Schools White Paper: Every Child Achieving and Thriving

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

We are putting in place significant extra investment—£3.7 billion of capital—to deliver what is needed in specialist provision and to ensure that local areas can deliver what is required. I would be happy to look into the individual case that the right hon. Gentleman raises and ensure that he gets a response.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

I thank Bournemouth’s parents and teachers for shaping this plan—I can see their views in it. I thank in particular Andrew, Claire, their lovely son and his lovely grandparents. Teachers in Bournemouth have been calling out for national support, and now they have it. Some £165 million of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council’s debt is being paid off, there is the return of Sure Start, £1.6 billion has been promised for mainstream education, and now there is £1.8 billion for educational psychologists. Will the Secretary of State set out how quickly we will recruit and train those educational psychologists and get them into the system? If we support our school system, we help to fix our SEND system.

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for ensuring that his constituents’ views have been right at the heart of our reforms. We will move rapidly to invest in recruiting more speech and language therapists and educational psychologists, but we also need to retain more of the brilliant people who have worked so hard to train so that they can support children. Freeing up their time to focus less on bureaucracy and more on working with children will lead to much more fulfilling careers for those amazing people.