Marie Goldman MP: speeches

Speeches

• 18 Mar 2025 · Free School Meals · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend said that it is important that children are well fed, and I want to focus on the word “well”. Does she agree that this is about not just the amount of food that we provide for children, but the quality? It is really important that children receive highly nutritious content that releases energy slowly throughout the day and enables them to concentrate. Does she agree that, given that school face such difficulties with their budgets, there is an understandable temptation to look at less costly solutions for food, which is potentially very dangerous for children’s long-term health outcomes and ability to learn?

• 13 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  As Members of Parliament, we have many issues that demand our attention, but few that can be more important than ensuring children are well fed with healthy, nutritious food. I am sure that Members across the House wish that all families are able to provide that every day for their children, but we must face the tragic reality that many children go hungry. In government, the Liberal Democrats were proud to introduce universal free school meals for infants. We ensured that every child could access a healthy lunch each day, because when children go hungry, they make less progress and have poorer behaviour and health outcomes. A free school lunch may be the only healthy cooked food that some children get, or even their only meal of the day. That is shameful in a country such as England. That is why we have tabled amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that would increase the after- tax threshold for free school meals to £20,000 a year, expanding eligibility for free school meals to a further 900,000 children. We are also committed to introducing auto-enrolment for those who are eligible for free school meals, ensuring that children are automatically considered eligible when their parents apply for relevant benefits or financial support. Does the Leader of the House agree that no child should go hungry in 2025, and will she ask the Government to embrace cross-party working to support the Liberal Democrats’ long-standing calls for free school meals when the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill returns to Parliament next week?

• 11 Mar 2025 · Anti-social Behaviour: East of England · Hansard source

  More

  Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Conservative police, fire and crime commissioner for Essex recently proposed getting rid of all 99 PCSOs in Essex? Does the hon. Gentleman think that would ever be the right thing to do?

• 11 Mar 2025 · Anti-social Behaviour: East of England · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the hon. Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) on bringing this important debate to Westminster Hall. Although I am the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for this debate, I also declare a strong interest in that I am the Member of Parliament for Chelmsford in Essex—for Members who do not know the geography, that is firmly in the east of England. I will start by saying a few things about my constituency. Other hon. Members have spoken with pride about their constituencies and how important it is that antisocial behaviour is curbed. Chelmsford is a lovely urban constituency with lots of wonderful things going on—of course, I am slightly biased—but when I am out knocking on doors, constituents tell me about things that are not going quite so well. They worry about drug dealing, as several constituents told me on Saturday when I was in the centre of Chelmsford. They tell me about fly-tipping, which was also raised by the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft). They tell me about the noisy car meets around the constituency. I used to live by the Army and Navy, one of Chelmsford’s main junctions, and the noise used to keep me awake at night sometimes, so I know how frustrating it can be. Structural issues can also lead to antisocial behaviour, including broken streetlights, which make people feel unsafe when they walk around the constituency. We need local councils to be much better at tackling such issues. Constituents are tolerant but understandably a bit fed up of antisocial behaviour, and we certainly need to do more to tackle it. Antisocial behaviour can very low level, including people riding bikes on pavements—an annoying thing that happens in my constituency and, I am sure, across the country—and when new trees have been planted and somebody comes along and chops them in half overnight. Nobody is going to be very ill off the back of that, but people are understandably frustrated by it. On fly-tipping, hon. Members mentioned the fabulous volunteers who help to make our constituencies better places. I would like to single out the volunteers of the Chelmsford Litter Wombles, who spend much of their free time going out and clearing up after littering and antisocial behaviour. I have joined them on various occasions to help them clear up. Many hon. Members raised the important point that everyone deserves to feel safe when they walk around their neighbourhood. Well over half of hon. Members focused on the importance of policing, punishment and tackling crime, which I agree is important, but it is a shame that more of them did not focus on what is driving those issues in the first place, although some did raise it. It was heartwarming, therefore, to hear the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean) be the first to substantially discuss the lack of provision and support for young people and the importance of youth services. Youth services were slashed by the previous Government, which left gaps. The issue is not just about youth services as we think of them being provided by councils; it is also about funding for charities and other organisations that can help, and schools’ extracurricular activities. Schools simply do not have the budget for sports activities, music and drama—all the things that help young people to develop, give them an alternative to getting into trouble, and set them up for life. The Liberal Democrats would like to see more focus on early intervention and on giving young people something to do. This debate is about antisocial behaviour, but knife crime, which has been mentioned, unfortunately fits into that. We would like to see a public health approach taken to the epidemic of youth violence—an approach that identifies and treats the risk factors rather than just focusing on the symptoms. There should be investment in youth services that are genuinely engaging and reach more people. We must give young people the support and opportunities that they deserve to help our communities and individuals feel safer. The bottom line is that talk is cheap; it is action that really matters. We need to understand the driving forces behind some of the antisocial behaviour. That is not just about the lack of provision of youth services; we need to see why the people who are in our prisons are there in the first place. When we talk about tackling crime, the ultimate endpoint of that is people ending up in prison, but the endless cycle of crime and punishment, with more crime simply leading to calls for more police and tougher sentences, is just not working. Some studies suggest that 50% of the prison population may have dyslexia or other neurodivergent conditions. When that is the case, we are getting something very wrong, so we need to focus on what is driving antisocial behaviour in the first place. Unnecessarily criminalising young people makes it only more likely that they will commit crimes in future. We know that high-quality youth work gets results: it has been proven time and again to help vulnerable young people to escape the clutches of gangs. As I said, however, the previous Conservative Government slashed youth services. Unfortunately, that robbed young people of hope and contributed to the rise in serious violence. I thank the hon. Member for Norwich North again for initiating this important debate and for its focus on the east of England.

