SEND Provision

Debate between Robin Walker and Toby Perkins

Thursday 14th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am grateful to colleagues on the Liaison Committee and the Backbench Business Committee for supporting my application for the debate and giving it the prominent position that it has today. I thank all those who supported the application. I note that it is an unusual subject that brings together the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis), and the hon. Members for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon). Not all of them can be here today, but I know that each has passionately supported the case for more and better targeted investment to support children with special needs. I warmly welcome the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Gen Kitchen) to the Chamber. It is greatly to her credit that she has chosen to make her maiden speech on this subject; I look forward to hearing it.

There have been many debates on the importance of special educational needs and disabilities in the House over the past few years, so this is not new ground, and I make no apology for that. There have been Green Papers, a Command Paper, and the excellent Backbench Business debate under the auspices of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden, which was so well subscribed. It is no surprise to me that today’s debate is similarly well supported across the Chamber. I do not intend to repeat all the arguments from the previous debate, in which 30 Members spoke. I hope that the Minister will take them all as read in his response.

In my casework as MP for Worcester, and in the evidence that I have seen as Chair of the Education Committee, there is a consistent trend of schools at every phase and of every variety struggling to meet the rising level of SEND, of families struggling to get the needs of their children properly met and supported, and of children with SEN too often being home educated, not as a result of genuine elective home education but as a result of their parents feeling that there is no other way in which their needs can be supported. We have heard this at the Education Committee described as “non-elective home education”.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The hon. Member has secured a really important debate. One big problem that comes across strongly in Derbyshire is the lack of capacity within the local authority to do the assessment. Many schools are supporting parents and their special needs children, but are unable to get assessment for months or even years. How big an issue does he think that local authority resources are in all this?

[Mr Walker]

The hon. Gentleman is right: that is definitely part of the challenge. I will try to come back to that later in my speech. The briefing that the Local Government Association has provided for the debate is very helpful in drawing attention to that. In the previous Backbench Business debate, Members from both sides of the House highlighted the need for earlier identification of need, and all the different organisations across local authorities, health and education that need resource and support to deliver that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend puts it perfectly, and I wholeheartedly agree with him.

The logic behind the Government’s welcome increase in investment in childcare, which I have strongly supported, applies just as much, if not more, when it comes to supporting children with SEND. If we get this right, there are benefits for the life chances of the individual and of the family who support them.

[Mr Perkins]

rose—

[Mr Walker]

I will not give way because I need to make progress.

I have lost count of the number of highly educated parents who have felt that they needed to give up work to support their children. An increase in the departmental estimate to support SEND children would repay itself in the future earnings of their parents and would help the Government to meet their worthy aspiration of halving the disability employment gap and ensuring that work pays for future generations.

I should acknowledge some welcome local progress. In Worcestershire, two new specialist settings for children with autism have opened in the past few years: the one mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), and one in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier). The county council is in the process of commissioning a new secondary school with a specialist autism base in Worcester. We have seen expansions in the number of pupils supported at both Regency High School and Fort Royal Community Primary School in Worcester, and we have seen improvements in the opening of new settings in alternative provision. An exciting partnership between Heart of Worcestershire College and the National Star college in Cheltenham promises better local progression opportunities for further education students with SEND. Our university prides itself on being one of the most inclusive in the country.

The demand on all our settings is rising insatiably. Fort Royal in particular has seen a huge increase in severity among the population of pupils it serves. That has led the school to seek agreement with the county council to reduce its intake so that it can ensure that pupils with highly complex needs are properly and safely supported. The principal of the school has recently written to local politicians to highlight that and the risk of local needs not being met by 2030. Will the Minister look at that correspondence and consider carefully the need for small specialist provision in Worcestershire, particularly at primary level? I have over many years made the case to move Fort Royal Community Primary School—a brilliant school on a highly constrained site—to a location where it could grow and expand.

I also want to raise the concerns of respite settings such as New Hope Worcester, which provides vital support to SEND families during the holiday. New Hope has seen a reduction in the number of places that it is commissioned to provide. Parents from that setting have raised with me their concern that more support is urgently needed for respite care, which helps to ensure that their children can engage in specialist education and avoids the far greater cost of children being taken into homes. Although that support comes from the budget of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities rather than the DFE, we need to acknowledge the importance of cross-departmental working to better support need.

The Local Government Association’s helpful briefing for this debate, which I have touched on already, majors on that issue and makes a number of constructive recommendations. It calls for a cross-Government strategy for children and young people, arguing that DLUHC should co-ordinate capacity issues impacting on children’s social care, SEND and the early years. The LGA wants councils to have the powers to lead local SEND systems, and hold health and education partners to account for their work supporting SEND children and young people.

The LGA calls on the Government to use the SEND improvement plan to recognise the vital interconnection between SEN and mental health. Children and young people with learning difficulties are over four times more likely than average to develop a mental health problem. That means that one in seven of all children and young people with mental health difficulties in the UK will also have a learning disability. The report points out that good-quality early years provision can generate sustained and significant improvements in children’s outcomes, reducing disparities in later life, but neither councils nor early years providers feel that they have sufficient funding, resources and tools to properly support children with SEND and their families.

