Munira Wilson MP: speeches

Speeches

• 24 Mar 2025 · Disruption at Heathrow · Hansard source

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  I again urge the Secretary of State not to divorce the question of expansion from what has happened here. Surely what this incident, crippling Europe’s busiest airport, shows us is that we need a better Heathrow, not a bigger Heathrow. We need to focus on the infrastructure in and around Heathrow, to improve resilience, security and the passenger experience. While a third runway may not increase the likelihood of such an incident, the impact of such an incident will be all the greater if she continues to put all our aviation eggs in one basket.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Free School Meals · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I hope you will forgive my heckling earlier—I could not resist when Sunday’s football match was mentioned. I am married to a proud Geordie and Newcastle United fan, and it was a day of high emotion in the Wilson household—although I am a Londoner and therefore a Spurs fan., but the less said about that, the better. I hope the Chair will indulge my teasing the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) on securing this important debate, especially as we head into the second day on Report on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. We will be talking about free school meals and breakfast clubs later. I am incredibly proud that the Liberal Democrats have a very strong record of championing and delivering free school meals. Let us not forget that universal infant free school meals were delivered as a result of Liberal Democrat efforts in the coalition Government. If not for our presence, it is clear that they would not have happened—Labour Members have previously put that on the record. I am proud to continue my party’s campaign to ensure that more children benefit from free school meals. Frankly, as many hon. Members have said, in this day and age, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, we should not have to campaign on this issue. It is shocking that the Food Foundation has reported that one in five schools runs a food bank, and that as of January 2025, 18% of households with children live in food insecurity, meaning that family members are skipping meals or having smaller meals because they simply cannot afford to put enough food on the table. I want to make the case for why more children should receive free school meals, both through the eligibility threshold and auto-enrolment, and for ensuring that is properly funded, given the challenges our schools face. Why are free school meals so great? Well, as my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) powerfully outlined, we know that well-fed children have better educational outcomes; children who took part in universal primary free school meal pilots in east London and Durham achieved on average two months more progress in their SATs. We also know that children’s concentration and behaviour improve. Behaviour is a real challenge at the moment for teachers up and down the country. We know that children end up eating healthier, because packed lunches tend to have more calories from fat, as opposed to carbs and other sources of calories, and they are higher in sodium and sugar. We know that free school meals help parents to save time and money—on average £10 per week—and, as we have heard from the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby and my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester, analysis by that well-known left-wing think-tank PricewaterhouseCoopers shows there is a huge economic benefit: for every £1 invested, there is £1.38 return. Why do we need more children to be eligible for free school meals? We know from the Child Poverty Action Group that some 900,000 children living in poverty are currently missing out on free school meals. The threshold that is used at the moment—£7,400 of family income—is shockingly low. It was last uprated in 2018; we are now in 2025, and we all know about the inflationary pressures and the cost of living crisis that we have faced. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones), who is no longer in his place, mentioned in his intervention, about a million children are set to lose out on free school meals as a result of the migration of legacy benefits to universal credit. The temporary extension to the arrangements is due to expire at the end of this month. I really hope that Ministers will take urgent action on that, because we cannot afford to see yet more children losing out on free school meals. I recognise that I happen to represent a relatively affluent constituency, but that does not mean that there is no poverty there; in fact, it is often in more affluent constituencies that pockets of poverty tend to be hidden and overlooked. I was moved to tears a while back when a mother came to see me at my surgery. She had fled an abusive relationship and, as a result of the domestic abuse she had suffered, she was on mental health medication. She told me, “I have had to forgo my medication so that I can use the money I would have spent on a prescription to enable my daughter to have lunch when she goes to college.” Those are the sorts of decisions, dilemmas and choices that families up and down the country are having to face so that children and young people are well fed and can focus on their studies. That cannot be right. I support the ambition, which a number of hon. Friends and other hon. Members have set out, of offering free school meals for all primary school children, but the Liberal Democrats recognise that money is tight at the moment. Therefore, extending free school meals to all primary school children is probably unachievable at the moment, and we should take a more targeted approach. That is why we are strongly committed to delivering the recommendation that Henry Dimbleby made to the last Conservative Government in his food strategy that the eligibility threshold for free school meals should be increased to £20,000, for children in both primary and secondary school. Let us remember