It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) and the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke). The right hon. Gentleman’s final point was right: this is a flagship Bill. Just as the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 turned out to be an historic step forward and a great achievement by the then Conservative Government, so I think this flagship Bill will be a great achievement of this coalition Government. It is symbolic that the Minister’s predecessor was a Liberal Democrat and that he has carried the Bill forward.
I know that we have limited time but I want to make a few comments. I was a little sceptical at the beginning of this process, and I remain worried that we might create a level of expectation among parents greater than the Bill can deliver, especially in this time of austerity, not least for local government budgets, but my scepticism and doubt have been eroded over time. The way successive Ministers have worked and the way the Bill has taken shape gives me hope that it can be as significant for children with special educational needs as the Disability Discrimination Act was for those with disabilities.
I wish to speak to my amendments 59 to 64, but first I want to put on the record my thanks to the Minister for his close and courteous co-operation with my Committee. His actions to improve the Bill in response to our recommendations have been appreciated, and he was big enough to list the changes that the Select Committee had suggested and which the Government had adopted. Ministers should not be embarrassed—quite the contrary—to change their proposals on the basis of evidence and submissions from people in the Chamber and outside.
The Education Committee paid particularly close attention to part 3 of the Bill on children and young people in England with special educational needs. As I say, we welcomed many features of the Bill in our pre-legislative scrutiny, such as the introduction of integrated education, health and care plans and the fact that the new statutory framework for SEN will cover children and young people from birth all the way to age 25. We should not underestimate the significance of these changes. They will deliver a process for assessing and meeting children’s and young people’s individual needs that could be more coherent, comprehensive and compassionate. As always, however, the devil lies in the detail, so my Committee will closely monitor the impact of these changes in practice.
My amendments have a common theme: to ensure that nothing in the Bill reduces the centrality of parents in making decisions for their children. I am particularly concerned to ensure that local authorities do not use the Bill to seek to change the balance in their relationship with the parents of children with special educational needs. I wish the Bill to enhance, not diminish, the role, power and influence of parents. I have particular concerns about parents who have chosen to educate their children at home. From discussions with the Minister, I know it is not the Government’s intention to undermine the parental role, but unless that is made clear in the Bill, there will always be the risk that these things will creep in.
That is why I have proposed amendment 59. It would insert a new subsection (e) in clause 19 expressly requiring local authorities to have regard to the right of parents to make their own arrangements for their children, in accordance with the Education Act 1996. Without this, the possibility will remain that local authorities might try to steamroller home-educating parents, who are only trying to do the right thing by their children. I am not saying it will necessarily happen, certainly not in all cases, but it is conceivable. My amendment is intended to prevent the situation from arising, whether through sins of omission or of commission. That is to say, the aim is to prevent local authorities from forgetting that
parents have the primary responsibility for their child’s education. My amendment would assert that responsibility and the right of families to be free to educate their children independently, if they so wish.
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My concerns about unintended consequences that might be read into the Bill also prompted me to introduce amendments 60 and 61. Clause 22 of the Bill states:
“A local authority in England must exercise its functions with a view to securing that it identifies all the children and young people in its area who have or may have special educational needs.”
As worded, this might lead local authorities to believe they must insist on seeing all home-educated children to assess whether they have special educational needs. Members might think such an interpretation perverse, but I know from paying close attention to the interests of home educators over the years that perverse outcomes are not unknown when it comes to local authorities and home-educating families. The current phrasing of the Bill opens the door to it.
My amendments to clause 23 are designed to focus the authority’s attention where it might reasonably be required, rather than inadvertently implying a duty to screen all children. They would bring this clause into line with clause 24, which employs the phrase “probably has” regarding special educational needs. That is also the phrasing in existing legislation—specifically section 321 of the Education Act—where it has functioned satisfactorily.
