, but she has made her point. The Government have been quite clear that we must look at how some alternative provision and specialist independent providers are making huge profits off the back of some of the most desperate and vulnerable children in our society, and at how local authorities need the tools to tackle that. In a new programme opening in my own city, one of the trusts that runs one of the special schools is looking to do mainstream work with some of the other trusts’ schools, but that is about getting trusts to work together. I do not remember her amendment, but I have absolute faith in the ministerial team—[Interruption.] I am sorry, but I cannot honestly say that I read everything that the Liberal Democrats produce.

To move this forward slightly, I do know, and the hon. Lady will know, that the Government have been quite clear about the need to tackle the profiteering and price gouging happening in the sector. I am almost certain that the Minister will have a better answer for her than I can give her while I am speaking. That is obviously something we all agree on as a principle, and I am sure we can have a discussion another time about how we get there. However, in places such as Stoke, the higher needs budget is being blown because thousands of pounds are being taken by these glossy brochure schools that are making huge profits, and that does not give the young people in my city the best start in life. I think it gives them false hope.

Finally, I would say to the Minister that the best start in life is about the first 1,001 days. I am very proud to chair the APPG on literacy, and I am really glad that the Department for Education has announced the year of reading. The bond of reading to your child is so important. Early years literacy, which also helps with oracy, means young people can start school with a set of skills that will help them thrive throughout their education.

The other part of this that we need to think about is how we help parents who do not have a level of literacy necessary to start reading to their children. Again, all too often in my constituency I talk to parents who want to talk about literacy, but their confidence in their own literacy skills is such that they do not feel able to do that. It would be welcome if, as part of the National Year of Reading, the Department not only helped young people and children get more into reading and enjoying books—enjoying reading for pleasure, as opposed to having to read for work as most of us do—but ensured that parents were supported to improve their literacy in a way that allows them to interact with their children for longer as their own education progresses, I know that would be a huge benefit not just in my constituency but across the whole country.