SEND Provision: Funding

I am grateful to my hon. Friend that important question. Labour is providing £1 billion more for high-needs budgets, and also providing councils with £740 million of capital funding to improve support for children with SEND in specialist and mainstream schools. This investment will lay the foundation for the better system that children with SEND need. Working with experts, we will set out our plans in the schools White Paper in the autumn.

The last Government left behind a SEND system that was failing children and families. Parents were made to fight for support, with education, health and care plans denied or delayed and vital services taken away. Tory cuts to early years support, rising poverty and extreme deprivation in Blackpool, as well as the pandemic hitting our children harder than most, have all combined to deepen the crisis facing our most vulnerable young people. What steps is the Education Secretary taking to ensure children in disadvantaged communities like mine, where the need is high and support often falls short, receive the targeted SEND support they urgently require?

My hon. Friend is a powerful champion for his constituents and for Blackpool, and he is right that far too many children are not currently getting the support they need in order to thrive. Early intervention is key—more support at the earliest possible point to identify where children might be struggling, and to make sure that they get the help they need. That is why I was very proud to announce to the House that, building on the proud Labour legacy of Sure Start, we will be rolling out Best Start family hubs to make sure that we have better family support services in every part of our country, including my hon. Friend’s community.

The Secretary of State knows that out-of-county placements are very expensive and highly unsatisfactory both for pupils and for families. Will she therefore confirm that the excellent news that we had last year about a new SEND school being built at Bitham Park in Westbury will go ahead to the advantage of children and, importantly, their families, and can she assure me it is not going to be cancelled in the proposals she has alluded to?

I will happily write to the right hon. Gentleman in relation to his constituency case. We are looking carefully at all the proposals we inherited when we came in as a new Government, but the assurance I can give him is that through the spending review we secured additional investment not just for revenue funding but also for capital funding to make sure that we are creating the specialist places that are needed in both the mainstream and also the specialist sector, which has an enormous amount of expertise. Sadly, I have heard far too many cases of the kind that he describes, where children are being forced to travel considerable distances away from their local community and their friends because of an absence of specialist places. We are determined to improve that.

Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating the staff, pupils and governors at Henry Tyndale community school on the official opening today of their new park campus in Aldershot, a vital new facility for students aged four to 19 with complex learning difficulties? This outstanding school is named after Henry Tyndale, who gave two decades of tireless service as a volunteer, fundraiser and friend to children with the greatest difficulties, and whose legacy continues to shape the school’s inclusive spirit. What steps are the Government taking to support the creation of more schools like Henry Tyndale, so that children with SEND in my community and beyond have access to the high-quality, specialist environments they deserve?

My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the amazing work in the specialist sector and the tremendous expertise, knowledge and passion that so many people bring to supporting children with some of the most complex needs. That is why how we can deliver better outcomes for children with SEND is at the forefront of all of our minds as we bring forward any reform to the system. That will be our guiding principle—it must be our guiding principle. So alongside better mainstream inclusion, we will of course make sure that there is the specialist provision necessary for the children who need it.

I have heard from and met with numerous constituents who are parents of children with special educational needs, all frustrated with the way that the system currently works. I welcome the Secretary of State saying she wants outcomes for children to be at the centre of reforms, but a parent of a child with an EHCP, which helps them to be in mainstream education, recently told me of the fear and horror she felt when she heard about potential Government reforms due to the risk of her son losing the ability to stay in a school that has, in her words, been an absolute godsend for him. Can the Secretary of State assure parents that her reforms will not take away support that children currently have and will ensure that every child has the support they need to genuinely thrive?

I can be clear that children with SEND have a legal right to additional support, and Labour will always protect that. I would say, however, that we all have a responsibility in how we approach the issue—a responsibility not to cause undue alarm among parents who are experiencing a system that is not working and that is too adversarial. I believe that a better system will be delivered. We can make sure that children get early, timely support that is much more effective and focused on their outcomes. The plans that we will set out later this year will be shaped by all the conversations with the parents who she describes—conversations that I, too, have had—and with experts, school leaders and campaigners to make sure that we get them right.

I call the shadow Minister.

Parents are getting in touch with MPs across the country to ask whether existing special needs support will continue under the planned reforms. The Minister for School Standards has said that the Government will not remove “effective support”, but what does that word “effective” mean? Who will judge what is effective, and on what basis? Why will the Government not just guarantee that all children will keep the support that they currently have?

As I said in response to the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns), children with SEND have a legal right to additional support. We will not just protect it, but improve it. We will deliver better outcomes and support for children with SEND.

I do not know how the shadow Minister has the brass neck to stand there and ask that question, given that the Conservatives left behind a system that their last Education Secretary described as “lose, lose, lose”. It is for that reason that we deal with so many questions on this topic every time we gather for Education questions. What we have at the moment is not working by any objective measure: children are being failed and parents are being failed. It falls to the Labour Government to deliver the better system of support that all our children with SEND desperately need.