Marie Goldman MP: speeches

Speeches

• 5 Jun 2025 · Free School Meals · Hansard source

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  I warmly welcome this today’s announcement, which has been a Liberal Democrat policy for a very long time. It is so important to have proper nutrition for children so that they get the best possible start in life. In response to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) about funding, the Minister said that this will come out in due course, but that it will be fully funded. Fully funded can mean that those funds come from various different places. Will the Minister rule out those funds coming from existing school budgets, and will he also rule out placing any other financial burden on to already overstretched school budgets?

• 5 Jun 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  The Liberal Democrats warmly welcome reports that eligibility for free school meals is being extended to all children in England whose parents receive universal credit. This is a Lib Dem policy on which we have campaigned for a long time, and it is a positive first step to help to lift children out of poverty. Of course, there is much more to do. Among other much needed changes, we would point to the importance of fully funding the policy for schools and auto-enrolling eligible children to ensure that they get the support they need. I will also highlight, once again, something that is raised in business questions nearly every week: special educational needs. In March it was reported in the media that the Government will produce a White Paper on special educational needs to address the crisis in schools for children with special educational needs and disabilities. We are hearing rumours that this White Paper may be delayed until the autumn, or possibly until next year. Children with special educational needs are still without support, parents are still battling with local authorities, schools are still struggling to cope, and councils are still left staring at the prospect of a £5 billion deficit next year from SEND being added to their budgets. Will the Leader of the House implore the Government to, at the very least, provide a timescale for publishing the White Paper?

• 22 May 2025 · School Teachers’ Review Body: Recommendations · Hansard source

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  The Minister, in her response to my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), referred to imaginings, but I do not think it is an imagining to suggest that the Secretary of State, in her response to the STRB, said that some efficiency savings would have to be found in schools to meet the additional costs. Earlier this week, I had a roundtable with headteachers from my constituency and beyond. The Minister also talked just now about “fantasising about the future”. Is she really telling me that those headteachers were fantasising about the future when they told me that they were already having to make cuts to staffing numbers for next September? One headteacher told me that just one or two more things need to go wrong and that they are on the brink of collapse. Is the Minister saying that they are fantasising about the future?

• 1 May 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  I have a beautiful four-year-old black labrador called Shadow and one of my favourite things to do, to get some exercise and clear my head, is to take her on a long walk. With the weather so gorgeous yesterday morning, I headed to Hylands park, a stunning 574-acre country park that straddles two constituencies, including mine. It is run and maintained by Chelmsford city council park staff with the help of a small army of amazing volunteers. Early in the morning, the only people we usually see are dog walkers, so there was nothing unusual about hearing dogs barking in the distance as I meandered through the woods. But it turned out that yesterday was no ordinary morning and the dogs were barking because their owner, Rebecca, had been knocked over in a canine encounter that had left her with an obviously dislocated knee. Another regular dog walker and I stayed with Rebecca, distracting her from the pain while we waited for the ambulance crew to arrive. I would like to state for the record today just how brilliant the paramedics and hazardous area response team—otherwise known as HART—were in helping Rebecca. It was truly a privilege to observe close-up and at first hand as they put to use their vital skills and training: keeping calm, administering much-needed pain relief and eventually popping Rebecca’s knee back into place. Will the Leader of the House join me in acknowledging and thanking the wonderful people working on the frontline of the East of England ambulance service and, indeed, all ambulance services across the United Kingdom as well as all the staff who support them, from the emergency service call handlers right the way through to the trainee paramedic technicians? They support us in our hour of need, and we never know just when that hour is coming.

