Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans he has to map speech and language therapy provision across the UK.

We are committed to supporting children and young people with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). This government has increased local authorities’ high needs funding by £780 million in 2020-21, boosting the budget by 12% and bringing the total spent on supporting those with the most complex needs to over £7 billion for 2020-21.

Speech and Language therapists working with children in England are employed by local authorities, the health service or directly by schools, in response to children’s and young people’s needs in each area. For this reason the Department does not map services centrally.