Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (Suffolk)

Debate between Sandy Martin and James Cartlidge

Tuesday 5th November 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sandy Martin]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct; he has put his finger right on the main point.

Two days ago, in response to the news that I had secured this debate, I received an email from a distressed parent. She says:

“My son has been out of school for 3 years in December. He was signed off by our consultant paediatrician as medically unfit for mainstream school. He has an Education & Health Care Plan. He has all the paperwork to state he has autism with a pathological demand avoidance profile but he cannot sit through the formal assessment as it runs for too long and he finds it too difficult to cope in the situation.

I have contacted the local authority so many times with regard to providing my son with an education; I have put in formal complaints and yet he still has no education.

I applied to the tribunal last December as the Local Authority insisted in his Education Health Care Plan that mainstream schooling was suitable for him, but they simultaneously refused to name a school he could go to.

The tribunal have made numerous orders ordering the Local Authority to name a school for my son but these have all been ignored.

We went to the tribunal last Tuesday, 29th October, at which the Judge told the Local Authority that they need to name a school on his education and health care plan and that the tribunal had to be adjourned until 13th December because of this, adding more of a delay to my son getting an education. He is now 12 years old.

My son is still without an education and we are in limbo.

My son deserves the correct education but he has been thoroughly let down by the education system. The strain of fighting the system tires you out but you still have to keep going. It should not be like this—every child has the right to an education. We keep being told that it is not the label that counts, but the child’s needs. Well we know our son needs an education but we cannot access any support for him to get that education because he doesn’t seem to have the right label.”

I had already secured this debate when that message was sent to me. The reason why I applied for the debate was that parent after parent has written to me, emailed me, met with me at my surgeries, and invited me to visit their child’s school or visit the school that their child would be going to if they had enough support in place, or the school that would be ideal for the child, but which has no more capacity.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate, but before I make my point, may I congratulate you, Mr Speaker, for the first time on your appointment? I think you will be a brilliant arbiter in this Chamber.

To the hon. Gentleman, who is also my neighbour, may I just say that I, too, have cases in my constituency that are very challenging? Does he accept that underneath all of this is resource, that it is the long-term funding formula that has caused us to receive such a small allocation, and that by fixing that we actually have at least a chance to see significant increases in SEND funding in Suffolk?

[Sandy Martin]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and agree that underlying all of this is a lack of resource, but I think the problem is not the formula, but the overall lack of resource.

I have met parents whose child had been placed in another county hundreds of miles away. I have met parents whose child is taken to school every day, but then regularly leaves the premises without any sort of supervision to prevent them from leaving. I have met parents who desperately want their child to receive some specialist support, but who believe that he or she is just left in the corner of a classroom for most periods because the school does not have the resources to provide the extra care required.

For years, resources for child mental health, school health visitors, children’s centres, mainstream schools, county educational services, school transport and family social workers have been more and more tightly rationed, and the situation for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities has suffered as a result of all of these cuts.

For children on the autistic spectrum, the situation is dire. It can often take years to get a diagnosis. Child and adolescent mental health services often tell parents that they need to get an initial assessment from the school first, but in most cases the school has nobody on the staff who is qualified to make such an assessment and will pass the buck back to CAMHS. In some cases, such as the one I mentioned at the start, the child will never be in the school to be assessed, because one of the defining characteristics of many mental disabilities is the refusal to submit to stressful situations.

Even once a child is properly assessed and their needs are understood, there is nothing like the necessary range of provision for those needs in Suffolk, and in particular, in my constituency of Ipswich. I am not a supporter of free schools as a model for educational delivery, but I still supported a free school for children on the autistic spectrum simply because there is a crying need for that provision and there does not seem to be any other way of obtaining it. Such a school has still not been built.

