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Bercow Review

It is a pleasure to follow the Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan), and I am particularly grateful to him for his generous remarks this afternoon. I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge and pay tribute to the Secretary of State for Health and the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, who have been unstinting in their support and encouragement of me in this venture during the past 10 months. A great many colleagues have engaged with the review, either by inviting me to visit a pre-school, primary school, secondary school or somewhere with post-16 provision, or by making a written submission. To each and every one of them, for their contribution to an important task, I am greatly indebted. Although it is invidious to single out an individual, I am moved to pay a special tribute to someone who has gone the extra mile—way beyond the call of duty—in submitting material to me and offering me personal support and encouragement throughout, and that is the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), whom I am delighted to see in his place. The Under-Secretary referred to the process through which my colleagues on the review advisory group and I have gone in the past 10 months. We have sought evidence from four different sources. First, we launched an online consultation questionnaire in October, to which, on the due date of 18 January, we had received more than 2,000 replies, of which just over half were from parents, telling us what they thought, what worked, what did not work, and what was needed. Secondly, we staged a series of focus or consultation groups around the country, calling on children, young people and their parents to offer their impressions of the state of services. In addition, we thought it justified and prudent to stage two particular focus groups on the thorny questions of augmentative and alternative communication under the auspices of Scope on the one hand, and of provision for young offenders, courtesy of the Prison Reform Trust, on the other. Thirdly, as the Under-Secretary said, we went round the country, visiting pre-schools, primary schools, secondary schools and post-16 facilities. A plethora of different examples were presented to us. We wanted to see not only London and the south-east but the midlands, the north and the south-west, urban and rural areas, mixed communities, different social cohorts and so on, to get the widest possible representative picture of what currently is—and is not—on offer. Finally, we thought it right to secure the services of some noted and distinguished academic researchers in speech, language and communication, a group of whom have engaged in a detailed project to look at service provision in six different areas, and seek to adduce evidence from their studies, the better to inform future policy making and the prospects of necessary and beneficial research. We have formed some fairly clear and explicit conclusions, based on what we saw around the country. Without doubt, some excellent professionals and high-quality services are out there, but, on the whole, the current state of speech, language and communication provision is highly unsatisfactory. Access to information and services is often poor; the quality of services is very mixed; continuity across the age range is lacking; joint working between health and education professionals, which is so critical to achieving success, is rare, and the system is characterised by high variability and a lack of equity, the short-hand translation of which is that a postcode lottery currently exists throughout the country. Above all, the priority attached to communication is too low. In our judgment, that must change.