This morning, I attended the excellent briefing by the Children’s Services Development Group on the launch of its “Hopeful Horizons” report. Among the key recommendations of that report are urgent clarity on the banding and tariffs arising from the new national standards, and speeding up the building and registration of new services. The group pointed out that independent specialist advisers have a wealth of knowledge and want to work closely with the Government to make the process a success.

It is good to see the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) in her place. I look forward to hearing her proposals for ensuring that any future Labour Government address SEND funding and provision better than they have in the past. I expect her to point to her party’s flagship policy of imposing VAT on independent schools as part of the solution for providing the resource to meet needs. However, having heard many of the uses to which Labour wants to put that theoretical money, I am at a loss to see how any of it would provide the revenue or capital needed to better support SEND children.

In fact, in our last debate on this issue, in which no Labour Back Benchers spoke, we heard from the hon. Lady’s colleague that Labour does not plan to exempt specialist settings from its tax grab—only pupils in independent settings with an EHCP. I profoundly believe that that is a policy mistake that Labour would come to regret if it ever carried it out. Many pupils with SEND are supported either by their families or by local authorities in independent provision, including many highly specialised schools, and a small proportion of those pupils currently have EHCPs.

The decision to make that, and solely that, the gateway for avoiding a 20% increase in costs would create enormous and immediate demand for EHCPs, which local authorities and health structures are already struggling to provide in a timely manner. It could result in many pupils with SEND leaving, or being taken out of, settings that are currently meeting their needs and then seeking EHCPs in order to access settings that might. I do not believe that Labour has thought this policy through, or that it has factored into its calculations that £86,000 per place for public provision.

The DFE estimates show rising spend on public education and schools and, within that, a rising level of investment in high needs. All of that is welcome, but not sufficient. In 2014, this House legislated to better support the needs of SEND children, and as the Government themselves have acknowledged, the potential of that legislation has not yet been realised. I hope Front Benchers of whatever colour will reflect on the need for future estimates to better support this vital and worthy cause.

In conclusion, I will support the departmental estimates, because they provide record levels of funding for education in general and SEND in particular, but I believe there is a strong case for increasing both capital and revenue investment in the latter.

Adult and Further Education

Debate between Robin Walker and Toby Perkins

Wednesday 5th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend reflects the concerns—amply spelled out in the report—about not removing pathways to success and routes forward for students while the T-level programme is, as yet, not fully developed and not fully proven. I think we all accept that T-levels can be a very valuable part of the landscape.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Walker]

I am happy to give way to the Opposition spokesman.

[Mr Perkins]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene. Regarding his Committee’s call for a moratorium, the Labour party is committed to that. We entirely agree with him, and while he will not be in Parliament after the next election, he can be assured that if we have a Labour Government, the call he has made today will be supported.

[Mr Walker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that clarification. I am sure my right hon. Friend the Minister is listening carefully. I know he is not averse to making the case to the Treasury for funding, so I urge him to take from this debate the strong cross-party consensus, reflected in the Committee’s recommendation in paragraph 179 of our report, that:

“To prevent a further narrowing of 16-19 education, the Committee urges the Government to undertake a wholesale review of 16-19 funding, including offering more targeted support for disadvantaged students.”

Careers Guidance in Schools

Debate between Robin Walker and Toby Perkins

Wednesday 13th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Perkins]

I, too, have seen some excellent provision through careers hubs, but the hon. Member is right that it is inconsistent. Does he know whether those hubs are actually leading to different work experiences for young people? Far too often, I see a form sent home with the child: “Find your own work experience and write the name here. We’ll make sure that you’re not going to die while you’re there.” That is basically all that schools want to know. What we really need to see is not the milkman’s son going to work with his dad, and the politician’s son going with his, but people getting experiences that are different from what they are already used to. Is he aware of those kinds of experiences in his hub?

[Mr Walker]

I do not disagree at all with what the hon. Gentleman has said. Absolutely, we want to give people those experiences. I talk to a lot of my engineering companies in Worcester, and one of their frustrations is that they feel that the image that people have of engineering is of where it was 30 or 40 years ago, with the traditional, metal-bashing image. What they are doing now is much more exciting, and much more engaging for young people visiting from schools. The working environment is also much better than it was.

Absolutely, getting people into a workplace that they might not necessarily know about must be part of this. That is something that our careers hub in Worcestershire does very well, and we have seen that, in particular, in the cyber-security sector. Nobody learns that at school, but they can learn the maths, computing and skills that can take them in that direction. Those companies are getting into schools to run code clubs, and they are getting children from the schools to come and do work experience. They tend to be the small businesses that, traditionally, careers advice did not look at.

I absolutely recognise that the box-ticking approach that the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) described was sometimes a problem in the past, but I think it is actually more likely to be a problem in a centralised system than in one that encourages direct engagement between schools and employers.

