My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 30 and 31 standing in my name and in the name of my noble friend Lady Hughes of Stretford and also to Amendment 33D standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Low, to which my noble friend Lady Hughes of Stretford has added her name. We also add our support to the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and to the arguments she eloquently made in proposing it. There is a compelling case for local authorities to be expected to take action where education and care provision is judged to be insufficient and it is important that we have adequate means to address that.
Our amendments relate to Clause 30, which introduces the concept of the local offer and places a duty on local authorities to publish the local offer for children and young people with special educational needs, to keep it under review and to revise it periodically. Obviously, we welcome the principle of the local offer, as does most of the sector, but our concern is to make the local offer tangible, accessible and responsive. One concern which our amendments seek to address is that the wording of subsection (1)(a) requires the local authority to set out in the local offer only what it “expects to be available”. We believe that this wording is ambiguous and could be used by local authorities to duck out of their responsibilities to deliver a quality package of services.
Parents, children and young people have expectations that the local offer will be an improvement on what has gone before, but, understandably, they want a more formal understanding with the local authority about the service that they can rely on being provided. Many parents have spent their lives fighting for basic
support for their children and are naturally suspicious of wish lists. We believe that our amendments to replace “expects to be available” with “which is available” will give those parents the added guarantees they desperately need.
When this was discussed in Grand Committee the Minister said:
“The local offer should enable local people to see what services are available, how they can be accessed, who provides them and where to go if things do not work out”.—[Official Report, 30/10/13; col. GC 612.]
We agree with that statement. That is what we are all trying to achieve and we believe that our wording is a better reflection of this aspiration than the current wording in the Bill. In Grand Committee the Minister also made the point that families need to be informed about,
“what provision the local authority expects to become available in the near future, possibly from new innovative practices”.—[Official Report, 30/10/13; col. GC 613.]
We very much welcome a culture of innovation in this sector and families will, of course, be interested in being kept informed of newly developing services. This should all be part of a greater commitment to information sharing and dialogue between families and the local authority. However, information about innovation and good practice is very different from the function of the local offer, which should be about what is available to families and what they can access now with some degree of certainty.
The Minister also drew our attention to the draft code of practice, where more detail is provided. Again, it is useful to have this additional information for parents. However, it does not answer our central concern about the status of the local offer and the extent to which it can be relied on. In fact, while the draft code of practice contains good supplementary guidance, it continues to use the phrase that the local authority should provide information about services which it “expects to be available”. Also, as we have debated before, it is important to have the fundamental principles set out in the Bill and we believe that this is a key feature which will give parents, children and young people confidence in services for the future. This is more than an argument about semantics. Our amendment will help to make the local offer a real, living commitment that will help to make the new proposals a success.
My noble friend Lady Hughes of Stretford has also added her name to Amendment 33D standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Low, who, I am sure, will speak on it shortly. The amendment seeks to give families confidence in the quality of the local offer by requiring the Secretary of State to lay regulations specifying the standards and quality of education, health and social care provision which local authorities must meet. These regulations would need to be approved by both Houses. In addition, it would require the Secretary of State to issue guidance on how to meet the regulations and publish information on the regulations on the department’s website. The amendment addresses the continuing concern in the sector that services across the UK will be patchy and that a postcode lottery of services will develop. Without the amendment, families will be at the mercy of local authority budgets, with all the uncertainty of provision that already occurs as a result of budget cuts, and so what starts
out as a promising new regime of integrated services may quickly descend into a fight to retain any kind of minimum provision. There is the added challenge that there is little incentive for local authorities to develop high-quality provision as it will simply attract clients from other areas, letting the poorer providers off the hook.
Our amendment also addresses the knowledge gap that arises from Clause 21(1)(a), which defines SEN provision in a local area as being relative to all mainstream schools in England. However, without minimum national standards, all a local authority can do is define the offer relative to its own local provision. When we debated this issue in Grand Committee we explored whether setting minimum standards of provision might be the answer, but we accept the limitations of this solution, which is the danger that minimum standards might become the norm. Therefore, our new amendment seeks to address this problem in a different way, allowing scope for services to be different around the UK to meet local and individual needs but nevertheless requiring that they meet overall quality standard benchmarks.
These standards could provide the framework for the Ofsted and CQC inspections currently being considered by the Government and would build on the recommendations of the Ofsted study into how this can be delivered most effectively which is currently taking place. Perhaps the Minister can update us on progress in developing this suggested framework of standards. They would also be a measure against which parents could judge the acceptability of local services if they wish to challenge the provision or ultimately appeal. Therefore, this amendment is the final piece of the jigsaw which will give parents confidence in the new provision and guarantee the success of the new regime, the principles of which, as I have said, we all support.
Finally, I would like to say a few words on the government amendment in this group. In Grand Committee we raised the concern, shared by many, that the obligation on local authorities to publish comments on the local offer from parents, children and young people did not sufficiently hold them to account or require them to be responsive to the views expressed. Giving a more powerful voice to those, often isolated, individuals struggling to access services ought to be at the heart of these improvements. That is why we welcome the government amendment, which would require local authorities to publish the action they intend to take in response to the comments received. However, picking up on the theme of the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, there is a further stage to be addressed if we are serious about making change, which is that the local authority should also be required to work with those who have been consulted to produce an action plan to address any identified failings.
It would be helpful if the Minister could explain how this additional challenge will be addressed. It may be that the requirements could be included in the regulations, but we need to be assured before we make a final decision today that the Government are addressing this issue and the concerns raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe.