Children and Families Bill

Nicholas Dakin Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) who, despite struggling to find his voice, has made his points effectively.

There is sometimes a gap between the rhetoric we display in here and the reality outside. In the Scunthorpe area, 22% of children are defined as being in child poverty. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that families with children are the group being the hardest hit by the current cuts, with the poorest families with children under one having already lost approximately £1,000 a year. That is the context in which the children and families who need the most help are struggling.

I pay tribute to all staff in schools and colleges up and down the land who work extremely hard to achieve the best possible support and outcomes for young people with special educational needs. As the hon. Member for Waveney said, bad practice needs to be consigned to history. However, we need to celebrate good practice and recognise the efforts made by people on a daily basis—that is important.

One of the most significant problems with the current system is the fact that two different systems operate: pre-16 and post-16. That has resulted, more often than we would like, in students enrolling in college at the age of 16, but the college receiving little or no information about special educational needs. The establishment of a seamless system for everyone up to the age of 25 should be a step in the right direction, but the change raises a number of concerns because it will come into force in September 2014, a year after the September 2013 changes to the way in which post-16 special educational needs provision is funded.

Colleges are finding that the process of preparing for the 2013 funding change is exceptionally complicated, and it is regrettable that this proposal was not trialled in advance. There is a real danger that students are going to miss out on their education of choice. As the Education Committee Chair said, the poor management of the funding changes risks threatening the good will of educational institutions towards the good intentions in the Bill. There is confusion about the funding for young people with SEN in respect of preparation for the change in 2013 in post-16 funding.

Local authorities are taking very different approaches, with the worst practice being where they are allocating funding based on their assessments. Such authorities are acting as commissioners and deliverers of the service, and that is endangering the quality of the service. I hope the Minister will confirm that the Government expect that, at the very least, local authorities should continue to fund current students until they have completed their course. It is important that that commitment is given by the Government to provide assurance in the system, so that there is the confidence to build on the Bill and it is not undermined by the September 2013 changes. I hope that the Minister who will be making the winding-up speech has picked up on that point and will respond to it. Although the post-16 sector is enthusiastic about the principle, it is very concerned about the practice in respect of the funding changes for 2013 and there is a real danger that confidence will be undermined, even though the Bill seeks to do the right thing.

I wish to pick up on one or two other issues. The hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) drew attention to the exclusion of young offenders from this Bill. I hope that the Government take the opportunity in Committee to re-examine that, because it seems, for reasons he expressed better than I could, that these young people need all the support they can get. Education for over-18s is not supported strongly in the Bill; it says that local authorities “can” take account of that when developing provision. That means that they might not take it into account, so the Government could also look to strengthen provision in that area.

Finally in my list of small issues, I would like the Government to examine the higher education provision. Young people with these additional needs should surely be supported in higher education, too, but the Bill deliberately excludes young people in higher education. Some young people’s higher education will be provided by further education colleges, and there is a lack of clarity about the position for that group in particular. I hope that the Government take the opportunity, either in response to this debate or in Committee, to examine these things in greater detail.

I welcome the excellent way in which the Minister began the debate by saying that he wanted to engage with issues and take the opportunity to improve the Bill. A number of hon. Members have mentioned the good intentions of the Bill and touched on the real issue, which is that with the changing landscape of free schools, academies, studio schools and so on—the hon. Member for Waveney mentioned that—there is a dislocation and dismemberment of a service, and we end up with a series of ad-hoc provisions. The Bill recognises the need for a proper service, but providing it is a challenge, because whereas Every Child Matters has a clear and direct philosophy behind it, the philosophy behind this Bill is at variance with the philosophy behind many of the other educational changes the Government are pushing forward. The Bill provides an opportunity for this skilled Minister to knit things all together, and I wish him luck.