Speeches by McKinnell.

“There are inspection systems in place. I understand we are coming to accountability, but there are processes in place for holding schools to account through the Ofsted inspection system. There are processes for holding local authorities to account through the CQC Ofsted inspections as to how the support for children wi…”

“Yes, we want to change that. We do not want it to be the case that parents are left fighting for their child’s education or that children are left without the education support that they should have within a system. It should not be that that must be fought for. It should be available as part of the system. If you look…”

“We know that effective early identification and intervention is critical to improving the outcomes for children, and that is what we are focused on delivering, moving away from a system that is reliant on labels, plans and diagnoses before the support that is clearly needed materialises. That means a system that can ac…”

“Sorry, do you mind just asking the question again?”

“We are very keen to change the system so that it works for children and young people.”

“We are very clear that we will protect existing provision that is working for children and young people, but we want to change the system to make it work for all children and young people. That is what we are very focused on delivering.”

“We are not looking to change the existing provision that is working for children, but obviously the system—”

“We have been very clear that we are not going to remove effective current provision that is working for children and young people.”

“We have not made any decisions yet about future changes on education, health and care plans. The settlement from the spending review means that we can make a significant investment in the provision available for SEND pupils in mainstream schools, as well as protecting the provision that is currently in place. To clarif…”

“Do you want to come in here, Alison?”

“We know that local authorities have seen a significant increase in the number of assessment requests for education, health and care plans. This is contributing to the difficulty of ensuring that children and young people receive the support that they need quickly, because we need to make sure that the services are deli…”

“As I said, some of this is already there but it needs to become much more consistent in the way that it is delivered across the country. We are looking at a whole range of areas to support schools to provide a much stronger offer and to meet the needs of the children within cohorts. I have mentioned a few. Since taking…”

“Okay, in broad terms, the point that I hope should be reassuring for parents—and that is an important part of this conversation—is that good already exists, what works already exists and it is already evident in the system. Since coming into Government last July, the first thing we did was restructure the Department fo…”

“No, I think it is the opposite. We desperately need to move away from this adversarial system where parents feel they need to fight for every bit of their child’s education and for their child to get the education they deserve. We feel that the system, as it should for any child—our focus is on all children getting an …”

“I should have said thank you very much for having me here today. I know how hard you have all been working as a Committee on the challenges facing the SEND system and investigating that. I recognise that you are all here because you care profoundly about the children and young people with special educational needs and …”

“That is a question that covers probably everything that we will discuss throughout this session, so I am conscious of that.”

“You touch on the really challenging point that we are at with confidence of parents in the system. We know that it is not where it should be. Many parents and families are having to fight really hard for their child’s education and we want to change that completely. We want to build a system that restores confidence. W…”

“Every child deserves the opportunity to achieve and thrive in education. That is why this Government have—as Labour Governments always do—prioritised education, with the Department’s budget for day-to-day cash spending increasing by almost £6 billion compared with the last financial year. Within that, we have increased…”

“My hon. Friend makes a really important point, and I was about to respond to a question that she raised in her very good contribution to this debate. We will set out the details of our approach to SEND reform in a schools White Paper, which we intend to publish in the autumn. We recognise that we need to support mainst…”

“indicated dissent.”