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Special Educational Needs (Information) Bill

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. That rather underlines the point that there have to be certain safeguards, guarantees and minimum standards. If I may, I will move on from the subject of training briefly to focus on services. This is not the occasion for a detailed debate about the precise composition of services, but I simply make the point that it is well recognised in the field of special needs that in broad terms there can be said to be categories of provision to reflect categories of need. Some services are, and should be, universally available; others are of targeted application; and others still are specialist in character. Some people with modest difficulties or delays in particular respects can benefit, adequately and more so, from what we call low-dosage, high-volume intervention within the mainstream school and the undifferentiated mainstream class within the mainstream school. Some of those services can even be delivered—if not initially, certainly after a while, and with the benefit of the training that I described—on what we call the consultative model; that is to say that one does not necessarily have to have a specialist present delivering the service, which would be highly expensive use of resources. Some children require something rather more than low-dosage, high-volume assistance—they need targeted help, possibly on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, possibly less, possibly more, and they may be in groups or seen individually. Then there are categories of children and young people who require a specialist service. I say to the Government that there is a real challenge that, in the review on speech, language and communication needs, my colleagues and I are trying to address to ensure that we can develop conceptually and then roll out practically a commissioning framework that will allow for joint commissioning between education and health services, and sometimes between education, health and social services, of the provision that is required specifically and adequately to cater to the needs of children and young people who have what we call low-incidence and high-need conditions, and quite severe needs. We spoke earlier about categories of need. The hon. Member for South Swindon, together with other colleagues, was quick to emphasise that we are not talking about a homogenous category in relation to special educational needs, and she was right to make and underline that very valid point. Let me add to it by saying that there is not only a variation between people with mild delay or moderate difficulty and people with severe difficulty, but a distinction between people who have one problem and people who have several. Some special educational needs children have an identifiable condition that might even be severe but which is easily comprehensible and susceptible to help of a simple and identifiable character. Other children do not have one-dimensional difficulties—they have what we call severe and complex needs that are not one-dimensional but multi-faceted in nature, and they will probably be enduring needs which will require assistance over a very long period. Over the past few months, I have come across the significance of this issue when visiting institutions around the country. I have visited schools, pre-schools, primary schools, secondary schools and post-16 provision in London, Sussex, Kent, Middlesbrough, Newcastle, Manchester, Salford, Plymouth—I am going to Essex next Monday and Norwich on Wednesday—and a host of other places. I have found that there are some admirable services—this relates to the point so powerfully made by the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins)—that cater for only a relatively small number of children or young people and which are hugely stretched financially, but the disappearance of which would be a catastrophe for the individual concerned and for the country as a whole. Let me give a couple of examples. The Nuffield speech and language unit in Ealing faces a threat to its survival, as does the Michael Palin centre for stammering children, which is the most outstanding centre that one could have the privilege of visiting. There are the ACE—aids to communication in education—centres, which cater to the needs of children and young people with cerebral palsy who require communication aids in order to express their concerns and offer their opinions so as to ensure that their interests are reflected. We can be sure of two things that will happen if those facilities disappear: first, once they have gone they will not come back; and secondly, if they go, we dissipate the expertise and lose the experience, and we no longer have available the teams that can provide training, offer outreach, upskill the work force and provide the specialist assessment and diagnosis that are so often required. In that sense—this is a completely non-partisan point—I feel that we should not overdo the rhetoric about localism. Localism has its place; in the form of local differentiation because of the characteristics of the area, local discretion or encouraging local service entrepreneurs to do more, to do it slightly differently or to innovate, it is a healthy phenomenon. However, localism must not become a religion that poisons the well of public provision or causes policy makers nationally deliberately or inadvertently to abdicate responsibility and simply say, ““Oh, these are not matters with which it is proper for us to interfere—we are mere Ministers, humble specimens who do not presume the expert knowledge. It is a matter purely for the local authority or the primary care trust to determine the configuration of services.”” That would be a great mistake. [Interruption.] I am not accusing the Under-Secretary. One sometimes has to say, ““This is an outstanding service. It is not a business. It would not survive if it were a matter of commerce, it will probably ever be required only by a minority of children, but it is hugely valuable, it must be maintained, and it needs, if anything, to have its facilities extended, and if that means that it has to be funded centrally by Government, be it a Labour Government or a Conservative Government, so be it.””