Robbie Moore

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. Under the weight of surging demand, our system for handling special educational needs is crumbling. Since 2019, the number of new EHCPs year on year has almost doubled from 54,000 to 98,000. The total number of active plans has surged from 353,000 to 639,000 over the same period. Quite simply, the system in place is not able to cope with the level of demand. I hope the Minister will be able to provide some of the fundamental reform that the system urgently needs. There are two issues that need to be tackled—and in isolation, neither will work. The first is the funding and management system. With SEND falling on local councils to fund, but with councils lacking the powers to properly raise money to support increasing demand, the current situation is inevitable. Parents are waiting months, if not years, to receive the support and documentation that they need. Even if that is secured, overstretched caseworkers are making mistakes, referencing out-of-date or draft EHCPs as part of negotiations with schools and councils. SEND needs central funding, and potentially centralised management. Politicians can then have serious conversations with the public about what they are willing to fund through taxation as part of the SEND system. I know only too well what total collapse can look like: Bradford council’s children’s services have been taken into trust after the council’s total failure to fix failing services. The resulting costs are directly responsible for Bradford council’s consistent flirtation with bankruptcy. All that has a negative impact on those in my constituency with special educational needs. However, in parallel to those reforms, we must have a serious conversation about what is happening to our young people. The figures at the start of my speech are nothing short of a surge in demand. Something is happening to our young people: not only are diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism rising, but social, emotional and mental health needs are the third largest category of primary need for EHCPs. Alarmingly, speech, language and communication needs are second. What on earth is going on? I urge the Minister to take this issue incredibly seriously—she will take note of the level of presence in this Chamber.