Children and Families Bill

Stephen McPartland Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tom Clarke]

rose—

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Buckland]

I will give way one more time to my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) and then to the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke).

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Buckland]

My hon. Friend is right. Low-incidence special needs can be catered for only by specialist colleges such as the one he represents—another college in Loughborough offers wonderful provision on a national basis.

[Stephen McPartland]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Buckland]

My hon. Friend has been very patient, so I shall let him intervene.

[Stephen McPartland]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for giving way. I am interested in the other end of the spectrum—pre-school children and the tension between education and health. In Stevenage, we have a nursery called Tracks, which provides education support for pre-school children with autism. The local education authority does not recognise that such children could have autism, so parents waste a year or two of normal school time while they persuade the authority that their child has autism.

[Mr Buckland]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend, who, in effect, gives us a case study. He reminds me that I want to draw back to what we were discussing. I have a hypothetical case study before me. A young 15-year-old with Asperger’s and co-occurring mental health difficulties receives cognitive behavioural therapy. Before starting that therapy, his attendance at school was low, attending as few as two days a week, but with the help of the therapy he attends more like four days a week. His conditions have a huge effect on his home life and the quality of relations with his parents and wider family.

Under the new system, it is not clear whether that young man’s cognitive behavioural therapy would be deemed

“wholly or mainly for the purposes of…education”.

Without it, he could not access education, because he would not attend regularly. We need to answer that question. We do not want to put such people in that position, or to have artificial debates on what the law means.