It is not just a problem for children with mental disabilities. There are 637 deaf children in Suffolk. Far too many of them are not receiving an adequate education. Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission carried out a local area SEND inspection in 2016 and found significant failings. The revisit in January of this year found that, in this area of provision, there was still not sufficient progress. It is not surprising that little progress has been made for deaf children. The numbers of trained teachers of the deaf in Suffolk have fallen by 8% in the past six years. The county is now trying to change the way that social care support is provided for deaf children, but it is not involving the families in the design of the new provision. “Nothing about us without us” is not just a woke slogan—if we do not include service providers in the redesign of a service, we will not be able to understand the problems and frustrations that have led to the need to redesign the service in the first place. The problem is not just confined to children who are profoundly deaf. There is very little provision for speech and language therapy in schools in Ipswich, and the few schools that were able to provide it in the past have had to think very carefully about whether they can continue to do so because of the inadequacy of the funding regime.

In many cases, parents are being forced to seek private provision because they cannot obtain anything through the educational system or the NHS. Both our educational system and our NHS were founded on the principle that education and health should not just be the preserve of the rich. It is, quite frankly, appalling that whether a child gets the support that they need to lead a satisfying and productive life can depend on whether their parents have sufficient resources to buy them the help that they need.

The Ofsted report from February this year is not encouraging. It identifies three areas of serious weakness that were all previously identified in 2016. The first is the poor timeliness, integration and quality of SEND statutory assessments and plans. This includes when statements of special educational needs are transferred to education, health and care plans, and the delivery of subsequent individual packages of support. The second is the lack of local understanding of the support available and the poor quality of the local offer, including access to child and adolescent mental health services support across the area. This leads to high levels of parental complaints and anxiety. In this section of the report, Ofsted particularly points out the long waiting times for assessments for autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and states that current pathways do not support best practice in line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance. The third area of weakness is the lack of joint working to monitor, quality assure and maximise the effectiveness of the work undertaken to improve outcomes for children in a diverse range of settings and circumstances. In all three cases, Ofsted says leaders have not made sufficient progress to address the serious weaknesses.

Underfunded schools, a failing mental health service in Suffolk and a lack of adequate leadership have all come together to produce wholly inadequate SEND provision in Ipswich. This is not just about the provision of nice-to-have services. It is about us failing people and leaving them with ruined lives.

Let me describe some of the situations in which young people in my constituency have found themselves. One student was transferred from a statement of special educational needs to an education, health and care plan. The plan is supposed to give access to medical and social care services as well as appropriate education, yet the entire preparation work for the plan fell to teachers who did not have the qualifications, time or support to provide such a plan. This is one of the areas that have been assessed as failing by Ofsted.

There is also a student in my constituency who has profound difficulties, and would respond well to music and other arts stimuli, but who is being taught to recognise coins, even though there is no likelihood they will ever be able to shop for themselves. Another student built up a good rapport with a midday supervisor in the school, but then lost that personal support when the midday supervision service was outsourced and the staff were forced to spend time logging their activities on paper to ensure that they were fulfilling the contract, instead of interacting with the children.

Mainstream schools do not have the resources to deal with the issue. Teachers are already near breaking point, and some are leaving the profession as a result. Analysis by the school cuts coalition shows that 94% of schools in Ipswich still have less income per pupil in real terms than in 2015—£290 per pupil less. The results-driven competition between schools leads to decisions that particularly hit SEND pupils. The local authority does not have the resources to deal with the issue. The invaluable county educational advisory service, which used to be one of the jewels in Suffolk’s crown and led to the county reaching the top quartile for educational provision between 2000 and 2005, has all but disappeared. The county no longer has sufficient powers to properly control admissions, exclusions, recruitment or the allocation of funds within schools. The Ofsted report repeatedly blames “local area services” or “local leaders”, but it cannot pinpoint blame because, in reality, nobody is in charge anymore.