I very much welcome this debate and am grateful for the chance to contribute to it. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to take forward the opportunity for work in the White Paper, to continue to engage with apprenticeships and employers, and to ensure that we also take the opportunity to raise aspirations in primary schools.

Northern Ireland Protocol: Implementation Proposals

Debate between Robin Walker and Toby Perkins

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. Where British businesses are selling into Northern Ireland and the intended use of their goods is clearly in the Northern Ireland market, it is, of course, important that we do everything we can to protect them from unnecessary bureaucracy. Discussions on this issue are ongoing with the Joint Committee, and I assure him that we will do whatever is in our power to deliver that frictionless access for businesses in order to ensure that the crucial trade between Britain and Northern Ireland can continue.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

There was a time when the Conservative party was proud of the fact that it was the party of business, but those days seem to be long gone: we have a situation where business is telling the Government about the problems that these arrangements will cause. Businesses need certainty and time to put in place measures to make such fundamental changes. We have a Government who seem to be passionate about the fact of Brexit, but ignorant of the facts around it. Will the Minister just come to the Dispatch Box, take seriously the concerns that have been put in front of him by a whole array of business bodies, and try to sort this out?

[Mr Walker]

We absolutely take seriously the concerns of business. We are engaging with businesses all the time on this and we want to deliver for them. One of the key concerns is the delivery of unfettered access. That is one of the issues on which businesses in Northern Ireland have repeatedly pressed me and my colleagues. The hon. Gentleman’s party is currently failing to support that in its approach to the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robin Walker and Toby Perkins

Thursday 26th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

It is absolutely our position to secure the best possible market access, and, as we have repeatedly said, the ability for British businesses to trade with and within the single market.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

8. What assessment he has made of the potential effect on the manufacturing industry of the UK leaving the EU single market.

Opportunities for the Next Generation

Debate between Robin Walker and Toby Perkins

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

I totally agree that we need to deliver economic growth. I welcome that intervention, and I will come later to that point and to some of my suggestions for delivering growth.

Just last week the Government announced plans to cut more red tape for apprenticeship providers and businesses. That will be welcomed by businesses in my constituency, which often say that it is fear of the red tape involved that discourages them from supporting the scheme. The hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) made an important point about how it is a challenge to encourage small businesses to provide apprenticeships. It is a challenge that we must meet, though, and one that I am depressed to see is not mentioned in the Opposition motion. It makes no suggestions for how to deal with red tape.

Businesses in Worcester are taking on apprentices, though—businesses such as Worcester Bosch, Skills for Security, Yamazaki Mazak, Sanctuary Housing, Worcester Community Housing and Tesco. From engineering expertise through to cooking and food safety, retail and administration, young people are learning on the job, and more are doing so as a result of the Government’s determination to strengthen the apprenticeship route. Next Monday I shall host an apprenticeship fair at Worcester’s historic guildhall, to celebrate the successes that have already been achieved and to launch a new challenge for apprenticeship recruitment in the city. It will be aimed specifically at NEETs and will be a celebration of real success and a chance to create new opportunities for the next generation.

It is not through apprenticeships alone, however, that opportunities will be created. Businesses must be supported in hiring and encouraged to invest in their staff and pursue opportunities for growth. Through scrapping Labour’s jobs tax right at the start of this Parliament, the Government did exactly that. Is it enough? Of course we would all like to see more, but is it a step in the right direction? Absolutely it is. We have also supported small business through corporation tax reductions and making the small business rate relief automatic.

We should never underestimate the vital role of SMEs in providing employment and opportunities for young people. The Opposition motion makes little mention of that, but it does mention the regional growth fund, which is already backing opportunity in Worcester through its support for the plans for a Worcester technology park. Once it gets the go-ahead, this project will provide a new home for green technologies in our county and provide thousands of jobs for the next generation. In contrast to the picture of doom and gloom painted by Labour Members, this body, created by the coalition Government, is already providing valuable investment in growth and making a real difference in our communities today.

The Labour party calls for a VAT cut, and for many businesses that might seem like an attractive option, but the best way in which this Government can help business is to provide economic growth and stability. Neither will be possible, however, so long as we labour under a growing deficit and burden of debt.

[Toby Perkins]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Walker]

I will not, I am afraid; I have already given way twice.

With their unfunded tax cuts, the Opposition have neither a plan nor a blueprint for growth. The coalition Government must do better. We must continue to invest in apprenticeships, and continue to ensure that a world-class higher and further education sector delivers real value and opportunity. Most of all, we must support a business-led recovery.

I would like to see more people taken out of tax, and more businesses participating in schemes such as the national insurance holiday, apprenticeships and business rate discounts. I would like to see a reform of the business rates system, to give local councils more power to provide targeted discounts and to replace the antiquated valuation system. I would also like to see a real focus on the skills needed for the next generation—but today’s negative and dispiriting Opposition motion provides none of those things. I urge the Minister, in dismissing this dismal motion, to show that the coalition Government are continuing as they started out, by supporting skills, backing business and opening opportunity for the next generation.