• 22 Apr 2025 · Road Safety and Active Travel to School · Hansard source

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  It is genuine pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) for securing this important debate. We are very short on time, so I just want to shout out a charity that has been doing excellent work for nearly 100 years. It is called Living Streets, although it used to be known by different names, and it has been encouraging walking, cycling and active travel for a really long time. I recently had the pleasure of walking around the streets of my constituency with people from the charity to see the challenges that people who are trying to walk, cycle and wheel are facing, which we have talked about, such as pavement parking and potholes not just in the roads, but on the pavements. There are pedestrian railings and barriers by pedestrian crossings that have been damaged. A car mounted and damaged a pedestrian barrier very close to where I live about two years ago, and Essex county council has failed to replace the barrier, despite being told about it many times. There is so much that we can do. We should take the example of Switzerland, where children as young as four walk to school by themselves every day. It can be done if we put the infrastructure in place.

• 27 Mar 2025 · St Patrick’s Day and Northern Irish Affairs · Hansard source

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  I thank other hon. Members and the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for what has been a really lovely debate. This is my first time participating in this debate, and I have been quite surprised by how genuinely lovely it has been and by the outpouring of love for the Irish community both across these isles and in the Republic of Ireland. That has been really lovely to hear. I was slightly concerned that we would get through the debate without mentioning anything about Irish music, so when the hon. Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) started talking about Irish music I was frankly relieved. Music was such a big part of my life when I was growing up. I discovered Irish music largely in a bar in France over many, many late nights when I lived there for a while. It went on late, or maybe early—I do not know; it was 1 o’clock or sometimes 3 o’clock in the morning when it finished. The sound of the fiddle and the joyful music was really amazing, and I have kept up that love of Irish music. I thank Ireland for giving us that music and for making it so enjoyable. I was also slightly concerned because the debate is about Northern Irish affairs as well as the wonderful things about St Patrick’s day—I also enjoy partaking of some Guinness. The hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) then spoke up and started saying something that I wanted to say. While there are some amazing things about Ireland and our relationship with it, there are also things that perhaps are not working quite as well as they could. In a debate about Northern Irish affairs, we should acknowledge that. In that spirit, without wishing to take away from some of the loveliness of this debate, I have a few things to say along those lines. I hope hon. Members will forgive me, but they are important to raise. I will start by talking about something very current; it happened earlier on this week. I pay tribute to the police and to schools for their swift and professional response to a hoax that forced nine schools in Northern Ireland to close this week. Teachers, parents and pupils can frankly do without the disruption and anxiety that such hoaxes cause. They have other things that they need to concentrate on—the importance of education must never be underestimated—so I am glad that things were able to return to normal quickly. Northern Ireland did not vote to leave the European Union. Some 56% of its population wanted to stay, yet the decisions taken by the Conservative Government in implementing Brexit have caused nothing but problems, whether along the border, inside Stormont or with trade. While Northern Ireland enjoys access to the United Kingdom’s and the European Union’s markets, the Conservatives’ Brexit deal—a botched deal, I am afraid—has been a disaster for the economy, hitting small businesses, farmers and fishers particularly badly. Although we welcomed the agreement of the Windsor framework, that deal is just a sticking plaster—one that only exists to fix problems caused by the Conservative party. What is really needed is something much more comprehensive and stronger. For Northern Ireland—as for Scotland, Wales and England—a closer relationship with our European allies will bring nothing but positives, but in our opinion, the Labour Government are failing to take a pragmatic approach to the UK’s relationship with the EU. An easy step forward would be alignment on sanitary and phytosanitary standards and securing a veterinary agreement, which the Liberal Democrats are calling for as part of our plan to fix what we believe is the UK’s broken relationship with Europe. As such, we call on the UK Government to take the following two steps: to use the provisions within the UK-EU trade agreement to secure a veterinary agreement, and to enshrine alignment with EU SPS standards in domestic law. The EU already has two veterinary agreements in place, one with New Zealand and one with Switzerland. Such agreements are not particularly novel and certainly not impossible to achieve, so it is difficult to understand what is holding the Labour Government back. Fixing our relationship with Europe is the most important way to boost our economy and accordingly provide funding to fix public services, yet Labour continues to rule out even simple steps, such as those I have