Academies Bill [HL]

My Lords, this has been mentioned on a number of occasions and I want to intervene very briefly. In the letter that the Minister sent to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, on 2 July 2010, he made quite clear the division of funding between what was going to be kept centrally and what was going to be distributed. Included in the funding to be kept centrally were educational psychology services; SEN administration, assessment and co-ordination, monitoring of SEN provision, and SEN transport. Included in funding to be distributed to the academies as a share of local authority funding was the funding retained from the schools’ budget for centrally provided SEN support services. This is the core of the issue we are discussing today. Services for deaf children, for blind children, and so forth, are part of these centrally provided support services. The problem is that if this share is taken away from the centre, there is not enough money left at the centre to provide these services adequately. The Minister has so far not been able to give us assurances that there will be adequate provision, and this is the core of the case that many of us are worried about. I look forward to hearing what the Minister says today.