• 6 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  As the Leader of the House has already noted, today is World Book Day, and I would like to say a big thank you to Barnes Farm primary school in my constituency for inviting me in yesterday to open its brand new library. One in seven state primary schools in the UK do not have a dedicated library or reading space, and almost 1 million children in the UK do not have a book of their own. As such, it was wonderful to meet year 5 students and representatives of Barnes Farm student council, who were very enthusiastic about their new library. It is fantastic to know that those students will have access to such a facility for a long time to come. At Prime Minister’s questions on 8 January, I raised the plight of community pharmacies. They are struggling to stay afloat due to the unfair terms of their NHS contracts, which often mean that they have to buy drugs that they dispense for more than the NHS reimburses them. The Prime Minister asked me to follow up with more details, which I did that afternoon. Despite chasing, I am yet to receive a reply from the Department of Health and Social Care, to which my inquiry was passed. Community pharmacies cannot wait. The National Pharmacy Association projects that nearly 1,000 pharmacies will close by the end of 2027. There is no guaranteed funding for Pharmacy First beyond the end of this month. This is a critical issue that the Government need to address urgently. I know that the Leader of the House takes seriously the timeliness of replies from Ministers and Departments, so will she let the House know what further steps she is taking to ensure that issues such as protecting our vital community pharmacies are given the swift and full attention they deserve?

• 27 Feb 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  The Climate Change Committee has published advice in its seventh carbon budget that sets out a new pathway to decarbonisation, including on how the UK can meet the legally binding target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The Climate Change Committee has already reported that the UK is behind in meeting its climate targets, and it has criticised the Government’s decisions to go ahead with the coalmine in Cumbria and oil and gas fields in the North sea. On top of that, Ofgem has taken the decision to increase the cap for the price of energy bills by 6.4% in April 2025, which is higher than the 5% increase that even those in the sector expected. This is the third increase since October 2024. The latest price rise means that households will be forced to pay about £600 a year more for their gas and electricity than before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago. The Liberal Democrats have been gravely concerned about the Government’s delays to tackling poorly insulated homes over this winter and to implementing the new future homes standard. As a result, an estimated 6 million households are still in fuel poverty. It is clear that to tackle the joint issues of climate change and ever-increasing energy prices, the Government must be bold. The Liberal Democrats want a 10-year emergency upgrade programme to make homes warmer and cheaper to heat, including free insulation and heat pumps for those on low incomes. Will the Leader of the House grant a debate in Government time to discuss what more can be done to support those struggling to stay warm, in a way that also supports decarbonisation?

