Catherine McKinnell

My hon. Friend raises an important point. The additional recognition of special educational needs and disabilities has highlighted not only the extent of the challenge to ensure the best offer for all children, including those with SEND, but that we should give every child the best education, regardless of their special educational needs and disabilities. Our ability to identify aids us to have the infrastructure and support in place to ensure that every child has the best start in life. I will talk in more detail about how we do that, as many hon. Members have asked. We have reached the point of recognising the challenge, although the surprising contribution of the Conservative Front Bencher, the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford), was a caveat to that. In the context of this debate, where we recognise that there is a shared challenge, his contribution seemed to skip from 2014 to the present day, as though the previous 10 years had not happened. It bore no recognition of that, despite his former Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan, acknowledging that the system presided over in the10 years prior to 2024 was “lose, lose, lose”. I agree that we should not be arguing about who created the challenges; we should be getting down and resolving the challenges together. I did not think that the hon. Gentleman’s contribution was respectful of the positive contributions that other Members from both sides of the House had made.