Adoption Breakdown

Tom Gordon Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

I am pleased to have secured this debate on this important issue, which is rarely discussed, yet profoundly impacts thousands of families across the UK: the crisis of adopted children leaving the family home prematurely. I want to highlight this issue of adoption breakdown, which sometimes might be days, months or even years after an adoption order is signed. Adoption is not just a legal process, but a lifelong commitment that demands sustained support from Government. At present, that support is simply not in place.

After meeting a family in my constituency who had experienced an adoption breakdown, I was deeply alarmed by the lack of support available once an adoption order is signed. Since securing this debate, I have been inundated by messages from people and families across the country sharing their lived experience. The overwhelming consensus is clear: adoptive parents feel isolated and forced to navigate the challenges of raising children with trauma and complex needs without sufficient support, often resulting in adoption breakdown.

The reality is that many adoptions face profound challenges. The trauma, loss, and attachment difficulties experienced by adopted children do not simply vanish once an adoption order is granted. Those challenges persist, often surfacing as complex behavioural, emotional and psychological difficulties that demand long-term specialist support. According to Adoption UK, 70% of adoptive families report that their children have significant social, emotional and mental health needs. Many are diagnosed with conditions such as foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder, yet post-adoption support remains inconsistent and inadequate, forcing families into exhausting battles just to access the help they desperately need.

For many adoptive parents, raising children who have suffered early life trauma is an immense challenge. Many endure physical aggression, verbal abuse and school exclusions. They feel abandoned, left without a clear pathway to support, and when crises emerge, the system often responds too late, if at all.

[Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)]

The issues that my hon. Friend raises are spot on. Would he agree that the more trauma-informed training we have within schools, the better these young people will be able to be accepted and supported within schools, rather than potentially demonised?

[Tom Gordon]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I will come on to that important point later in my speech. A major challenge in tackling adoption breakdown is the lack of reliable data. We have little understanding of the true scale of the problem, making it hard to assess the effectiveness of current policies or plan for meaningful improvements. Local authorities, which are meant to provide support, frequently fail to help parents facing those significant challenges in raising children with complex needs, and that is worsened by the absence of clear, specific policies to prevent or respond to adoption breakdowns. There is an urgent need for better data.

[Liam Conlon (Beckenham and Penge) (Lab)]

I have met a number of adoption charities and organisations in Beckenham and Penge, and they have told me that adoption breakdown can lead to significant emotional trauma for children and adoptive parents, and many other implications. Does he agree on the need to bring local authorities, Government and families together, first to try to prevent adoption breakdown, but then, where it occurs, to take action to support both parents and children?

[Tom Gordon]

The hon. Member raises an excellent point. That is exactly the case, and I have heard exactly those points from many adoption charities across the UK.

Our focus must also be on trying to make sure that there are clearer policies and improved support systems, and addressing the gaps is the only way to reduce adoption breakdowns and ensure that every child has the chance to grow up in a loving and stable environment. Our focus must shift to enhancing the support structures available to families post-adoption. While the current framework is well intentioned, it is insufficient. Raising adopted children is made more difficult by barriers to vital special educational needs and disability services and mental health support. Increased investment in services such as counselling, educational support and respite care could significantly improve outcomes.

The most recent Government research and data that I could find on adoption disruption dates back over a decade. It was the Department for Education’s “Beyond the Adoption Order” research paper published in 2014. The paper estimates a disruption rate of between 2% and 9%. Since then, there has been no significant follow-up or research, and if we are to address this issue, it is vital that we have that up-to-date information on disruptions to properly assess and respond to the challenges that parents face.

Currently, local authorities and regional adoption agencies record data inconsistently, creating an incomplete picture of the national situation. The Department for Education reports that 170 children entered local authority care after being adopted in the year to 31 March 2024, averaging 0.2 adoptions per constituency. However, I am aware that three adoptions broke down in my constituency of Harrogate and Knaresborough in the same time period, so the data is clearly patchy. The discrepancies highlight significant gaps in our understanding of the prevalence of breakdown. How can the Government possibly expect to adequately support those affected, when they do not fully understand and comprehend the extent of the issue?

In speaking to adoptive parents—regardless of whether they face disruption or not—a clear theme emerges: support often vanishes once the adoption order is signed.

--- Later in debate ---

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Gerald Jones.)