• 25 Feb 2025 · Maternity Services · Hansard source

  More

  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) for securing this important debate. I will keep this brief and not reiterate all the things that have been said before, but there are a couple of points I want to make about how important it is to talk about women at the most vulnerable point in their lives, as well as the most vulnerable point for the babies who are being born. There cannot be a more important time in their lives than the moment when they are born, which is why it is so important to talk about this. I speak as a woman and a mother, but also as a human being. We are discussing the birth of the human race; I do not think there is anything more profound than that. However, I will focus on something that has not been raised very much today: the role of the CQC in keeping our maternity services safe. One of the hospitals that serves my constituency of Chelmsford is Broomfield hospital, the maternity services rating of which was downgraded to inadequate at the beginning of January. That on its own is shocking and worrying enough. I have met the staff at Broomfield hospital and been to the maternity services there. I want to give it help and support so that it can improve. However, what concerns me is that the CQC carried out its inspection in March last year and only released its report in January. That is utterly unacceptable. How can we be expected to hold our services to account and how can we help them to improve if we do not even know what is wrong with them in the first place? It is the CQC’s job to tell us what is wrong with those services and lay it out bare so that we can learn from the things that go wrong and quickly put them right. It is not okay for the CQC to turn around and say “We have had technical difficulties with our new system and, therefore, we couldn’t get the report out”. That is not good enough. It is also not good enough for them to say “We shared some of our findings with the hospital, which is also making them public at the same time”. It is simply not good enough. We need to support the CQC to do much better. I am conscious of time and I know other Members want to speak, but I want to underline the importance of the role of the CQC, as well as the leadership across all of the NHS. From the excellent job that the midwives and the support staff do in maternity centres to the leadership of the hospitals, including the chief executives and the ICBs, everyone has a role to play in improving maternity services. The CQC also has a huge role to play, and it must do better.

• 13 Feb 2025 · Infected Blood Compensation Scheme · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. The Liberal Democrats are glad to see the introduction of this legislation and the extension of the infected blood compensation scheme. This scandal is a chilling story of people being failed not only by the medical professionals who treated them but by the NHS that should have been responsible for the safety of their treatment, and by a series of Governments who should have prevented the scandal from ever taking place. We are glad that the new regulations will move the victims, both those infected and those affected, closer to long overdue justice. However, we are deeply concerned by the speed at which victims have been receiving compensation, with only 25 people having been invited to claim by December last year. It is right that the Government are now widening the scheme so that compensation reaches many more people as soon as possible. It is also crucial that there are mechanisms in place to ensure that the concerns of the charities, organisations and affected individuals are heard. To that end, and to provide confidence to victims and their families, will the Minister outline a timeline for when all victims can expect to have received their long overdue compensation? Furthermore, will the Government introduce a duty of candour on public officials so that such a scandal is never repeated?

• 13 Feb 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  As we now know, local government is being reorganised, and the Labour Government have cancelled local elections while affected councils work out how on earth they will reorganise themselves. Like many residents in these areas, I would have hoped that that plan would have been in place before the elections were cancelled; many issues are very much up in the air, and the public deserve to know what they are in for. In Woking, for example, successive Conservative administrations at the council racked up £2 billion of debt with absolutely no plan for how to pay it off. In Greater Essex, Conservative-run Thurrock ran up debts of around £1.5 billion largely due to investments in a solar farm that did not exist. With both Essex and Surrey now on the fast track for local government reorganisation, what will happen to those debts? Last week, the Minister for Local Government and English Devolution, the hon. Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon), wrote a letter to all the leaders of the two-tier councils and unitary authorities in Essex, in which he said: “there is no proposal for council debt to be addressed centrally or written off as part of reorganisation…proposals should reflect the extent to which the implications of this can be managed locally.” Will the Leader of the House ask the Minister to come forward with a statement to confirm that what he really means is that residents across places such as Essex and Surrey will be forced to pay for the incompetence of previous Tory administrations of other councils, and that they are likely to see reduced services and higher council tax bills simply because this Labour Government are determined to press ahead with local government reorganisation but not prepared to offer any financial support to alleviate that?

