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Special Educational Needs and Disability (Support) Bill

I am in no position to give any alternative estimate, let alone an authoritative one, but it seems to me that the hon. Gentleman is palpably on to something. My own study of special educational needs provision across the country includes the work that I undertook on speech and language services, in collaboration with the Government, between 2007 and 2008. In that period, I had 70 meetings across the country on the subject of the delivery of services, and I frequently encountered people who, spontaneously and independently of each other, said to me, "There are more children here who have a problem which took a long time to detect or which has still not been officially recognised, and for whom neither a label nor a provision has yet been made available." That is tantamount to agreeing with the hon. Gentleman that my figure of 20 per cent. is overwhelmingly likely to be an underestimate. It is not a bad thing to err on the side of an underestimate, as long as one accompanies it with the helpful and welcome caveat that he issued. The situation that I am describing factually is very bad, but in all probability the true position is considerably worse.