Speech Therapy Services (Children)

Tom Clarke Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

I join the tributes to the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) for his comprehensive and well informed speech. I congratulate him on securing this important debate. We are debating these matters when the economy could be in better shape. The hon. Gentleman and I were at a meeting in a Committee Room of the House of Lords last week, where the organisations of and for people with disabilities, particularly children with learning disabilities, got together to discuss what is happening, what might happen and what the problems might be given the current situation.

Lord Rix, who is my co-chair of the all-party disability group—perhaps I should put that the other way round—made an outstanding speech. The next day, he followed it up by reading a letter to the Minister responsible for disabled people, the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller). Being the gentleman that he is, he apologised for the passion that he had shown the night before, although I do not think that he needed to apologise. Like his speech, his letter was profound, and I will quote an important paragraph from it:

“If support is adequately financed and provided for by all schools, children could remain in a setting in the heart of their local community. Placing this responsibility on parents in terms of their child’s education could be an additional burden in their already complex lives, if the right levels of support, information and advice are not adequately provided. This could also potentially lead to parents having to prioritise aspects of their child’s development—i.e. speech and language therapy over in-class support—which could have significant legal ramifications on issues concerning the responsibility of educating children with special educational needs.”

I am glad that Lord Rix made that point; it is repeated again and again.

Some of us—perhaps all of us—received representations this morning from the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, to which the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys referred. In the hope of a reply, questions were put to the Minister that included:

“Will communication competency be seen as critical to the forthcoming Schools Paper and will the Minister consider mainstreaming communication competency as a measurable outcome within the school curriculum?”

Other questions raised may emerge during the debate. That underlines how vital education is to the problems that we are discussing—education, education, education.

In the time available, I would like to refer to the work carried out by the hon. Gentleman’s predecessor, Mrs Joan Humble. We were asked by the then Secretary of State for the Department of Children, Schools and Families to set up a review looking at the needs of disabled children and their families. I led that review and inevitably, based on evidence from parents, children, carers and those who work in social services, we had to focus on the importance of funding. If funding was important when things seemed to be affluent, it is much more important today given the financial outlook that we face.

My one regret is not about the findings of the group that I had the privilege to chair. The Department was funded through the allocation of an additional £340 million to look at issues such as early identification, which was one of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass). That included £34 million for Scottish children. My one regret is that, as far as I can see, not a penny reached children with special needs in Scotland. Without any consideration for ring-fencing, the Scottish Government allocated the money to local authorities to spend however they wished. All local authorities decided to keep council tax at the present level. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that the priorities that we presented to the Department were taken on board by any local authority.

Given the comprehensive spending review and the issues that follow from that, my regret today is that the same issue might apply not only to education authorities but to health boards. I thought for a time that the problem applied only to Scotland, but when we examined where the money went in England, sadly in Wales and also in Northern Ireland, we saw that it did not go to where it was intended. Vulnerable children found that their needs were not being met, and other issues such as those discussed today, and those raised by Mencap and other bodies, are not being addressed.

Mencap has noted that certificated training in this area is not mandatory, and that few schools have sufficient professional development funding to sponsor staff who are doing certificated or master courses. That is one issue, but there are more. What goes on in the classroom, the environment and the community is hugely important to children with profound and multiple learning disabilities.

In view of the time, I will conclude by saying that we all want to see the problems that have been identified addressed. We want Parliament to be better informed, and we recognise the work of the various Select Committees. Yesterday, during Health questions, I put a question to the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow). I asked whether

“the confidential inquiry and the learning disabilities public health observatory will go beyond March and until the work is concluded”.

The Minister of State replied that

“we had a good debate in Westminster Hall earlier this year on this matter, in which I indicated the Government’s support for those observatories. We believe they play a very important role in our understanding of the issues.”—[Official Report, 2 November 2010; Vol. 517, c. 750.]

I welcome that, but I wonder whether the Minister will respond specifically to my question, and provide reassurance to those who support the work that is going on.