• 6 Feb 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  I draw the attention of the House to the register of my interests. Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government made a statement to this House in which she said that she had agreed to delay the local elections in some areas for one year. I must confess that I am a bit confused, because my local council, Essex county council, is one of those areas. The briefing papers for the extraordinary full council meeting of Essex county council that took place on 10 January state: “The Leader is minded to support the proposal to postpone the elections in order to maximise capacity for the transition process, whilst noting that this would lead to a two or three year postponement.” That is rather longer than the one year that the Secretary of State announced yesterday. Essex county councillors are usually elected for a four-year term and a postponement —really, a cancellation of elections for three years—would extend their terms of office by 75%. Will the Leader of the House grant a debate in Government time on the principles of democracy in the United Kingdom?

• 30 Jan 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  May I echo the words that have been spoken about the unfolding tragedy in Washington DC? My thoughts go out to all the victims and their families. When I am out and about talking to people on the doorstep in my Chelmsford constituency, the issue of crime often comes up. That is not because Chelmsford is a criminal hotspot—far from it—but because of the often frustrating low-level crime that takes place, which concerns my constituents. They often say that they want to see more bobbies on the beat. They want to see more uniformed police patrolling our streets, making their presence felt, and reassuring the community by building relationships and deterring wannabe criminals. Much of that presence is provided by police community support officers, who work with police officers and share some of their powers. They do genuinely wonderful work that frees up precious police officer time for other and perhaps more complex policing issues. In short, they are very welcome and an important part of our communities. In Essex there are 99 PCSOs, but not for much longer. Essex police have just announced that they are getting rid of all of them, as they face a £12.5 million budget shortfall for 2025-26. I doubt that Essex police will be the only force to consider such drastic action, and I am sure that I am not alone in being extremely concerned about the implications of that decision. Will the Leader of the House consider asking the Home Secretary to make a statement on the effect on our communities, and on what can be done to salvage the situation before the experience of all these dedicated individuals is lost and society suffers as a consequence?

• 30 Jan 2025 · Proportional Representation: General Elections · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I do not think those two things are mutually exclusive. There are preferential systems that can lead to proportional results. In fact, we see that in many places that use preferential systems. In the election in May 2024 for the police, fire and crime commissioner in Essex, the turnout was barely 25%. So why are people not voting? Surely part of the issue is simply that they do not believe that their vote counts. They do not believe that they can make a difference. Although I do not completely agree with that, I certainly agree that the first-past-the-post system makes it harder. There are also other things in our electoral system that make it harder, and I do not think that we should be talking about changing our voting system without also talking about them. For example, the introduction of voter ID was supposedly designed to enhance trust in our elections, but the evidence suggests that there have been some other consequences. In the 2024 general election, 4% of people who did not vote said that the voter ID requirement was the reason that they could not do so. Additionally, 0.08% of those who went to the polls were unable to cast their ballot because they did not have the correct ID. Those may seem like small figures, but if we put them into rough numbers, rather than percentages, we can see that, with about 28.9 million people casting their vote, the number of people who showed up who could not cast their vote because they did not have the correct ID was approximately—unless I have got my maths wrong—23,000 people. That is an incredibly high and quite shocking number. Let us think about that for a moment—23,000 people could not vote because we wanted to stop voter fraud. Of course that might be a good idea if there was lots of voter fraud going on, but the Electoral Commission’s own website says: “In the past five years, there is no evidence of large-scale electoral fraud. Of the 1,462 cases of alleged electoral fraud reported to police between 2019 and 2023, 11 led to convictions, and the police issued four cautions.” Talk about a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Voter registration is another area where improvements are needed. Research shows that as many as 8 million people across the UK are not registered correctly at their current address. This affects key groups such as young people, private renters and recent home movers who may not realise that they are missing from the register until it is too late. Although the current system allows for late registration before elections, this puts unnecessary pressure on electoral services and risks leaving some people unable to vote on polling day. We can see the impact that even small barriers to voting can have. Imagine what would happen if we broke down those barriers and got rid of them. We must recognise that barriers to participation, including voter ID, voter registration and the voting system itself, are dangerous to our democracy. I urge the Government to take the opportunity to fix this and thereby to strengthen democracy and democratic engagement in our country.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Proportional Representation: General Elections · Hansard source