that hunger does not end at the age of 11 and, where we have scarce resources, target them at the most needy children and young people at both primary and secondary. Welcome though the breakfast clubs are, we have heard time and again, not least from the children’s charities that gave evidence to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee, that there are concerns that the most needy children will miss out and not take up the breakfast club offer. Even with the current low eligibility threshold for free school meals, far too many children are missing out, but, shockingly, we do not know how many are missing out, because the last time the Government assessed how many children who were entitled to free school meals were actually taking them up was 2013—12 years ago. We know that at that point 11% of children eligible for free schools meals were missing out. Based on current numbers, the Liberal Democrats estimate that around 230,000 eligible children are missing out today. In a report published last week, the Education Policy Institute notes that those least likely to register are younger primary children, typically from the most deprived local authority areas. Although there are universal infant free school meals, it is still really important that parents register if their child might be eligible, because, as we have heard, that brings with it pupil premium funding for our schools. I beg the Minister to look seriously at auto-enrolment. Last week, the House considered a private Member’s Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Crawley (Peter Lamb)—a Labour Member—that would introduce auto-enrolment. The Education Committee has strongly recommended auto-enrolment, and at least two amendments on it, including a Liberal Democrat one, have been tabled to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and will be debated this afternoon. In Liberal Democrat-led Durham county council this academic year, as a result of auto-enrolment, 2,500 more children are getting a free school meal and £3 million of pupil premium funding—money to help support our most deprived children to learn and thrive in their schools—has been delivered to schools in Durham. In responding to Friday’s debate on the private Member’s Bill, the Minister said that he was talking to colleagues in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology about data sharing to enable more auto-enrolment at local authority level, but children cannot afford to wait. There are all sorts of challenges with data sharing, but this can be done nationally. If the Government are going to persist with the changeover from legacy benefits to universal credit, with more children missing out on free school meals as a result, this is one mitigation they can take right now. Before I finish, I want to touch on funding. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh and my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett), who is no longer in her place, touched on the fact that we have to fund free school meals properly where children are eligible for them. I welcome the Government’s recent uplift in funding for universal infant free school meals, but it has increased by only 28p, or 12%, since the Liberal Democrats introduced the universal infant free school meal policy in 2014—at that point it was funded at £2.30 per pupil per meal; it is now £2.58—since when food prices have increased by 29%. For most of that time, the funding stayed static. In the last Parliament, I and many other hon. Members campaigned hard for an uplift in per-meal funding. I was very pleased when Nadhim Zahawi finally moved a little bit on that, but the funding is still lagging behind inflation. Schools are having to find cost savings in other budgets to fund universal infant free school meals, which they have to deliver by law. As a London MP, before the Mayor of London introduced free school meals for all primary pupils, I heard from many of my primary schools that they were charging juniors more per meal in order to subsidise infant meals, because the Government were not giving them the requisite funding. If we want high-quality, nutritional meals for our children, they need to be funded properly. That is a very important lesson to learn as breakfast clubs are rolled out. As my hon. Friends the Members for Eastleigh and for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) have pointed out, there are alarming stories of schools picking up costs of between 60p and 80p per breakfast. That is just not sustainable. Schools do not have the extra money to subsidise breakfast clubs. We need breakfasts that have nutritional value. I asked in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee whether breakfast club breakfasts will consist of just a piece of toast and a glass of water, or whether they will actually be nutritionally valuable for children. We know that there are big logistical challenges for small schools of delivering breakfast clubs. My hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) mentioned children who cannot get to school in time, particularly those in temporary accommodation. Families in temporary accommodation travel from Croydon, Slough and further afield to Twickenham, and some spend two hours each way travelling. Those are the children who most need a breakfast, and they are the most likely to miss breakfast club. In conclusion, providing a hot, healthy meal in the middle of the day for every child in poverty is the right thing to do both morally and economically. The Government have the opportunity to do the right thing today by supporting new clause 7 tabled to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill by me and my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh. If they are serious about spreading opportunity—they tell us most weeks that they are—they have the chance to step up today to improve educational outcomes for the most disadvantaged, to boost their health and nutrition, and to help every child, no matter their background. If the Minister wants to deliver on that mission, I hope to see Labour Members marching through the right Division Lobby tonight when we call a vote on new clause 7 to raise the eligibility threshold for free school meals and auto-enrol every child that meets it.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I chose my words carefully. I talked about the past decade, during which the Liberal Democrats were not in government. The Conservatives had seven or eight Education Secretaries in that period. That carousel of constant change demonstrates how little those Education Secretaries valued education. The state of our school buildings, and of our special educational needs and disabilities system, tells us all we need to know about how much the Tories value education.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I am shocked, because I was about to come to that as a possible solution to staying within the price cap. Apparently that will not be allowed either—