outlined or, indeed, a youth mobility scheme. Such a scheme would not be a return to free movement, as the Prime Minister has suggested; it would be a way to support our young people to develop the skills and experiences they need to help grow the UK economy as a whole. Ulster University’s economic policy centre has published a report that looks at what future skills employers will need, and at the potential supply gaps. Northern Ireland needs more than 5,000 additional workers a year in order to grow its economy, so a youth mobility scheme between the UK and the EU is the perfect way to fix that problem. These proposals would go a long way towards reducing the friction caused by the Brexit deal. In a world in which the Labour Government talk endlessly about the tough choices they need to take, a youth mobility scheme feels like an open goal—we just need Labour to lace up its boots and kick the ball into it. However, we are also calling on the Government to negotiate a new trade deal with the UK with a new customs union at its heart, which would tear down red tape and boost our economy. Boosting the economies of both Northern Ireland and the whole of the UK means more revenue to fix public services that desperately need fixing, especially in the context of power sharing only having been restored just over a year ago, following two years without a functioning Executive during a cost of living crisis. The Liberal Democrats’ four-step road map provides a path for the UK to rebuild its ties of trust and trade with our European neighbours. Ultimately, Liberal Democrats want to see the UK back at the heart of Europe once more, setting the agenda from within rather than battling the constraints from without. Turning to the welfare cuts that were announced last week and deepened further yesterday, it is hard to overstate how strongly opposed Liberal Democrat Members are to those cuts and, importantly, how concerned we are about what they mean practically for those impacted. We agree that we have to bring the welfare bill down and support more people into work—it is right for people and for our economy—but the emphasis should be on supporting people into work. We will not achieve that by slashing support for disabled people, some of whom will never be able to work, while others need the personal independence payment precisely so that they can continue to work. These cuts will have a disproportionate impact on Northern Ireland, and particularly on those still living with the legacy of the troubles, including victims with catastrophic injuries and those suffering from trauma-related mental health issues. The hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) has been highly vocal on this issue, describing the cuts as “cruel and cowardly” and highlighting that balancing the books should not come at the expense of the most vulnerable. Limiting the eligibility of these people will do nothing to get more people into employment. Liberal Democrats have long said that the best way to bring down benefit spending is to fix health and social care, and fix it quickly. That involves investing in preventive health measures by properly funding mental health support, especially for young people, and reforming social care—surely that should be the priority. However, when it comes to healthcare reform in Northern Ireland, the spanner in the works remains political instability. Since devolution began in its most recent form 25 years ago, Stormont has been without a functioning Government for almost 40% of the time. It has had prolonged collapses—in 2000, from 2002 to 2007, from 2017 to 2020, and most recently from 2022 to 2024. It is the people of Northern Ireland, no matter what community they are from, who bear the brunt of a malfunctioning Government. This never-ending cycle prevents the transformative action that is necessary to get Northern Ireland’s public services and finances in order. There is also the cost of maintaining a divided society, estimated in 2016 to be at least £833 million annually. That cost stems from duplicated services, additional policing and security expenses, and missed opportunities for investment and tourism. Those unnecessary costs are a drain on the Executive’s already stretched budget; it would be far better to spend that money on improved healthcare, easing the pressures caused by the cost of living, and essential services. Earlier this year, the hon. Member for Lagan Valley held a Westminster Hall debate on the reform of political institutions in Northern Ireland, in which she outlined the ways in which reforming those institutions will allow Northern Ireland to become more prosperous. Addressing the financial burden of division could unlock substantial funding for public services. We echo her calls for an updated assessment of the societal and financial costs of division, and a commitment from all parties to tackling those costs. That would ensure that money is spent where it is needed most, and that we could deliver a more inclusive, united and integrated community for everyone. Northern Ireland cannot afford to keep paying for a divided system in which essential services struggle. In closing, I underline that the Liberal Democrats are entirely committed to fairness, sustainability, and a shared future for Northern Ireland. We call for real action on welfare support, movement back towards our European neighbours, and a focus on tackling division and addressing issues in political institutions in order to boost public spending. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches have a positive vision for a more prosperous, inclusive and forward-looking Northern Ireland—a vision that I hope all Members of this House will share, regardless of their views about how to get there.