  More

  When I was out knocking on doors in my constituency in last year’s general election campaign, lots of people reminisced with me about a previous general election when the Liberal candidate came just 378 tantalising votes short of the incumbent Conservative. They spoke very fondly of that candidate, which might not be surprising, except the election that they were recalling was in 1983—over four decades ago. I also remember speaking to an elderly, lifelong Labour voter who was lending me his vote for the very first time because he had to do something different. When I thanked him for placing his trust in me, he told me not to take too much from it, because his entire life he had never voted for a candidate who had won. I will always remember that conversation. As I walked away, I said, “Well, we’ll see about that.” Until last July, for 74 years the constituency of Chelmsford, in its various shapes and sizes over the years, had never been represented in Parliament by anyone other than a Conservative. In fact, it had been 100 years since Chelmsford was last represented by a Liberal—something I am extremely proud to have corrected. It should not have to be this way. I hugely admire the tenacity of that erstwhile Labour voter who lent me his vote, hoping against all the evidence of his lifetime that this time it might make a difference. No wonder turnout in elections is often so painfully low. Our antiquated first-past-the-post system can be incredibly demoralising, even for a committed political campaigner like myself. Believe it or not, I do not like having to ask people on the doorstep to lend me their vote so that, together, we can game the system to get the change that we want. Would it not better if people could cast their vote in a way that let them set out their preferences? They would know that all would not be lost for them if their first preference candidate did not win, as their vote could be transferred to someone else that they also would not mind seeing elected. The turnout in last year’s general election, as has already been alluded to, was 65.9% in Chelmsford, slightly better than the national turnout, which was a pretty poor 59.7%. In Manchester Rusholme, the turnout was just 40%. But these are dizzying heights compared with the turnout in local elections.

• 28 Jan 2025 · A133-A120 Link Road · Hansard source

  More

  I apologise to the hon. Gentleman and thank him for giving way. His point is about the importance of infrastructure coming first. Just down the road from the proposed A1331 is the A12 widening scheme, which affects my constituency of Chelmsford, which will potentially affect the delivery of 55,000 new homes, and for which we are waiting for confirmation of funding. Those homes would, of course, go a long way towards meeting the Government’s 1.5 million target. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the “infrastructure first” principle is crucial, and that the Government must not overlook it when they are considering funding?

• 28 Jan 2025 · A133-A120 Link Road · Hansard source

  More

  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 23 Jan 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  I echo the words of the Leader of the House on the Southport attack. May I take this opportunity to welcome the ceasefire in Gaza? Many of my constituents have contacted me about the conflict, and I know it will be a comfort to them to know that bombs are no longer falling in that part of the world—long may the peace last. At the beginning of January, the Care Quality Commission published a report into the maternity services at Broomfield hospital, which serves my constituency. Worryingly, it downgraded the services from “requires improvement” to “inadequate”. A few days ago, the CQC published two more reports about maternity services at the two other major hospitals run by the Mid and South Essex NHS foundation trust, Basildon and Southend, which were both rated “requires improvement”. This is understandably concerning to my constituents, who are served by all three hospitals. When I visited Broomfield’s maternity services a couple of weeks ago, I was pleased to see encouraging signs of improvement, so I hope my constituents will take some comfort from that. It is worth noting that the CQC’s reports in all three cases were based on assessments carried out in March 2024. Does the Leader of the House think it is acceptable for the CQC to take such a long time to report its findings on services that are obviously struggling, and will she grant Government time for a debate to discuss whether the CQC needs better resourcing and support to carry out its important duties?

