My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 112, standing in my name; to Amendment 118, tabled by my noble friend Lady Wilkins, to which I have added my name; and to Amendment 114, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Ramsbotham.
All the amendments reflect the strong view that the local offer should be strengthened to ensure that it is a statement that parents, children and young people can rely on and for which, particularly—the noble Lord, Lord Low, stressed this—the local authority can be held accountable. In order to do this, the amendments would create the minimum standards that have been called for both by the SEN sector and by the Education Select Committee.
It is right to acknowledge that in the lead up to the Bill arriving in this House, and, indeed, while it was in the other place, there was considerable debate across the sector as to whether minimum standards for the local offer were a good idea. People tried to evaluate the impact of having minimum standards or not. It is also fair to say that the broad and strong consensus now is that minimum standards are necessary to ensure reliability and accountability, otherwise there is a danger that we may end up with a postcode lottery of services. Again as the noble Lord, Lord Low said, this is not about being prescriptive with local authorities but rather ensuring that no child or young person is left behind or suffers from a poorer service because of where they live.
The Government have said, and probably will say again, that they feel that minimum standards will create a race to the bottom, that they will constrain parents’ and young people’s ability to influence the local authority to increase service provision, and that that is to be avoided. The opposite is true. Equally one could argue that if you do not set a minimum there is a risk that councils will deliberately weaken their offer and undercut other councils to avoid families moving in because of resource constraints. There is a real risk that the quality of service locally will be entirely dependent on budgets and will be reduced.
Some organisations within the sector, for example, the RNIB, NDCS and Sense, have said that in the absence of any expectations on minimum standards, local authorities with better provision could reduce it in line with poorer neighbouring provision, and that too many services—I agree with this—are already at the bottom or below what parents should reasonably expect. The Government should move on this.