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

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  I extend my condolences, and those of my party, to the shadow Leader of the House on the passing of his father—he sounds like an amazing man who will be missed not just by the right hon. Gentleman, but by many across the country. Yesterday, in response to a question about welfare reform from the Mother of the House, the Prime Minister highlighted the importance of getting young people into work. He said: “I think that one in eight young people not being in education or training…is a moral issue.” —[ Official Report , 19 March 2025; Vol. 764, c. 348.] I could not agree more about the importance of education and training, but I gently suggest that some of the Government’s own policies are fighting against that. Anglia Ruskin University has a campus in the heart of my Chelmsford constituency. Its relatively new medical school is doing fabulous work teaching the doctors and medical professionals of the future—members of the workforce that we desperately need in our NHS. It is doing that in new ways. When I visited ARU just a few weeks ago, I met three of the 25 apprentices taking part in the only medical doctor apprenticeship of its kind in the country. That apprenticeship is aimed at getting more young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into medicine, and it is structured in such an innovative way that those apprentices will remain in their local area to complete their foundation training. That means that they will have a familiar local support system around them as they progress. It is an excellent programme, and exactly what we need to recruit, train and retain young medical professionals. But it is a level 7 apprenticeship, and the Government are scrapping them. As this is clearly a moral issue for the Prime Minister, will the Leader of the House ask the Government to think again, and provide hope that brilliant programmes such as that can continue?

• 18 Mar 2025 · Free School Meals · Hansard source

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  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

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  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?

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

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  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?

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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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.

• 19 Dec 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  I, too, would like to wish you, Mr Speaker, all the Clerks and the House staff a very merry Christmas, and I add my personal thanks to everyone who has shown such support to the newly elected Members of Parliament in their first few months in office. This week’s White Paper on local government devolution was hotly anticipated, but there is a big problem that it did not address. Local government finances are in a desperate state, and yesterday’s finance settlement announcement does precious little to correct that. Setting aside local council tax increases, my council, Chelmsford city council, has calculated that its core spending power has increased by only £100,000 in the past decade, yet its costs have gone through the roof and it is constantly being asked to do more with less. We are in the midst of a housing crisis, and we will not be able to build 1.5 million new homes without the hard work and attention of local government’s talented planners, highways engineers and housing teams. We have a crisis in our special educational needs system and no plans in sight for reform. We will not be able to fix it without a huge effort from local government professionals working in children’s services and education. Our social care system is in crisis. We will not be able to fix that without the input of the professionals working in local government. There is plenty for local government to be focusing on, but where is the plan? Instead, the devolution directive, accompanied by local government reorganisation, will drag sparse resources away from those issues, as councils are forced to focus on new structures, on paying redundancies and on spending money on rearranging the deckchairs while services the public rely on are made to suffer. Will the Leader of the House ask the Secretary of State to explain why there does not appear to be a plan for fixing these things that are broken, before giving local government more to do?

• 12 Dec 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  This week the Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned us that local authorities’ special educational needs and disabilities deficit is currently £3.3 billion, and that without proper reform it could rise to £8 billion within three years. It is clear that, even with the deficit at £3.3 billion, the Government’s Budget announcement of £1 billion is less than a third of what local authorities need for SEND just to allow them to stand still. Meanwhile, according to analysis by Special Needs Jungle, the £740 million of capital funding announced recently is less than the average amount of similar funding over the last three years—and besides, it is capital funding, which means buildings and equipment. I am not saying that the money is not welcome, but what is the point of having more classrooms if we do not have the teachers, teaching assistants and support staff to fill them? Online reports suggest that the Education Secretary told teaching unions this week that schools would have to find money for their underwhelming 2.8% pay increase from efficiency savings in existing budgets. She suggested, I understand—I am checking my notes, because it seems a little optimistic—that schools could pay for it by switching their bank and energy providers. Will the Leader of the House ask the Education Secretary to come to the House as a matter of urgency to lay out her plans for education and special educational needs? Nothing that the Government have announced so far is going to make things better, and there are children’s lives at stake.