• 22 Jan 2025 · Education, Health and Care Plans · Hansard source

  More

  I thank my hon. Friend for that really important point. I do not live in a rural area, so it is easy for me to overlook issues such as this. However, I do know that many councils have raised it; indeed, to be fair to Essex county council, it has raised it with me. When we talk about root-and-branch reform of the system, we need to make sure that we address the whole system and everything that goes with it, including transport. My hon. Friend raises an important point, and I thank him very much for that. What is the impact on the school budget? One primary school is funding 90 hours of learning support assistant time a week because there is no EHCP, and it is having to find that funding out of its own budget. That is not through lack of trying to get EHCPs. The school said that it had applied for an ECHP for one child in January 2024, but that child has not even seen an educational psychologist yet. Schools tell me that they do not have the buildings and the other resources to be able to safely look after these children using ordinarily available provision.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Education, Health and Care Plans · Hansard source

  More

  Yes, and it is very hard to disagree with that point. Of course provision needs to recognise what the local challenges are, and those differ in different localities. I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. Let me return to LSAs and the support they provide in schools. Often, there are several children with EHCPs in a class, so it is sometimes necessary to have more than one LSA to support them. However, it is hard to recruit LSAs, because, as schools have told me, the salaries do not match the skills that LSAs require. Also, LSAs are not suitable in all cases, because young people with severe special educational needs can—through no fault of their own; I want to make that very clear—be very disruptive and, unfortunately, endanger other children if they are not properly supervised. That is why it is really important that we have LSAs, teaching assistants and all the support staff necessary to support these children. One special educational needs co-ordinator told me: “As much as the LSA children don’t need 1:1 support full-time, there are some children that really do require 1, or sometimes 2, adults with them throughout the day if everyone is to be kept safe and for the child to have their self-care needs met in a mainstream environment.” We talk a lot about schools, but this issue also affects further education—for example, sixth-form colleges. They tell me that the annual reviews that are done as part of the EHCP process focus too much on educational attainment and on academic achievement and progress, when colleges in fact need to understand what special measures they need to put in place to best meet the needs of the children who are coming in. That is not necessarily about academic achievement; it is about how colleges can best manage the behaviour that pupils exhibit and keep them safe. Colleges say that, unfortunately, EHCPs do not place enough emphasis on behaviour, and their plea—I hope the Minister is listening—is that if we look at the EHCP process, we should encourage it to focus on that issue and not just on educational attainment. Colleges also say that some information in the annual review of behaviour is historical, and might put sixth-form colleges off accepting pupils, even though it would be perfectly appropriate to accept them because their behaviour had changed and they could be supported in different ways. I also want to emphasise the importance of early intervention, because addressing issues early is key. Some children will not need support throughout their entire life or even their entire school life, but getting in early, especially with speech and language issues, can help children to progress just as well as children who did not need additional support. It is not necessarily always about long-term support; sometimes it is about early intervention, and then we can save money later.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Education, Health and Care Plans · Hansard source

  More

  Of course, and my hon. Friend raises an important point. We must tackle that inequality. The Government will say, “We put £1 billion of extra funding into special educational needs.” That is great—it is much better than no extra money for special educational needs—but it will not touch the sides. Local authorities are saying that they have a deficit in the high needs block of £3 billion, and some estimates say that that will go up to £8 billion in the near future. We are looking at a massive funding shortfall.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Education, Health and Care Plans · Hansard source