[Tom Gordon]

While the early stages of adoption may involve training and some resources, the ongoing assistance tends to dwindle after a child is placed. Many adoptive parents, especially those caring for children with complex needs, report feeling isolated and overwhelmed, as local authorities frequently fail to offer consistent, tailored support.

[Sojan Joseph (Ashford) (Lab)]

I have been approached by my constituents about their breakdowns. As we do not have any data, we do not know how many parents are struggling in our constituencies. Does the hon. Member agree that if we do not identify adopters and support them, we will not have any adopters in the future?

[Tom Gordon]

That is one of the key points about adoption disruption and breakdown, and the hon. Gentleman makes it very eloquently. There is concern that if we do not help people who are adopting now, we will not have a next generation of people who will adopt.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for securing today’s debate. We know from Adoption UK’s adoption barometer that 42% of families experience challenges or crisis. It also notes that it can take them an average of five months to get the support they need, and we need to shrink that timeframe. Does he agree that we need to have money reserved for the urgent support that these families need?

[Tom Gordon]

The hon. Member is exactly right and puts her point eloquently. Far too often, families and children are left waiting, which causes additional pressures that can lead to adoption breakdown, so I completely agree with her. As I said, while the early stages of adoption may involve training and some resources, the ongoing assistance tends to dwindle.

I applied for this debate after meeting some of my constituents at a regular surgery. Ian and Verity experienced this issue at first hand when their adopted child began exhibiting violent behaviour. When they reached out for help, they were shocked to discover just how little was available to them. Unfortunately, like many services, post-adoption support has become a postcode lottery. Available services are often fragmented, underfunded and difficult to access, leaving parents without the necessary help to manage the challenges.

[Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. As he knows, I am an adoptive parent and a foster carer. In the run-up to this debate, I had the opportunity to speak to the social worker who is supporting me and my husband with what we hope will become our second adoption, and I would like to get the hon. Gentleman’s view on some of the things she mentioned: the importance of having better access to more holistic support in schools; closer working between psychologists and adoption teams to maximise the use of the adoption and special guardian support fund; therapeutic life story workers to work with children and families, particularly those at greater risk of breakdown; and greater training in social work courses on key issues, such as early trauma and attachment, to widen the knowledge across the workforce and ensure that a wider range of teams can support adoptive families when they come across them. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that such measures would go a long way towards keeping adoptive families together?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Gordon]

I have had the pleasure of meeting the hon. Gentleman’s child and look forward to meeting more in due course. He makes an excellent point. I will come on to everything he said when I set out the wish list from adoptive parents to the Minister, and I am sure she will respond to the best of her ability, within the constraints of what the Government can do.

When Ian and Verity reached out to me, I was shocked by how the local authority and local services had failed them. When they reached crisis point, they requested an intervention from the local authority, but instead of receiving help, they were threatened with police action for child abandonment. Ultimately, they were forced to disrupt the adoption, causing trauma to both the child and the entire family. I have asked people to email me their stories, and a common, repeated theme is local authorities using child abandonment charges as a scare tactic, which is deeply worrying. The advocacy group PATCH has highlighted how families facing adoption crises are often met with punitive approaches that fail to acknowledge the impact of trauma on these children. As a result, families break down because they cannot access the resources needed to address those challenges. I have heard from many families that have experienced breakdowns, and instead of receiving support when they have faced violent and threatening behaviour from their children, they have been met with blame, threats and criticism. A culture of blaming adoptive parents persists, leaving them isolated and without the help they need. Many adoptive parents are not fully informed about the child’s needs before adoption.

[Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing this very important debate. Does he agree that, under article 20 of the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, when children cannot be looked after by their own family, they should be looked after by those who respect or represent their ethnicity, their culture, their religion and their language? With BAME children being disproportionately represented—and, unfortunately, very vulnerable—does he agree that this is about not just finding a place for children but finding the right place for them?

[Tom Gordon]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. He makes a good point. We have ended up in a situation where local authorities are trying to recruit anyone to adopt, and it is often a scramble to find any place, so places do not necessarily always meet the needs of or provide the best option for those children. I think that is the nature of the situation we find ourselves in, with the service at a crisis point.

