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Special Educational Needs

I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in the debate and to declare an interest as the father of a boy approaching three who will have significant and probably long-term special educational needs. It is truly a great privilege to follow the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), because he and his Committee have produced an outstanding report—one of the finest of its genre. It is painstaking, rigorous and insightful. I am aware of his sincere commitment to the issue, and I recognise he will acknowledge that I speak from no partisan spirit when I say that the thesis that he has advanced in the report is a great deal more compelling than the Government’s answer to it. I say that with genuine regret, because I waited with bated breath and beads of sweat upon my brow for the ministerial answer, and I was badly let down by it. This is, of course, an extensive, almost labyrinthine territory, and one has to try to pick those issues on which one particularly wants to focus in the short time available. I shall focus on three that seem to lie at the heart of the debate and encapsulate those important concepts of power, money and capacity. The first theme, which is all about power—who decides; who controls; who is the instigator; who calls the shots—is the centrality of the position of the local education authority. What the Select Committee had to say on the subject was both measured and persuasive. The problem at the heart of the system—I do not say that it is the only such problem, but it is significant—is that local authorities are currently in a virtually omnipotent position: they assess and decide, pay for and provide. In that sense, however good their individual attentions and the competence of the particular staff may be, there is an in-built conflict of interest. The authorities decide at every stage what a child gets, and they have the responsibility, of which they are aware in advance, to pay for it. They often also have a responsibility, and make the choice directly through in-house provision, to deliver what it is judged the child needs and must receive. Throughout the process, whether it be in the course of a parent seeking a statutory assessment or getting a statement, in debating its terms or in parental attempts to secure its implementation, the LEA is in a powerful position. That is fundamentally wrong. We need a system that is independent of Government, LEAs, the sources of supply and the means of payment. What was the Government’s response to this powerful case? The hon. Member for Huddersfield focused on one of the more footling and invalid objections: the Government saying, ““Well, this would undermine local democracy. It would remove the elected element.”” Given that nothing precise was said about the exact contours of the new policy, but rather the Committee properly concerned itself with identifying a strategic weakness, it was wrong for the Government to jump to that conclusion, although I confess that I do not think that there is anything indispensable about the electoral component. We are talking about the needs of a particular, significant, important and frequently neglected minority, whose electoral purchasing power is, in any case, not very great, so it is not particularly important whether provision is determined by an elected body. More specifically, this was a bogus criticism from the Government, who then raised all sorts of other objections: would there still be a right of appeal for parents? Would LEAs have a right of appeal? They do not have one at the moment, so I do not see why they should have in the future. Would what was issued still be called a statement? What would happen to the special educational needs and disability tribunal—SENDIST? The Government response bore the hallmark of being written by one of those rather clever officials who knows everything and nothing, and takes it as a great personal affront that the judgments at which he or she has arrived have been questioned by a mere inexpert, amateur, interfering set of politicians. It is precisely that sort of overweening arrogance and condescension to which parents are so accustomed. We received a dose of it ourselves. I suggest that the Government take a much more responsible approach in looking at what is a major criticism of the system. It would be much better, as outlined in recommendation 26 and paragraph 99 of the Committee’s report, to break the link. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues did the House of Commons a signal service in highlighting the problem with the Government’s enthusiasm and apparently almost insatiable appetite for the extension of delegated funding for the delivery of special educational needs. We know the argument: if more funds are delegated to local level, decisions can be made more quickly, people do not have to wait in the queue, there is no requirement for demonstrable need, there is not that adversarial contest with the LEA and the school can just get on and deliver. It must be said that in making that argument, to which there is some weight, the Government have always said that it must be subject to the important caveat that delegated funding results in a better deal, not for schools, but for individual children, rather than in a reduced entitlement. The commitment to delegated funding should not be an ideological, abstract or theoretical one; it should be based on and grounded in the concrete reality of demonstrated improvement in the quality of service in the interests of some of the most vulnerable children in our community. In that context, the painstaking character of the inquiry bore fruit, for we heard both from Ofsted and Network 81, a respected parents’ representative organisation, of instances in which funding had gone to schools and had not been used for the purposes for which it was provided. If we are to have more of that in the future, before making any such decision, certain clear understandings and guarantees need to be in place. The funding has to be ring-fenced, subject to minimum standards, specified nationally, of what will be delivered; subject to a broad range of appropriate provision; and subject to an adequacy and regularity of training at all levels in the system. That should take place in initial teacher training during periods of induction and should continue as a feature of professional development. Above all, if we are talking about delegated funding we need one other thing: oversight. I suspect that other hon. Members know, as I do, of parents who say, ““My child got a statement.”” The other day, someone said to me, ““It took 10 years, Mr. Bercow, for me to get a statement for my child. Our school is now failing to deliver the 25 hours a week, and since 7 September, in the first two weeks of term, Shana received just two hours.”” The school denies it and tells the Minister that it is not true, and that everything is delivered, the forms have been filled in and the boxes ticked. That is what the LEA comes to believe too. However, the parent said, ““Mr. Bercow, I will provide you with very persuasive evidence that that simply is not the case. It is not happening. The hours are not being delivered. The help is not being provided””. There must be that oversight and a recognition of the responsibility of the LEA if the funding is to go directly to the schools. It must regulate and police proper behaviour by them. Simply leaving it to parents to complain to the head teacher, to try to appear in front of the governors or to remonstrate with their local Member of Parliament is not a satisfactory substitute. It is not a bad theory or a poor principle, but it has been sloppily applied in practice. In that respect, for the Government simply to say that they do not think that it is either necessary or particularly desirable to have detailed scrutiny of individual funding on given children is not very persuasive either. Where we are talking about statemented children, to whom specific commitments that have legislative or statutory backing have been given, that provision must be honoured, and we must see that it is being honoured. I am sure that you and colleagues will be pleased to hear, Mr. Hancock, my third and final point: specialist services and specialist provision delivered by specialists is an important issue. We have a serious problem in that regard. In ““Every Child Matters”” there are no fewer than 32 references to specialist provision or support, but in ““Removing Barriers to Achievement””, the Government’s SEN strategy, there are no fewer than 68 such references. We heard the Audit Commission as long ago as 2002 say that there is a ““shortfall”” in the provision of such specialist services. We know also from the Government’s own strategy, published in 2004, that Ministers recognise how crucial it is first to ensure high-quality, specialist, local provision, particularly to meet low-incidence needs, and to meet the needs of people with severe, complex and multi-faceted disorders, before the number of places in special schools are reduced or whole institutions are closed. I say to the Minister in the most genuine and sincere spirit that that justified intellectual conclusion and stated commitment by Ministers is not being reflected in the reality on the ground. For example, I know that the MacIntyre school in my constituency, which is a distinguished special school, gets everyone in only because they qualify on appeal to SENDIST. I know that the Nuffield speech and language unit, for which I and others are battling extremely hard in a determined campaign to preserve, is also suffering. It is a specialist facility that looks after people with severe verbal dyspraxia. The Royal Free Hampstead NHS trust plans to close it when nothing substantive is in its place. Good work is being done in our system by outstanding professionals, but there are serious problems. I want to tell the Government, in a positive and benign spirit, that too many children have suffered too much for too long with too little done to help them. That must change and the prerequisite of change is abandonment of the arrogance of officialdom and the beginning of a readiness to listen.