  More

  Absolutely. Parents’ trust in the system is important, so we need to show that we are listening to them. We also need to show that we are giving them the information they need to alleviate their stress. Someone who has a child with special educational needs knows that their child needs extra support. This is already a stressful time in their life; they then have to sit and wait for an EHCP to land in their inbox, perhaps in week 19 —it is supposed to be 20 weeks, so of course it should land in week 19—but then it does not turn up, and keeps on not turning up. That is incredibly stressful, and it takes away parents’ trust in the system. We should be more transparent about that. We talk about an EHCP being issued within 20 weeks, but across England 37.4% of decisions took six months or longer—that is just ridiculous—and 5.7% took a year or longer. That is completely unacceptable, and it leaves parents in a very difficult place. We need to be more honest with parents and to make that information much more available to them. My new clause 3 to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would help to make the system much more transparent for parents by making local authorities publish how well they are performing against those statutory deadlines. That would be much better for parents. What is the impact on children? We must remember that we are not talking about random numbers or about figures on a spreadsheet somewhere; these are real children who have real lives, real parents and real families. They have aspirations in life, and we need to support them. What does all this mean for them? One SEND professional wrote to me about one child’s case: “This child, who is autistic, non-verbal, and has sensory processing challenges, applied for an Education, Health, and Care Plan (EHCP) in October 2023. It is now January 2025, and they are still waiting for their EHCP to be issued. In the meantime, they are placed in a mainstream school with no tailored support. The result has been incredibly stressful for the child, their family, and the staff working with them. The school has now reached a point where they cannot cope, and the child is being home-schooled, isolated from peers and without access to the specialized education they need and deserve.” One SEND co-ordinator, who is also a teacher, wrote to me: “It is very frustrating with the length of time it is taking for EHCPs to be finalised. Although they are back-dating the funding (which is great), by the time the EHCP actually is agreed, it is often too late for parents to request school placements ready for a transition at the start of the school year, which is often what we need it for.” There is a preference for mainstream, and I hear the Government say that we should educate as many children as possible in mainstream. I do not fundamentally disagree, but mainstream is not suitable for all children, and certainly not when mainstream schools do not have the resources they need to provide education and support. Mainstream sounds good in principle. However, Contact—a charity for families with disabled children—wrote to me, saying, “Local Authorities like Essex”—again, that is where I am— “are reducing the provision in section F for a child with an EHCP as they believe that a lot of the provision in section F comes under ordinarily available provision, which they say the school can provide as standard. All the special educational provision that a child with an EHCP needs is legally required to be stated in section F of an EHCP. It is through section F that there is a legal duty for Local Authorities to make this provision. Parents have been told by schools that there is no funding for SEN provision or ordinarily available support. How can children be reliant on SEN support when there is no funding for it?” Schools are really struggling to deal with the situation. The idea of mainstream and of “ordinarily available” provision is great, but not if schools are not provided with the funding they need. I know that the Government can say, “Well, we have increased the funding for schools,” and they have also increased teacher pay, which is great— teachers absolutely should be paid more—but they have also told schools that teacher pay needs to be funded out of their budgets, which makes the situation very difficult.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Education, Health and Care Plans · Hansard source

  More

  Thank you, Dr Huq. I am not sure I thanked you for your chairmanship earlier, so I thank you now. I also thank all hon. Members who took part in this important debate and contributed, in some circumstances, harrowing stories. I do not have time to go through them all. I will simply say this. I first heard about this subject and the terrible state that special educational needs provision was in at around this time last year. A parent raised it with me and told me what was going on. When I started digging into it, I learned that parents just did not feel heard; they felt that nobody was listening to them. Any parent and anybody involved in education who has been battling this issue can see in the debate here today that we are listening now. We will keep holding the Government’s feet to the fire and making sure that they make progress. I very much hope they do—indeed, I have faith that they do indeed want to make progress. I thank Members again for taking part. I hope we make progress very soon. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered Government support for education, health and care plans.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Education, Health and Care Plans · Hansard source

  More

  I wholeheartedly agree that the system is completely broken and needs complete reform. I gently say to the Minister and anybody listening to the debate that the longer that reform takes, the more harmful it will be for children. Children are suffering right now because they are not getting the support they need. Children keep getting older; they do not wait for Governments to decide what they are going to do or for root-and-branch reforms. Children and their parents need the support right now. Although I would absolutely welcome a wholesale review and change, there are things we can do now to alleviate the problems. If the Minister takes away only one thing from the debate, I hope it is the plea for more to be done now and for the reform and implementation to be sped up. I will come in a bit to the things we can do.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Education, Health and Care Plans · Hansard source