Many families that have been in touch have also said that support for adoptive families is often limited to the adoption and special guardianship support fund. This fund seems to have become a bit of a sticking plaster to allow local authorities to claim that they are supporting families with adopted children. While the fund is massively helpful, it is often the only resource that people can turn to.

As the Minister mentioned a number of times during Tuesday’s urgent question, local authorities have a legal obligation to support families who have adopted. However, this fund is often inadequate, and it is the extent of support in many areas. It is not an instant fix, and it is often only available to families once they have reached crisis point. As the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) said, families often report waiting for months—six months and upwards—to access funds and support due to delays by local authorities. During this waiting period, crises can escalate, and families are pushed closer and closer to breakdown.

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing such an important debate. During the process of putting together his speech, I am sure he read the local government and social care ombudsman report from last November, which details a litany of failures across England in supporting adoptive parents. For me, the most heartbreaking element of reading the report and its recommendations was the number of families who said that they were put off the process, or driven out of it, by the bureaucratic failures and the lack of support on offer.

[Tom Gordon]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, and that is one of the key points. I will turn to examples of where people try to access that fund, but many people do give up, which is such a shame for the children involved.

[Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way; the number of interventions he has taken shows how important this debate is to the House.

I, too, have had adoptive parents come to my surgery who are going through a breakdown, and they have told me that their experience of adoption was better in the past because they used to have a named person supporting them at the council. That council service has merged with those of eight other boroughs, so it is now a nine-borough service. Adoptive parents no longer have a named contact, and they have to go through a central hotline. Does my hon. Friend agree that the adoption breakdown rate is increasing partly because of the funding environment for local government, and that we need to improve that first to get this service fixed?

[Tom Gordon]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. The point he makes is one that I experienced at first hand when we had local government reorganisation in North Yorkshire. People have commented that the merging of services leads to an inferior outcome at the end. I agree with his point about needing greater funding for local authorities to help fix this problem.

The Government must ensure swift distribution of the new funding announced earlier this week to prevent future delays. For many families that are already struggling, the support fund is a lifeline. A delay in therapy increases anxiety and distress not only for these children, but for their families as a whole, and it can cause huge disruption to their daily lives. In some cases, families have been left without support for months or even years. The prolonged period of uncertainty around the support fund has caused an exacerbation in woes and fears. Many families feel they have been abandoned by the system and have struggled to navigate a complex and fragmented network of support services.

It is clear that the system is failing the families it was designed to support. The unpredictable nature of service access means children and families are left to fend for themselves. The Government must urgently address the chronic underfunding of adoption support services, and commit to ensuring that families have timely and reliable access. I have heard countless stories from adoptive parents and children who speak about the deep trauma of what happens when an adoption breaks down. The impact is not just emotional; it can extend to physical and social challenges as well, and leads to behavioural problems, mental health struggles and difficulties in schools in some cases.

A point made earlier by another Member was that a key barrier to providing that support is the lack of training for professionals working with adopted families. Teachers, social workers and healthcare providers all lack an understanding of the unique challenges that adoptive parents and adopted children face. That lack of knowledge results in misguided interventions and insufficient care. Adoptive parents require more than just financial assistance. They require access to specialists, including trauma-informed mental health care, educational support and respite care, too. Lived experiences are at the heart of this issue and countless adoptive parents have shared their stories of pain, struggle and heartache. They are not just statistics; they are real families grappling with unimaginable challenges and receiving little to no support. In the time left, I will try to briefly share some of those stories.

One parent wrote to me about how an adopted child had suffered severe abuse. Despite their best efforts, the child’s behaviour became increasingly violent and unmanageable. When they reached out for help, they were met with indifference by the local authority. Eventually, the situation became so unbearable they had no choice but to disrupt the adoption, leaving heartbreak in its wake. Another adoptive parent shared the story of a child who had been through numerous foster placements before being adopted. Despite the child’s significant trauma, the family was dedicated to providing a loving and stable home. However, due to a lack of support and the inability of the local authority to help meet the child’s needs, eventually another adoption broke down. The parents feel ashamed and abandoned by the system that promised to support them.