There are things that the county could do, but unfortunately it is doing the opposite. Improved children’s centres would go a long way to helping in early diagnosis of childhood problems and, in many cases, in preventing those problems from becoming embedded. As identified in the Local Government Association report on the subject in January, Suffolk County Council is in the process of closing many of its children’s centres and converting the rest to hubs, which will supposedly cater for young people aged nought to 19, although what a newborn baby has in common with a 19-year-old is somewhat beyond me—unless, of course, the 19-year-old is the parent.

Whenever hon. Members raise the issue of systemic difficulties in various services, it is normal for the Minister or Secretary of State to explain patiently that everything is now improving and the picture is based on past errors that are now being rectified. I do not believe that in the case of SEND provision in Suffolk. I believe that there are profound problems in the way in which the county approaches the issue, and that there is an underlying belief at Suffolk County Council and in other related services such as CAMHS that, somehow or other, the affected parents are just making things up and the problems will eventually just go away. I do not know what the answers are, but I do know that SEND provision in Suffolk is failing children and their parents in Ipswich, and that doing nothing is not an answer.

School Funding

Debate between Sandy Martin and James Cartlidge

Monday 4th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Sir David. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) on a fine speech. Obviously, we all sympathise with the points she made because there are concerns in our schools. I have just had a letter from the Stour Valley Trust in my constituency, and I have forwarded it to the Minister. There are significant concerns: capital is the one that schools in Suffolk mention the most. However, there is a positive picture to paint, particularly in relation to standards.

On Friday, I had an inspirational visit to a primary school in my constituency. I have 42 primaries, most of which are tiny and in very small rural areas. Hadleigh Community Primary School, which I went to on Friday, is exceptional because it has 500 pupils. I went to Edgware Primary School in north London, which has 680 pupils, but in South Suffolk Hadleigh primary is very large. It has just gone from “requires improvement” to “good”. Its excellent headteacher, Gary Pilkington, asked me to give the Minister a message: that the funding situation is improving significantly because of the change in the formula.

It is all well and good people denying the point about how the cake is divided, but on the Government side of the House, where many of us represent rural constituencies, we have disadvantage, too. We have poverty in rural areas. When a child has special needs there should be no difference in the amount they receive, wherever they are in the country, and we have campaigned for such principles. From the evidence that I am getting, that is now leading to more funding getting through.

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[James Cartlidge]

I am delighted to give way to my neighbour.

[Sandy Martin]

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that the so-called fair funding formula has disadvantaged Ipswich and Lowestoft far more than the rest of Suffolk? Those are the places where there are the largest problems with SEN provision and the lowest levels of attainment. Does he not accept that it does not necessarily make sense to provide exactly the same resources for every child?

[James Cartlidge]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but, if we were disadvantaging the other schools in Suffolk, standards in Suffolk would not be improving. The statistics show very strong improvement in Suffolk. In March this year, just under 90% of Suffolk schools held Ofsted ratings of “good” or “outstanding” compared with 72% in December 2013. We have seen significant improvements in GCSEs: 64% of students in Suffolk now achieve the expected standard in English and maths, putting Suffolk in the top third of local authorities. The county has risen from 67th to 42nd out of 151 local authorities ranked on Progress 8 schools, which is a significant improvement. If Lowestoft and Ipswich, our biggest towns, were struggling to badly, we would not be attaining such improvements.

I have only one minute left, so I will make my key point. Yes, spending is important, but, with respect, Opposition Members focus relentlessly on that when standards and outcomes are what ultimately matter. What matters is the education our children achieve, the grades they get, how our country performs, and how they will be able to compete in a global marketplace.

Ipswich-London Rail Fares

Debate between Sandy Martin and James Cartlidge

Monday 15th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

Although I am here to talk about rail fares, I should start by making it clear that I believe Ipswich is conveniently connected to London and that rail is by far the most effective and sustainable way to travel between the two cities under all normal circumstances. Like some other Suffolk MPs, I almost always use the train to get here, and on the two occasions in the past 16 months when I have had to drive to Westminster, I have had ample reminder of what a bad idea it is to drive in central London if one can avoid it.

