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Special Educational Needs (Information) Bill

It is my great pleasure to speak on the Third Reading of the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Mrs. Hodgson). In light of the praise that has been lavished on her, she will have difficulty getting out of the door after today's debate, but all that praise is deserved. She is very persuasive in a way that is not always met with in politics; she bowls people over with charm, as well as with the logic of her argument. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton, West (Mr. McAvoy), who is on the Front Bench, uses similar tactics in the Government Whips Office. I was recently in the north-east. In many ways, people from the north-east and people from south Wales, where I come from, are very similar. I noticed that there is an advertising campaign for the north-east, and its slogan is ““Passionate people, passionate places.”” My hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West is a living embodiment of that. Perhaps she should appear on the posters promoting the north-east to the rest of the country and the world, because she certainly lives up to that slogan in the way in which she puts forward her arguments on behalf of her constituents, and families with children with special needs right across the country. They have great reason to be grateful to her for introducing the Bill and steering it through its stages in such an exemplary fashion, and with great charm. I want to thank the Opposition Front-Bench spokespeople for the serious and thoughtful way in which they have engaged with the Bill. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) and I are former Select Committee colleagues, and I know how assiduously she cares about the issues, which showed in her contributions to the debate and the way in which she probed to ensure that the Bill achieves what we all want to see it achieve. The hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller) has a good knowledge of the issues. We do not always agree across the Floor of the House, but we have debated the issues in a civilised manner. It is important that her party is, like the other parties in the House, committed to the cause of children with SEN. She has pressed me once or twice about whether the Government are doing enough in that area, and I have responded. It is only fair that I press her back occasionally, especially because she mentioned in her concluding remarks on Third Reading that children with SEN are eight times more likely to be expelled than the average. I remind her that that situation would not be helped if an important tier of protection on exclusions were removed by getting rid of independent tribunals. I urge Conservative Members to think about the impact of such a move on children with SEN, whose interests the hon. Lady has discussed during the course of the Bill. The Bill is short, and it is not mine—it belongs to my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West. I will not match my hon. Friend's level of detail on Third Reading, but I will make a few brief points. The hon. Member for Basingstoke has asked whether our ambitions are high enough for children with SEN. The Government have shown their high ambitions in the children's plan and by supporting this Bill. One of our ambitions is to make this country the best place in the world for children to grow up. That is our mission and our ambition, and we want those words to become reality. When we discuss the issues, it is important to will not only the ends but the means. That is why we have undertaken record levels of investment in education and SEN. In the course of the Bill, I announced a number of measures on the provision of information and the improvement of teacher training. Our ambitions are high, and the children's plan, which we published last December, makes it clear that those ambitions are high not only for some children, but for all children. In particular, our ambitions are high for children from the most deprived or vulnerable backgrounds and for children with SEN. We all believe that every young person should have a fair chance to reach their full potential, which is the driving force behind this Government's agenda on children. As a result, the Government are determined to help children overcome the barrier presented by SEN. As we have discussed, a great deal of work is under way to try to narrow the gap in achievement. Incidentally, another hon. Member who contributed to proceedings and who is worthy of attention, particularly in relation to her contribution on deaf children, is my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley (Barbara Keeley), who made a good speech earlier in our proceedings. We are determined to do more in the future, but I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West, which is why the Government have supported and will continue to support the Bill in its passage through Parliament. We will not get anywhere on improving outcomes without better data. As the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole has said, we do not want bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake, so it is important that we collect information and data for a purpose that will have an impact at the front line and, ultimately, on the outcomes for those vulnerable children. We need a clearer picture of the scale and impact of SEN around the country to drive up the transformation that we want to see in standards. We want to see better outcomes for all children with SEN as well as other children in our schools. That is why the Bill is so important, and that is why the Government have been able to give it our wholehearted support. We wish the Bill bon voyage on its way down the Corridor to the other place, where it will hopefully have a smooth journey into law.