As we reflect on those stories, we must remember that behind every statistic is a child who has already endured more than enough and more than most. These children deserve the same opportunity to thrive as any other, but they cannot achieve that without the right support. It is our responsibility to ensure that adoptive families are equipped with the resources, tools and understanding to provide that. We need a system that places support at the centre of the adoption journey: from the moment a child is placed, to the challenges they face during adolescence. It is not enough to provide support just in the early stages and walk away once the adoption order is granted and the child appears settled. We need a cultural shift in how adoption breakdowns are viewed. Parents should never be made to feel guilty for seeking the support they so desperately need.

The lived experiences of families impacted by adoption breakdown serve as a reminder of why change is necessary. Adoptive parents do not want to bear the blame for breakdowns, many of which are caused by systemic failures. They want to be part of the solution. These families have opened their hearts and homes, yet they feel abandoned. We can no longer allow adopted children and their families to fall through the cracks. Decisive action is required now. I will set out a few things that the Government could do to try to help with this issue.

We need a commitment and guarantee that the adoption and special guardianship fund will be made permanent, and that we will never see a return to the year-by-year situation that has caused heartache and pain for children and parents this time around. We need to mandate regular keeping-in-touch opportunities for all adoptive families. Too many families feel isolated without a clear support network during times of crisis. We must improve local authority support structures. Families must have guaranteed access to crisis intervention services and mental health support before situations become unmanageable.

We must ensure that health and education professionals are trained in early trauma and care experiences. We cannot expect teachers, social workers or mental health professionals to support adopted children without properly training them and giving them the resources. I would like to see an extension of adoption support services to at least the age of 26. Trauma does not end at 18, and young people need continued access to support as they transition into adulthood. We need to provide a targeted support pathway for teens and young adults, including access to specialist advocacy services, mental health care and interventions to prevent exploitation and criminal involvement.

Before I conclude, I would like to share a few other personal stories. There is one which stands out. It is from somebody who got in touch after I put out an appeal for stories:

“I’ve been reflecting on my adoptive son’s life story and wanted to share some statistics with you and the services involved: 13 Social Workers, 15-plus placements with only three regulated, 100-plus carers, innumerable police officers, innumerable fire officers, five care home managers, four headteachers, five teaching assistants, 10 judges including eight High Court judges, three GPs, two dentists, 25-plus class teachers, two behavioural analysts, three play therapists, one psychologist, one children’s guardian…”

The list goes on and on. Adoptive children interact with services across the board, but it is clear that they are being failed and passed from pillar to post.

I heard another story from a family whose adoption broke down in January last year, when their children were aged just 13 and 14. Only six months earlier, they had celebrated their 10th anniversary as a family by going to Paris. Like many other adopters, they had several happy years before things started to go wrong. The family

“believe a combination of inappropriate education, hormones, peer pressure, social media and—possibly most significantly—trauma from childhoods…was the cause of a…dramatic change. To cut a long story short, things got so bad that myself and my husband both suffered breakdowns and the children went into care. We are lucky that we are in regular contact”.

The current system leaves far too many families struggling with inadequate support, which often results in disruptions that could have been prevented with earlier targeted intervention and support. Without accurate data, clear policies and sustained funding, we cannot address the root causes of adoption breakdown or provide the resources needed to ensure successful adoptions.

I call on the Government to make sure further action is taken post adoption to ensure that there is no postcode lottery and that local authorities are held accountable for providing the support that families need. These children have already faced immense trauma and instability, and they deserve better. Adoptive parents who open their hearts and homes should never be left feeling abandoned when they seek help. We need urgent and meaningful reforms to mental health services and access to SEND, and we need to establish a robust, long-term framework for post-adoptive care.

I will close by thanking everyone who has reached out to share their deeply personal stories, and especially my constituents Ian and Verity. We must reject the idea that adoption is a one-time event; it is a lifelong journey that requires continuous and specialist support. To every adoptive parent struggling in silence, and to every young person feeling abandoned by the system, I say, “You are not alone.” Today we ask those in positions of authority and power to listen, learn and act.

Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund

Tom Gordon Excerpts

Tuesday 1st April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

I would like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham for securing this urgent question and the Minister for her commitment on the £50 million. I have secured an Adjournment debate on Thursday on adoption breakdown, and over the past few days I have been asking people to tell me their stories. I have heard that things such as the adoption and special guardianship fund are crucial to preventing it. With that in mind, what assessment has the Minister made of the impact of the fund on ensuring that adoptions can continue, and will she make that information publicly available, if possible?

