Dr Al Pinkerton

I thank the 125,000 petitioners, some of whom are in the Chamber today or who were in Parliament Square earlier, for bringing this issue to the House. In a recent survey, more than 70% of respondents described SEND services in Surrey as poor or very poor. The now former chair of Surrey’s children’s services select committee stated that the current system should be “broken up”, arguing that it is too large to effectively meet the needs of the families that it is meant to support. She criticised the lack of accountability to elected councillors and described the service as a “cold, uncaring bureaucracy”, more focused on preserving its own structure than on prioritising the wellbeing of children. Perhaps it is little surprise, then, that the senior leaders at Surrey county council claimed in a meeting with MPs late last year that “Surrey does not have a SEND issue” at all—what it has are parents who are “too articulate”. How many more lives need to be put at risk by Surrey county council, by that kind of gaslighting and parent blaming? The hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) raised the funding of specialist free schools, three of which are in Surrey and one of which, Lakeside school, is supposed to be in my constituency—forgive me, Chair; I did not realise the time.