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Special Educational Needs (Information) Bill

It is a great pleasure and privilege to follow the hon. Member for South Swindon (Anne Snelgrove), with whom I have jousted constructively in several such debates over a significant period. I am well aware of her background and great interest in the matters that we are considering. It is also a pleasure for me to be one of the first to congratulate warmly and sincerely the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Mrs. Hodgson) not only on her admirable and heartfelt speech this morning, but on all the work, planning and forethought that led up to this important occasion. I was pleased yesterday evening to join her and several colleagues, as well as representatives of interest groups, to mark the Bill, the occasion of today’s debate and the great sense of optimism that her work has produced. I declare an interest again as the parent of a child with significant special educational needs. My elder son, Oliver, who is four, has notable speech and language difficulties and was diagnosed last summer on the autistic spectrum. He is a pupil in central London, where he receives fantastic help in a language unit in what I would describe as a language-rich mainstream school, which is driven by the tremendous commitment, vision and inspiration of the head teacher and his senior staff. No parent would ever say, ““I’m not worried about my child.”” We are all concerned about our children. However, I confess that my wife and I feel that we are very fortunate that we managed to identify the fact of difficulties at an early stage, to access help, to secure a placement and to start the process whereby our child is assisted and becomes—this is important—a much happier little boy than he was for a while or otherwise would be. My concern is therefore not specifically for my child but for the vast number of children, some of whom I have, of course, like other hon. Members, encountered in my constituency, who simply do not receive the help that they palpably need. With the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Lynda Waltho), I work in the all-party group on speech and language difficulties, which I have the privilege of chairing. Some hon. Members will know that the Government asked me to lead a review of services for children with speech, language and communication difficulties, aged from 0 to 19, with a view to publishing an interim report in March and a final report in July, suggesting how best we can take forward provision. I was happy to agree to undertake that task because we are considering a set of issues that need not be a matter of great party political combat and about which there is considerable potential for common ground between public-spirited people of all political persuasions and none. I welcome the Bill because there is a knowledge gap—an information deficit. Too little is known by too many and that has been the case for too long. That is unacceptable. If the position were to continue, it would represent an abdication of our public responsibility. That is why the fact that the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West has identified the problem and proposed a way forward is so welcome. What do we know? We know quite a lot and I should like to highlight at this stage that we all know, talk about and celebrate the priority that should be attached to early intervention. Let us take the field in which I have a particular interest: speech, language and communication needs. A considerable body of evidence shows that early intervention can be hugely effective. Something like 10 per cent. of school-age children suffer from speech, language and communication difficulties. The evidence is clear that, if we identify and help a child with a speech delay or speech impairment before he or she reaches the age of five or five and a half, the problem will be overcome or very substantially reduce and the child will be able to access the national curriculum, opportunities and courses, and fulfil his or her potential. The corollary is that the absence of early intervention is massively damaging. What are the consequences of the failure to identify, and prescribe and provide for, children with speech, language and communication needs? The answer is fairly harrowing: emotional and psychological difficulties; behavioural problems; lower educational attainment; poorer qualifications; weaker employment prospects; persistent communication handicaps; challenges to mental health; and, in the worst-case scenarios—the evidence is on the record to demonstrate this—a descent into criminality. People who do not get help and suffer from untreated communication disorders are more likely to commit crime, commit it again and end up incarcerated. [Interruption.] I am sure that the point is of great interest to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan), who is sitting on the Front Bench and is, I think, motivated to intervene.