Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Reed Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the new Minister to her post. As she will know, children with special needs rely on help with speech and language and on counselling support, but the Children’s Commissioner has published research showing that the severe underfunding of those services is seriously damaging children’s lives and futures. Even after the spending review and the additional funding to which the Minister has referred, we still face a £1 billion shortfall in special educational needs services by 2021. Given that the Government could so easily find £1 billion to bribe the Democratic Unionist party, will the Minister agree, here and now, to find the same amount to fully fund the services that the country’s most vulnerable children so desperately need?

[Mrs Badenoch]

I met the Children’s Commissioner last week, and discussed this issue among many others. We welcome her report. However, I remind the hon. Gentleman that the Government are spending £7 billion on special educational needs, and are adding an additional £700 million. That is part of the extra £14 billion that we are spending over three years, and I think that it is to be welcomed.[Official Report, 25 September 2019, Vol. 664, c. 7MC.]