[Janet Daby]

I look forward to speaking to the hon. Member during his Adjournment debate—I am sure that he will ask me many more questions, as is absolutely appropriate. I would say that this should not prevent people from coming forward to adopt children, and that children will still get the support they need and so rightly deserve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Gordon Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Janet Daby]

We are working across Government with the sector to put in place training schemes to build up the next generation of installers, including new apprenticeships for retrofit co-ordinators and installation technicians. As I mentioned, we have also established Skills England, which will form a coherent national picture of skill gaps and how they can be addressed.

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

I recently visited a school in my constituency in a building that is hundreds of years old. Its school condition allocation does not cover the work needed to keep the school warm, safe and up to date. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that classrooms in older buildings are fitted out?

Family Visas: Income Requirement

Tom Gordon Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I start by acknowledging the more than 100,000 people who have signed this petition nationally, including almost 200 people in my constituency, and I particularly thank Shannon for starting it. They have come together to call for a fairer and more compassionate approach to family visas. This issue deeply affects families across our country and we must address it with care and urgency.

The Liberal Democrats believe that the immigration system should work for everyone. We want to make sure that it works for our country and for our economy while treating everyone with dignity and respect. That means that the current system must change because, sadly, the previous Conservative Government’s changes to the income requirements for family visas fell far short of that goal.

The decision to raise the minimum income threshold for a sponsoring partner to £29,000 a year and to propose further increases to nearly £39,000 a year has rightly caused widespread fear and anxiety for families. We ought to feel concerned for them and the countless people who have been left feeling uncertain about their futures or forced to make impossible decisions about their lives.

More than 10 hon. Members have spoken in this debate. I have heard that the policy is a tax on love and that it rips families apart, but I have not heard anyone speak in favour of it—I am pleased to say—which shows that the system is broken and needs changing. We must acknowledge the humanity of the situation: those arbitrary thresholds fail to take into account the many families who simply cannot meet them through no fault of their own. They disproportionately affect women, people in lower paid but essential jobs, and those living outside London and the south-east, where wages are often lower.

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

We have heard a lot about sector-specific issues, and about regional inequalities and inequalities of race and gender, but does my hon. Friend agree that there is also an issue for people with disabilities? My constituent is an armed forces veteran who now suffers from PTSD and a range of other disabilities that leave him able to work only part time, which would massively hamper his ability to hit any threshold. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to ensure that the system that works for everyone and gives back to the people who have served our country?

[Mr Forster]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, who highlights that the policy has an impact on disabled and vulnerable veterans. The Government must acknowledge that and take it into account as they change the system to ensure that they support those people. He makes a valid point in support of his constituents.

Given that no one has said that they support the current policy, why did the Conservative Government make that move to cause so much disparity and hurt? Putting the threshold so artificially high prevents British citizens on lower incomes sponsoring their foreign spouse or partner moving to the UK. It does not save money—it hurts our financial system and our economy—but it is there to make them look tough on immigration. Everyone can see through it. Roughly half of UK employees earn less than £29,000 a year, so I am disappointed and surprised that the Conservatives, who often say that they are the party of traditional family values, trashed our family values in this country by introducing this policy and breaking up families.

The Government’s own Migration Advisory Committee is now reviewing those financial requirements. Although we welcome the pause on further rises, families need certainty, and they need it now. We need to know that they will not be torn apart by policies that prioritise the system over compassion; we need to protect them. We must ask ourselves what kind of country we want to live in—one that values the bonds of family or one that tears those bonds apart based on arbitrary numbers and a statistical threshold picked out of thin air. Do we follow hard data or do we follow the love that our constituents feel for each other?

The Liberal Democrats are committed to reversing the unfair increases in income thresholds for family visas. Families should not have to live in fear of being separated. They deserve stability and the opportunity to build their lives together in the UK. I urge the Government to act swiftly, to halt any further increases and to ensure that family visa requirements are fair and proportionate. Families matter. No one should have to choose between their loved ones and their home.

[Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I am grateful to the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell), the Petitions Committee and the 101,321 members of the public who have requested that we debate this topic. Those 100,000 people have asked us to discuss this policy because, as many hon. Members have movingly pointed out, it can be overwhelmingly important to those it affects. There are few things in life and in human nature more powerful than the desire to be with those you love. To be separated from your husband or wife by a national border is no small thing. Indeed, for those it is happening to it can feel like everything.