  More

  Of course, I would be delighted to work with the hon. Lady on that sort of issue. I was also at that APPG on SEND meeting, although I could not stay for the whole thing. I am glad she raised it, because at that APPG meeting, an example was given to us of a child who had situational mutism. The intervention they received early on meant that they were able to progress and achieve their full potential, which I thought was fabulous. Unfortunately, I have an example of exactly the opposite in my constituency, where a child with selective mutism did not receive that support and is now not in school at all. The importance of that support cannot be overstated. We could talk a lot about why there has been an increase in EHCP applications, about covid and its impact, about the lack of socialisation and what that has led to and about the lack of early intervention. Maybe some parents are asking for EHCPs because it is the only way to get the support that might ordinarily have been available if schools were not feeling the pressure so much. Ultimately, this is a systemic failure, and I want to move on to some solutions. We need to do this quickly—remember, every single day that children grow up without that support is another day they are suffering. Other than root and branch reform, we need better communication between schools and colleges, between local authorities and parents, and between schools and parents. The list could go on, but I remind everybody that communication is two-way. It is not just the local authority sending out a briefing pack—that is not good enough. We need them to listen, and we need the Government to listen. We need more training. We need qualified and experienced people working with children. A qualified and experienced SEND professional told me: “People like me, who are trained to work with SEND children and adults, often find there is no structured role for us within councils or government systems to support schools, families, or nurseries effectively.” We need to do more about that. There are people who are willing to work and have amazing experience in the system, so let us help them get the qualifications to be able to help parents and young people. One SENCO said that SENCOS need more career path options. Could we have an option, for example, to fast-track some training? Could there be some kind of associate ed psych qualification? I do not know, but maybe that could be looked at. We need to make it easier for parents to understand what is going on. Returning to the issue of tribunals, when local authorities are losing 99% of cases, something is seriously wrong. I wonder whether some of those delays, where the local authorities are deciding to take parents all the way through to tribunal, are—to be very cynical—a way to avoid having to pay the costs of providing the support to the children during that time. I welcome the Education Committee’s inquiry on solving the SEND crisis and advertise to everybody that the deadline to contribute is 30 January. I say to the Minister that, at the risk of repeating myself, we really do need some action now. I urge the Government to work on what steps they can take now to make children’s lives better because, at the end of the day, this is about supporting children’s futures. I look forward to hearing from colleagues across the House and thank them for taking part in this incredibly important debate.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Education, Health and Care Plans · Hansard source

  More

  I beg to move, That this House has considered Government support for education, health and care plans. I thank everybody for coming along to this really important Westminster Hall debate on a subject that fills our inboxes. The Government Benches are very full, and some of the Opposition Benches are reasonably full. I will try to keep my speech as short as possible, because so many people want to speak, but there are various points that I want to make. The debate is about Government support for education, health and care plans. For the benefit of anybody watching the debate who does not understand the system, EHCPs are a fundamental part of the special educational needs system. They are responsible for providing the additional support that children need in school to help them through their educational life and beyond. The big problem is that children and parents do not get the support they need through the EHCP system. Even when EHCPs are granted, schools are sometimes unable to deliver the support set out in them, so parents end up in a ridiculous situation and in many cases have to take their local authority to court. Local authorities lose 99% of cases, but that delays and delays the process and costs parents and local authorities a huge amount of money. On 3 September 2024, the Government published local authority-level figures on waiting times for a decision following an education, health and care needs assessment. That assessment is the first stage: the parent applies for an EHCNA, and the local authority has six weeks in which to decide whether it will accept it, and 20 weeks in total in which to issue the EHCP. So how long are people actually waiting? Well, there are huge discrepancies across the system. Hampshire county council issues EHCPs within 20 weeks 75% of the time, which does not sound too bad, right? Essex county council, where I am situated, issues EHCPs within 20 weeks 0.9% of the time. Both councils have more than 3,000 requests.

• 16 Jan 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  On the Liberal Democrat Benches, we have been delighted by the recent groundswell of support from across the House for Liberal Democrat policies. In particular, I cite: the support for our Youth Mobility Scheme (EU Countries) Bill; the warm response for the sunshine Bill—the New Homes (Solar Generation) Bill—from my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson), which is coming tomorrow; and the House endorsing a fairer voting system. Will the Government answer this clear yearning by Members across the House for Liberal Democrat policies and provide parliamentary time to ensure those Bills become law?