Amendment 62 is designed to underline the importance of parents’ and young people’s roles in developing SEN arrangements with local authorities. Clause 28 lists the local partners with whom local authorities must co-operate in developing local offers. During our pre-legislative scrutiny, the Education Committee heard compelling evidence that parents should be given a clearer mandate in this part of the Bill. This sentiment was expressed by bodies such as the National Autistic Society and the National Network of Parent Carer Forums. Brian Gale of the National Deaf Children’s Society pointed out that the list of local partners overwhelmingly represented the provider interest and did too little to give a voice to children, young people and their parents. Including parent carer forums on the list would improve the situation, so I hope the Minister will give it careful consideration.
Our inquiry heard how early evidence from pilot schemes and pathfinder work indicated that where local parent carer forums had been actively involved in planning and designing schemes, the work of the pilots had been more solution-focused and more likely to gain the support and confidence of the families taking part. In the section on parent carer forums, the Department’s draft code of practice for SEN acknowledges:
“Effective parent participation can lead to a better fit between families’ needs and service provision, higher satisfaction with service delivery, reduced service costs (as long term benefits emerge), better value for money decisions and less conflict between providers and those dependent upon services.”
If the Department knows that to be true, I would urge the Minister to add parent carer forums to the list I mentioned.
My amendment 63 is similarly designed to safeguard parents’ rights. It would amend the wording of clause 42(5). It outlines the situation where a local authority or a
health commissioning body is not obliged to arrange the specified educational or health provision set out under an EHC plan. As drafted, these bodies do not have to make provision for a child if the parent has made “suitable alternative arrangements”. This “suitability” requirement implies that someone in authority will have to decide whether the parents’ arrangements are suitable. It is another feast for the lawyers. This requirement would be inherently subjective and risk introducing uncertainty, which the Government are keen to eradicate, into the system My amendment substitutes this phrasing for that of section 7 of the Education Act, which currently already requires such arrangements to be suitable for a child’s age, ability, aptitude and any special educational needs. It is a much more specific formulation and will therefore avoid the definitional pitfall.
My amendment serves a second purpose, by emphasising that clause 42(2) and (3) do not apply when parents have made appropriate arrangements and when they have chosen not to receive assistance with making provision. It is incredibly important that when parents are home educating and seeking to make suitable provision, local authorities do not opt out of offering support. It is essential that they continue to provide that support. They do not have to be in overall control of the situation or in charge before they fulfil that responsibility.
Finally, my amendment 64 is designed to prevent local authorities from washing their hands of home-educating parents. Clause 45 describes the circumstances in which a local authority may cease to maintain an EHC plan for a child or young person. My amendment would ensure that the Bill expressly provided that local authorities cannot cease to maintain an EHC plan solely because a child or young person is being educated other than at school. In the absence of an EHC plan, local authorities might argue that because a child is out of the school system, they are not under a duty to provide anything and therefore the plan does not need to be maintained. Home-educating families need to be protected against any such reading of the law.
The amendment again may be accused of taking an unduly pessimistic view of how local authorities may interpret this Bill, but local authorities have a track record of interpreting the rules in ways that best suit their own purposes. They often find home education anomalous and thus something from which they would seek to remove help. Unless protections are built into the Bill, parents of children with SEN will continue to be concerned that they may lose out to unduly officious local town hall bureaucrats. My amendment would put that right and, in doing so, would put the issue beyond all doubt.
The Minister may suggest that this is a matter for the new SEN code of practice, but experience has made it clear that it is unsafe to rely on guidance where there is ambiguity within the education itself. In education, as elsewhere, one size does not fit all and the Bill should recognise that, build it into the system and provide reassurance to thousands of young people and their parents.
If I may, I will briefly touch on a couple of other issues. I welcome new clause 8 and congratulate the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr Sanders) on introducing it. Requiring schools to have a robust policy in place to safeguard and support children with health conditions such as asthma and diabetes would represent a positive
step forward. Many schools have such a policy in place independently but too many do not. Last week, my office met the Crawforth family from my constituency. Their son suffers from type 1 diabetes. He is one of 29,000 children in the UK who live with the condition, yet a study by Diabetes UK in 2009 found that in only 29% of cases did school staff help with insulin injections. In 47 % of cases, someone other than a member of school staff helps the young person with blood glucose testing, including parents in 42% f these cases.