My Lords, I also support the gist of the amendments but I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton. I knew that local authorities would have genuine concerns. However, I really want to support the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, because I thought that that was a good way forward.
My instinct is that there needs to be some monitoring or inspection, or some notion of a common format or minimum standards. I say that because, looking back, I find it difficult to think of a new service being introduced that has not had that infrastructure under it, at least to begin with. I am concerned about just plonking it out there in the system with no monitoring, no inspection and no minimum standards. I am not saying that local authorities will deliberately set out not to provide the service, but I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, would have to admit that in the present circumstances, when local authorities have really tough spending decisions to make, those who have no legal or regulatory protection might end up
being at the end of the list when it comes to the decisions that local authorities take on expenditure. Therefore, the amendments would offer that protection.
With this new system, I think that the whole Bill could fall if parents did not quickly have confidence in the offer. That is my concern. This service is central and new. It is a new idea, and it has to retain the confidence of the people who use it. I think that there is an added complication, as has already been mentioned, that these are busy people who are already fighting other bits of the system. It is also not something that affects every citizen. This is a small and particular group of people. It has not got the voice of the nation behind it. It is not like “all our schools”, “all our universities” or “all our elderly care people”, it is a very small group of people who will have to fight the good fight. So my starting point is that I am not entirely confident that there is enough in the system at the moment to guarantee that it will grow into a strong part of special educational needs protection.
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Now, I am prepared to say that there might be better ways of doing this. I like the idea of an Ofsted inspection or some other kind of inspection. It should not be beyond our wit, with so much experience of inspection, to produce something that does not squeeze the innovation and flexibility out of the system. This issue must be raised to the top and Ministers and Government ought to be able to find some ways of creating incentives to make that happen.
Three things need to happen. First, there must be a clear message to parents that there will be a voice speaking on their behalf to make sure that the offer is of a good quality. Secondly, there must be incentives to stop people going below the minimum standards, because if they are not there, they will. This must be matched by the third point—incentivising good, innovative and flexible offers that will be the best that they can be. That may come from inspections picking out the best examples so that other people can learn from them. I do not know. That is why I think that the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, is very good.
I fear that if we let this legislation go through with no underpinning in these early years, it will be very difficult to backtrack because parents will have lost confidence in it. I do not think that you get a second go at this. That is my message to the Ministers. It may take the form of an inspection framework or minimum standards—both are real runners and could do the job. However, I am not averse to saying that there might be something else that could accommodate the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton. Finally, I strongly believe that it ought not to be nothing: that would not be fair to the offer as it would not give it the best chance to succeed.