Health Bill

Peter Swallow Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 7th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention; he has been a doughty campaigner on this issue, as have other members of the Committee, including the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman). We also know that much of the data is based on the data being taken from Chelsea and Westminster hospital, and not much else across the country. We have a lot of questions about that contract, hence why we came to the same conclusion.

However, I primarily urge the Government please to consider new clause 85, in the name of the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft), which would impose duties on ICBs for delivering education, health and care plans. In my constituency we held a roundtable to provide evidence for our own hearing on this issue—by the way, this was based on a recommendation that came out of the Education Select Committee’s work on EHCPs, so we decided to take up the “H” bit. In that roundtable, I heard movingly from families who kept saying things like, “Everything is a battle.” One child, Stefan, suffers from multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, which affects his hips, and needs support to get around. He is very bright and desperately wants to learn. His mother was at that roundtable, and told me that, exceptionally and against school policy, he is allowed to keep a phone on him. There is no one whom the school can employ to make sure he can be wheeled from class to class, so instead what happens—and mother and school have done everything they possibly can—is that Stefan rings his mum so that she can come from home and deliver him to his next class. Ridiculously, this is the kind of thing that goes to tribunal, and then those tribunals cannot hold the ICBs to the same level of accountability as local authorities. The whole thing is nonsensical.

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

I agree with the point that the hon. Member is making. To add the voice of a member of the Education Select Committee, the Committee’s report equally found that we have to have a system where ICBs can be held to account for delivering on EHCPs.

[Layla Moran]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his intervention, and for the work of that Committee. We are doing work together right now on children’s mental health, so I am sure we will continue to pursue this theme.

The point is that the impact was not just on that child; it was also on the mother, who could not work, and there was also the distress of having to battle the system. The mental health of both parents was affected. It does not need to be this way, and I genuinely believe that accountability is part of the answer. As such, my plea to the Government is simply to say that it is past time that the “H” part of EHCPs is put on a statutory footing, and I urge the House to support new clause 85.