Academies Bill [Lords]

It is a pleasure to participate in the debate. It was also a pleasure to hear the maiden speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) and for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe). Both spoke in a fine fashion, and they will be an adornment to not only their constituencies but the House. I want to start on the most positive note that I can. I think that we all agree that the current system for dealing with special educational needs is not appropriate. The—I used the word yesterday—““pushiest”” parents, certainly the most articulate, are best able to get their children statemented and their needs recognised. That is the current system, and people realise that it is not good enough. We heard from the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), in another excellent contribution based on her years of experience, her explanation of the difficulties. The current system is broken. The Minister has promised a Green Paper in the autumn to look at the whole subject of special educational needs. At that time, I hope that the House will have more time to reflect on, consider and possibly improve the policy. Rushing policy making does not always help, particularly when dealing with low incidence SEN or something that is on the margins of the mainstream. Although there are so many children with SEN, it remains to be tackled. I do not support amendment 71, but I think that it may be looking for an explanation from the Minister of how the system will work. The hon. Member for North West Durham, who will be an excellent Member of the House and an excellent member of the Select Committee, talked about priorities. That brings me to my favourite topic when dealing with public service reform: incentives. Too often, we reorganise the system without fully understanding the incentives that are in place for the various players in it. We deserve an explanation from the Minister. Given his ability, I know that we will get it. I want to hear how precisely the incentives will work for schools that at times resist parents who are trying to do the best for their children, to the extent that only parents with the nous, money and self-confidence can challenge them and get their child statemented. What happens to the others? I want to hear how the system will work so that, following the changes, it does not become worse. There is nothing obvious in the Bill to make it worse, but I want a cohesive narrative from the Minister about how the system will be better even before the Green Paper is produced. I want to be assured that it cannot possibly get worse. We cannot have more parents in that position. People come to us, as constituency MPs, about all sorts of topics. I can think of many constituents who are particularly articulate, well educated and well placed, and who have relatives and friends in good positions, yet they are still endlessly and unjustly frustrated by a system that can often seem unbelievably resistant to doing the right thing. Whenever I meet those people and try to help them—sometimes successfully, sometimes not—I reflect on the people who do not have their self-confidence, education and ability. It is therefore incumbent on us to ensure that legislation creates something that will be more just, not less. We need to hear that from the Minister, as I know we will. I wish we had more time to reflect on the Bill, and that members of the Education Committee from both sides of the House and others were in a better position to improve the Bill, but we are where we are. The hon. Member for North West Durham talked about the hard-end drift—perhaps it will be called the ““Glass drift””—and said that even when money goes in, it somehow drifts away. That must be because of the pressures within the system: the way human beings work—those who do the jobs that she did in the past, parents and people in schools—leads to money not going where people want it to go. It is therefore not enough for Ministers to wish the right outcomes—all hon. Members wish the right outcomes. Rather, they must show that they understand the engineering of the system sufficiently to deliver them. We are dealing with the most vulnerable of our children, and we cannot have an already bad situation made worse inadvertently by Ministers in a hurry who do not have sufficient explanations. I am sure that that is not the case, but I would hate to think it was. We should not be blinded by the desire to appear to be acting if we are doing the wrong thing.