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Special Educational Needs and Disability (Support) Bill

Yes is the short answer to my hon. Friend. Like him, I have a child with special educational needs. My wife and I have a five-year-old son, Oliver, who has speech and language difficulties and has been diagnosed as exhibiting the characteristics of high-functioning autism. There is a degree of empathy between me and my hon. Friend on these issues, not least as a result of that shared experience. It is certainly true that, as in so many other walks of life and features of public policy, the chances of getting justice are not equal. In short, and without wishing to exaggerate the point, I have found, going around the country, talking to people, hearing from people, and studying the evidence that people have submitted in writing, that the chances are that someone who is educated, articulate, middle class, willing to write a decent letter, capable of jousting with authority, and unperturbed by the prospect of having to appear in front of some sort of official forum or tribunal will probably get all, or much, of what their child needs, and in some cases they may even succeed in garnering additional provision, on the precautionary principle, beyond what their child is subsequently shown to have needed. Conversely—this is the logical corollary of that point—someone who is uneducated, inarticulate, incapable of writing a really good letter, petrified at the thought of jousting with authority, and wholly intimidated by the prospect of meeting officialdom in some sort of adversarial scenario will probably not get what their child needs. I might add—I was struck by this as I went around the country visiting some very deprived communities—that we have to reckon with another factor apart from deprivation itself. One will meet families, sometimes run by single parents, sometimes not, in which the sheer plethora of problems with which the family head is daily confronted is such that although he or she adores the affected child, the fact of the child's speech or language difficulty or other special educational need is not writ large in his or her priorities. That parent might have addiction problems, mental health problems or debt problems, they might suffer from a problem of domestic violence or marital relationship breakdown, or they might have issues of offending or reoffending. It is therefore incumbent on right hon. and hon. Members who are, by all accounts, relatively fortunate, to try to put ourselves in the position of, and to make effective provision for, those who are, frankly, very much less fortunate than we are.