Olly Glover

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I join my colleagues in commending my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman) on securing a debate on this important topic. I agree that it is good to see so many people here from the Labour and Liberal Democrat Benches but, as they say on Radio 4, it creates a challenge of delivering my remarks in just a minute. According to Oxfordshire county council, in the last 10 years in the county of my constituency the number of EHCPs has doubled from 3,000 to 7,000. The deficit of high-needs funding in Oxfordshire is estimated at £21.3 million, but that is in the wider national context of an estimated £3.16 billion deficit in England. Although the £1 billion extra allocated by the Chancellor in the Budget is welcome, it clearly does not go far enough. I will use the example of St Blaise primary school in Milton to show the wider context of some of these problems. The school was bitterly disappointed to hear that it could not access mental health support teams, but, in an example of the postcode lottery, children just a few minutes up the A34 are able to access that support. The child and adult mental health waiting list is ever growing and feels out of reach, making it difficult to provide wider support for children. I join my colleagues in calling on the Government to tackle the crisis in SEND funding by giving local authorities extra funding. Please do that to support our children, our parents, our teachers and their assistants.