The role of Government is to determine what is right for the country, not for any one person, couple or family, so we must place this discussion in its national context: managing overall migration to Britain. The public have consistently asked successive Governments to lower migration. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch) has said, the last Government, like Governments before them, promised to do exactly that, but, again like the Governments before them, did not deliver. Migration has been far too high for the last two decades and remains so.

The issue of migration is not just about quantity. It should be a fundamental principle of our system that people who come to this country do not cost more than they contribute; what they pay in tax should at least cover the costs of the public services that they use. The policy that we are debating was implemented by a Conservative Government as part of an attempt to cut migration and to ensure that those who come here do not represent a net fiscal cost. Clearly, it was not enough, but it was a step in the right direction.

In delaying reform, the new Government seem to be making the same mistakes as previous Governments. To refer again to the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex, we in Westminster

“cannot pretend that immigration comes only with benefits and no costs”.

This is all too clear to the country. People can see it in their wages, which are stagnating because they are being undercut, and they can see it in their rent soaring, in how hard it is for their children to get on the housing ladder, in the cohesion of their communities and in the pressure on their GPs, dentists and infrastructure.

[Tom Gordon]

I am slightly surprised. The hon. Lady raised a number of points about her own Government’s record and what they were unable to deliver, so does she not find it a little jarring that she is now preaching to this Government about what they should do?

[Katie Lam]

It is the job of the Opposition to hold the Government to account, whoever is in government. As I have acknowledged, these are mistakes that we made, so very few people are as well qualified to suggest what behaviour could be avoided in the future. That is part of our job and our duty to the public.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Gordon]

The Conservative spokesperson, the hon. Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam), mentioned the point about personal independence payments. Obviously, not everybody who has a disability is eligible for every benefit; there are certain thresholds and requirements in order to get those statuses, and the conditions of people with disabilities might vary and change. How does that factor into what the Minister is saying?

[Seema Malhotra]

I am sure that those issues will have been raised in the responses that have come to the Migration Advisory Committee. It is right that the MAC is reviewing how the current financial requirements are operating, including looking at the impact on family units. It is important to mention that both the immigration fees and the immigration health surcharge may be waived based on what the applicant can afford.

I will briefly mention those who work for His Majesty’s armed forces in relation to the immigration rules. I note that the previous Government laid immigration rules in March 2024 that brought the MIR for His Majesty’s armed forces, including the Brigade of Gurkhas and the Royal Air Force partner route, in line with the armed forces salary threshold on completion of training, which was £23,496 for the 2023-24 financial year. That no longer includes an additional income requirement to sponsor a child. Tethering the MIR to the armed forces salary threshold takes into account the unique nature of their service, the armed forces covenant and the recruitment and retention of the armed forces in order to maintain national security.

Home-to-School Transport: Children with SEND

Tom Gordon Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for bringing forward this debate. I want to make a point—I will try to keep it brief—about the inconsistency in the implementation of the framework. That inconsistency is exacerbated in rural areas such as North Yorkshire, where my constituency is. We have had horror stories of children in taxis for up to two hours a day. That has a massive impact on their ability to learn when they make their way to school.

Another problem comes from changes to the council’s policy on home-to-school transport and its inability to finance it. It is projecting a spend of £27 million on SEND transport next year. Despite the rural complexities of the North Yorkshire council area, it is only 148th out of 151 local authorities for high needs funding per head of population. Although the framework is important, there needs to be an understanding of rurality, and the funding to go with it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Gordon Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Janet Daby]

Central to our opportunity mission is that where someone is from should not determine where they end up in life. This Government are serious about supporting young people. We are working across Government to ensure that young people are supported in their communities through devolution, local growth plans, local skills improvement plans and the youth guarantee.

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

The largest provider of vocational education and training opportunities in my constituency is Harrogate college, which was previously promised more than £20 million in a combination of loans and grants under the FE capital transformation fund. I have written repeatedly to the Government to ask if they can secure an extension to that funding period because, due to a hold-up in the planning process, it will not be able to meet the deadlines. Will the Minister commit to guaranteeing the funding for Harrogate college for that rebuild?

[Janet Daby]

The hon. Member outlined many failings by the previous Government. I will ask my noble Friend the Minister for Skills to meet him.