• 27 Nov 2024 · Finance Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for giving way. I want to ask her specifically about what she just said about special schools still getting funding. Is she aware that many parents of children with special educational needs choose to send their children to special schools even though they do not have education, health and care plans, so do not have funding through local authorities and so will still be affected by this measure? I wonder what she thinks about that.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Government and Democracy Education · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman pointed out that this is UK Parliament Week. Last week, I was delighted to visit Great Baddow high school in my constituency to speak to students who were preparing for a debate that they would be taking part in as part of UK Parliament Week. They asked me lots of wonderful questions on diverse subjects. I have often been into local schools to talk about government, but it often becomes apparent that students do not know anything at all about local government, and yet local government affects their lives on a day-to-day basis—sometimes much more than this place. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that local government, alongside central Government, should form part of this education?

• 8 Oct 2024 · SEND Provision: East of England · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) for securing this very important debate today. It is my absolute pleasure to represent the Liberal Democrats on this important issue. It is filling up my inbox, and I know that it is filling up the inboxes of other hon. Members, both here and not here today. I would like to start by expanding on an issue that has been raised in this debate, but I think a bit more information needs to be put out about it. That is the issue of tribunals and what is happening with them. We have talked a lot about how difficult it is for parents to get EHCPs for their children, but having to take a local authority to the first-tier tribunal is such an arduous task that no parent should have to go through it. They have to wait on average a year to get an appointment at a tribunal and it is costing them tens of thousands of pounds, in many instances, to get to that point in the first place. They are employing solicitors who have to battle with the local authorities, and they get to the point where they have given up and have to go to a tribunal. Then they wait their year and get their tribunal date, and then they are often faced with legally representing themselves, because they have exhausted their own resources, but they are battling against local authorities that are not just using solicitors or barristers but King’s counsel in many cases, to fight against parents who are just trying to get what their children desperately need. [Clive Efford in the Chair ] Even worse is the figure that has already come out in this debate but is worth underlining. Despite parents not being legally represented and despite local authorities using barristers and KCs to fight parents—what sort of system is it where that is happening?—local authorities lose 98% of cases. Local authorities are using public money to fight parents and losing. Then even if a judge, through the first-tier tribunal, has made an order about what the EHCP should contain—if a parent is lucky enough to even have an EHCP at that point—in cases in my constituency and, I am sure, in other constituencies, that provision is still not being delivered, even when ordered by the tribunal. We have examples of parents who have to go to judicial review to make the local authorities do what they are legally bound to do but are not doing. We have to strengthen the consequences for local authorities that are not doing what they are supposed to be doing as set out in law, because the system is not working in that situation at the moment. I ask the Minister to address that. This matters because while we are waiting for judicial review and for tribunals, the children who are affected are growing up. Children have this uncanny knack of getting older, and as they get older, they need more resources and different resources. However, a parent in my constituency said, “But Marie, when I went to the annual review, the officer at the council said to me, ‘Every time we meet, you ask for something different.’” And she said, “Well, yes, because my child has grown up, he is now older, and he needs something different from what was in the last review.” As much as we may be shocked by comments like that from officers working for local councils, there are many, many officers who want to do the very best for children, but they are stuck in such awful situations, in which they are not provided with the resources that they need. Although a lot has been said about EHCPs, the special educational needs system is not just about EHCPs. There are about 1.6 million children with special educational needs or disabilities in the east of England—we must remember that we are talking about disabilities as well, not just neurological conditions—and only 4.8% of them, or just under 48,000, have EHCPs. The rest of them are living with SEND but do not have EHCPs. We must make sure that we cater for them as well. I am