Sarah Dyke

It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Huq, and a privilege to follow the powerful speech of the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft). I thank all the petitioners, including the 221 from Glastonbury and Somerton. As vice-chair of the f40 group, which represents the worst-funded 43 local education authorities in the country, I have spoken many times about the broken SEND system. It is adversarial, fails the most vulnerable children and puts councils on the brink of bankruptcy. Caroline from North Cadbury recently wrote to me regarding her daughter, Lucy, whom she described as an “intelligent and capable girl” who is on track to do well in her GCSEs but has been left to fall through the cracks. She told me: “The very systems that are supposed to support her are, in fact, ignoring her.” Lucy has autism and challenges with her mental health, and she has had a long wait for a diagnosis and is fighting for an EHCP. I recently spoke to the director of education at Somerset council. She told me that it costs the council £6,000 to create an EHCP and that the number of EHCP applications is up 26%. EHCPs are not one size fits all. They were developed to provide a long-term plan for relatively stable conditions, but children with social, emotional and mental health issues and behavioural challenges do not have stable conditions. Therefore, an EHCP is not always the right solution, but it is the only solution for children and young people that is presented to parents and schools. Changing an EHCP requires a full consultation process, which is arduous, expensive and time consuming—a structural barrier that is impeding common sense. It often does not matter whether a child has an EHCP if the school they attend is not equipped to provide the support outlined in the plan. We are all awaiting the publication of the Government’s schools White Paper. We need clarity, and I hope that the Minister will outline that today. If these priorities are not central to the system, we will continue to fail a generation of children. We need to recognise diversity and provide the education of the future now.