Travelling from Ipswich station is a joy. It is easy to get to by bus, taxi or bicycle or on foot, the staff are friendly and helpful, and the facilities are excellent. It is not just me saying that: Ipswich won the Network Rail award for the best large station for 2018. I am looking forward to having all new trains on the Great Eastern main line, starting from April next year, and I would be able to look forward to shorter journey times as well if only the Government were willing to put the money into the fairly modest track improvements that our region has been calling for.

Ipswich is a town undergoing a renaissance, and that renaissance is partly due to our proximity to London. When IT, software, media and arts-related companies are considering relocating to Ipswich—or, indeed, starting up in Ipswich, which is regarded in at least one business survey as the best start-up location for small businesses in the UK—I want them to know that they can easily visit their families or friends in London and can easily invite clients up from London. In short, they are not cutting themselves off from our capital city in any way.

The cost of fares is not going to be the No. 1 criterion for any business relocating, nor should it be. For those travelling daily between London and Ipswich, the annual season ticket, at £6,548, while eye-wateringly expensive by the standards of most European countries, is not completely out of step with other destinations in England. It is 1p per mile more expensive than Cambridge, but 1.3p per mile less expensive than Oxford. I apologise now for any inaccuracy in my figures, but it appears to be as difficult to pin down actual costs per mile as it is for passengers to find out how much their tickets would cost before they travel.

Although annual season tickets are regulated, anytime walk-on fares have been allowed to rise year after year, and in effect penalise passengers for travelling without advance planning. This really matters because, in the modern work pattern—we are talking about attracting modern, creative and information-based industries—most of the travelling will not be on a nine-to-five work day basis. When businesses invite clients to visit, they may well not know when they are likely to come until the day concerned. When staff are working on projects, they may decide at a moment’s notice that they need to visit a colleague. While the season ticket cost for travelling from Ipswich to London is 23.9p per mile, the walk-on peak time fare is 74.4p per mile. I have found a town in the UK where the anytime walk-on fare is even more expensive, and I will be passing my findings to the Members for Swindon. However, the main point I want to get across is, first, that the exorbitant cost of walk-on fares has the potential to hold back the growth of modern, flexible, creative businesses outside London

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

I congratulate my neighbour on securing the debate, which will be welcomed by my constituents who commute from Ipswich. When we talk about the cost of commuting, it is not just about the cost of the train fare. Most of my constituents drive to stations such as Ipswich, Manningtree and so on. Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that, on our line, the cost of parking has risen substantially above inflation? The cost is not regulated, and many of my constituents are as concerned about it as they are about the cost of the rail fare.

[Sandy Martin]

I understand the concerns that the hon. Gentleman’s constituents have. I have to say that, if constituents can find a way of getting to the station that does not involve parking, that is clearly preferable. I would certainly not encourage people to drive to Ipswich station and park during the week, and there are bus services to Ipswich station. If his constituents wish to park at a station, Manningtree is probably a more sensible station to drive to than Ipswich.

The anomalies in fares between one town and another confuse travellers, including business travellers and people travelling to visit families in another town, and put many people off using the trains before they have even looked at the prices. It may take only one return trip costing over £100 to dissuade someone from using the trains ever again.  It is all very well for rail operators and the Government to point to advance tickets, which can give excellent value for money—I myself have made extensive use of advance tickets, travelling, for instance, to Edinburgh and back for less than it would cost me to travel to London on a peak-time ticket—but if the cost of rail travel bears no relation to the distance, or apparently anything else, the confusion experienced by first-time rail passengers who are stung with maximum fares will not encourage them to travel by train again.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Sandy Martin and James Cartlidge

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 18th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

It is a pleasure, as always, to follow the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman). Interestingly, she mentioned inclusive growth, to which I will return shortly. It is also a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr), whose speech was a real tour de force. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North criticised him for not talking about the future and dwelling on the past. Actually, he was talking about the present—the challenges facing his constituency today, in the here and now. The bank levy is incredibly important because it is all about the future prosperity of those constituents, so I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s comments.