conscious of the time and want to mention the funding cuts that have happened since 2010. The School Cuts website is instructive on the subject. It tells me, for example, that one high school in my constituency has received a funding cut of £1,201 per pupil since 2010. Another has seen a cut of £1,174 per pupil. It goes on and on. A special school in my constituency takes the biscuit, with a cut of £4,815 per pupil since 2010. Schools are having to do more with less, and we must address that. I want to bring out the voices of parents. Recently in my constituency I met 24 parents and grandparents who turned up to a meeting to tell me about their problems with the special educational needs system. They told me many things. They told me what could be done to make the system better in ways that would not cost the earth. We know that there are economic challenges ahead, so let us look for solutions that do not necessarily have to focus on money. One of the things the parents and grandparents raised was the transition when a child goes from primary school to secondary school. We need to make that transition easier for pupils with SEND who need that bit of extra time to settle in and understand the new system. Can we put in place a better system of transition that gives them extra time without all the other children around? The parents and grandparents told me about the blanket approach to attendance that many schools take. They told me about 100% attendance awards and how cruel they are for children with special educational needs and disabilities, who often have to attend medical appointments during school time. They can never get that 100% attendance rate and never receive the award that they see their fellow pupils getting. It is cruel and discriminatory. The parents and grandparents told me about schools that are locking toilet doors during class times so that children cannot go to the toilet. That makes it very difficult for someone who has a physical condition that means they have to go to the toilet. One of the people who came to speak to me was a special educational needs co-ordinator. They told me that it is not mandatory to have SENCOs on the senior leadership team, and how they are often teaching full time while also doing the SENCO role. They told me that they have no protected time to look after children with special educational needs, work out what is best for them and help them. In fact, parents told me that they believe SENCOs are just a name on a piece of paper for local authorities. How does all this impact children? Children are often demoralised when they leave school. A parent told me that all their child’s energy was going into school and it left nothing—no energy afterwards for anything else. One parent said, “SEND shouldn’t just be a bolt-on.” I echo what other Members have said: SEND should be an integral part of education. I could go on and on about local authorities not doing annual reviews, not replying to parents when they write to them, or sending encrypted emails that disappear after 40 days so that parents have no permanent record of what they have been told. I could talk about evidence disappearing and about dyslexia not being accepted as a diagnosis—as if that is not a thing—but I want to spend a little time talking about solutions. One solution, which could be cost-free, is being more transparent. EHCPs should be issued within 20 weeks. In my local authority, Essex, 1% are issued within 20 weeks. When parents are waiting, in week 19, for that email to drop in their inbox, anxious and stressed, after having fought so hard to get to the point where they will finally get the provision their children need, deserve and are thankfully entitled to, and it does not arrive, that is incredibly stressful. Yet the local authority knows that there is no chance of that email arriving in that time. They know that the average wait time is probably 30, 40, 50 weeks, or even longer in some cases. Tell parents that. Alleviate their suffering just a little bit. It will not fix the problem, but it is a free option. Local authorities already know the figures—make them publish them. The Liberal Democrats want to see a centralised national body for SEND, which would end the postcode lottery of funding. Lots more can be done, but there are things we can do without having to provide funds.

• 8 Oct 2024 · VAT: Independent Schools · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for giving way on that specific point, because he is relying on those schools still being open because other parents have not left. How will he address the situation in which parents of children needing that extra support rely on such schools for their special educational needs, yet those schools have closed because they cannot afford to stay open any longer?

• 4 Sept 2024 · Budget Responsibility Bill · Hansard source

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  First, I congratulate Members who have also made their maiden speeches in the Chamber this afternoon. In particular, I congratulate the hon. Member for Swindon North (Will Stone). I wonder whether his skills as a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black-belt led him to apply to be an extra in those movies that he mentioned. I will be watching out for him in the fight scenes.