Interestingly, the Opposition’s new clause 3 gives us a good way of looking at the bank levy as it stands. Subsection (2) of new clause 3, which would affect schedule 9—the schedule that contains the details about the bank levy—states:

“No later than 31 October 2020, the Chancellor of the Exchequer shall lay before the House of Commons an account of the effects of the proposed changes in Part 1 of Schedule 9—(a) on the public revenue, (b) in reflecting risks to the financial system and the wider UK economy arising from the banking sector, and (c) in encouraging banks to move away from riskier funding models.”

I accept that those three points are incredibly germane. In fact, let us not wait until 31 October 2020. Let us stand here now and think about how a review would fit under Labour’s very own new clause.

Look at subsection (2)(a) of new clause 3, which is about the impact “on the public revenue”. What do we see? Well, the banking sector paid 58% more tax in 2016-17 than in 2009-10. That is under a Conservative Government. The average amount paid by the banks every year since 2010 has been 13% higher than under Labour. In 2016, the Government introduced an additional tax on banks—the 8% corporation tax surcharge, which we have been discussing—which will raise nearly £9 billion by 2022.

[Sandy Martin]

rose—

[James Cartlidge]

I give way to my Suffolk colleague.

[Sandy Martin]

In 2009-10, the banks were recovering from the worst position they had been in since the 1930s. In many cases, they went under and needed Government support to get out. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that it would therefore have been extraordinary if the banks were not making more profit in 2016-17 than they were in 2009-10, that that is the reason why there is more take from the bank levy than there was in 2009-10, and that it is not simply because the Conservatives have reduced the amount of it?

[James Cartlidge]

I consider the hon. Gentleman to be a friend because we work together in Suffolk as MPs; we are always happy to do that. I will be coming to the issue of the crash and the way in which the banks went back to the 1930s, as he puts it, because I experienced that myself.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Cartlidge]

I am happy to have that debate. I will tell the hon. Gentleman what I said. I started a mortgage broking company in 2004—we have expanded since then, and I should declare that I still have interests in that business. I wrote an article for The Guardian in 2004 about the next general election. [Interruption.] Just a closet Marxist. At the time, the big issue being talked about was public services, but I said—this was in 2004—that the big risk we were not talking about was consumer debt. I knew that because, having just started a business in that area, I was stunned by what was happening in mortgage finance, which, of course, was the type of borrowing that laid the seeds for our destruction in 2008.

[Sandy Martin]

May I tell the hon. Gentleman how prescient he was in 2004? He was clearly right. Does he have the same concern about the rising level of private debt now?

[James Cartlidge]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, and I will come back to that once I have set out the context of my remarks. The key point is this: there are some concerns, but in a growing economy, consumer debt will tend to rise, so we have to separate out that which is perfectly acceptable and that which may give cause for concern. I will come back to that point, but it is very fair.

In respect of proposed subsection (2)(b) of the Labour new clause, which talks about

“reflecting risks to the financial system”,

we conclude by reminding ourselves that it was the very explosion of the financial system that created the need for this bank levy. As I say, we have to debate the past—why we are here in the first place and where this all came from—and the fact that we are on a journey. The reason this tax is being tapered off is that the banking sector is once again becoming profitable, and we are allowing it to flourish again as a free enterprise-based banking system, but, of course, in the context of very strict regulation and a prudential regime.

Let me go back to the point about personal experience. It amazes me when members of the Labour party stand up and, like Pontius Pilate, wash their hands of the huge impact of that crash. At the time, many of us approached the regulator—the Financial Services Authority—which Gordon Brown launched early in the first Parliament after Labour won in 1997. He claimed that that would avoid future financial crises. We must remember that and have accountability.