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. In Committee, the Minister said that a cost cap, rather than an item cap, would be too complex and risked reducing choice for parents by increasing schools’ reliance on specific suppliers. She also suggested that there would be regional variation in uniform pricing. Again, having tabled a PQ, it is clear that there has been no analysis by the Government to show regional variation in uniform prices. I was going to suggest that schools that wanted more branding on items under a cost cap could sew or stick logos on plain jumpers and other items bought cheaply in supermarkets. I believe the Government want parents to have choice. My suggestion would give parents the choice of going to a well-known supermarket brand and then applying the school logo. I am shocked to hear about the answer to the PQ tabled by the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), and I will have a look at it afterwards. Our amendment 1 would put pounds and pennies back into parents’ pockets and avoid top-down meddling from Whitehall on school uniform policy. Also on school uniforms, new clause 12 concerns a simple matter of fairness. The zero rate of VAT applies only on clothing for children up to the age of 14, and parents have to pay VAT on school uniforms for children who are larger or over the age of 14. In Committee, the Minister cited the cost to the Exchequer of making the change, but if the Government’s stated aim is to bring down uniform prices, I humbly suggest that she presses the Chancellor to look at this amendment, because it is a simple change to make. Turning to special needs, as I said at the outset, this is probably the biggest burning priority for the school leaders I speak to up and down the country. It certainly is across this House, given the number of Members involved in SEND debates. New clause 10 in my name would establish a new dedicated national body for SEND, which would fund high-needs provision and ensure that children with particularly complex needs receive tailored support. With high-needs spending having tripled since 2015 and, as the Minister herself pointed out, educational outcomes for SEND pupils remaining stagnant, we need to reform the system. I know she is busy working on this, but a national body would help reduce the postcode lottery for those with the highest needs. Indeed, a growing body of experts in the sector are starting to suggest that a national body could gather evidence on the efficacy of various SEND interventions. Yesterday I said it was surprising that a Bill so entitled had little content on wellbeing. Given the huge and growing mental health crisis among our children and young people, new clause 9 in my name would place a duty on school governing bodies to ensure that every school in England, whether primary or secondary, has a dedicated mental health practitioner on site. The Government have repeatedly said they are committed to providing mental health support in every school, but it was clear when I pressed the Minister in the Chamber during a debate last Thursday that the support the Government are committed to providing will certainly not be the equivalent of a full-time person in every school. Mental health support teams, which the Government are looking to expand, do great work but are spread far too thinly. Our children and our schools are crying out for more dedicated mental health professional time. Let me turn to the issue of academy schools. I fear that the Government are mostly trying to fix a problem that does not really exist, rather than focusing on the real challenges in education. My biggest concern here is that Ministers are putting the cart before the horse by writing into legislation that all schools must follow a curriculum of which we do not yet know the content because it is under review. New clause 51 in my name would ensure that we have a core common curriculum with local flexibility built in. New clause 52 would ensure parliamentary oversight, given that we do not know the results of the ongoing review. Although we Liberal Democrats have always maintained that the automatic academy order is not a silver bullet for turning around failing schools, until such a time as Ofsted and Government have settled on a swift and robust new accountability and inspection regime to ensure high standards in all our schools, removing the automatic academy order for schools that are causing concern is certainly very risky. Amendments 223 and 225 in my name would ensure parliamentary oversight and attempt to mitigate some of those risks. Let me turn to home education. On Second Reading, I stated that we Liberal Democrats strongly support a register of children not in school to ensure that vulnerable children do not disappear from the system. We also strongly support the right of parents to choose to home educate where that is the best option for their child. However, in evidence to the Bill Committee, even the Association of Directors of Children’s Services was circumspect about the amount of information that parents will be expected to supply, as set out in clause 26. That level of detail risks becoming intrusive and unnecessary. Ministers must think again. New clause 48 calls for, at the very least, a review of the register’s impact on home educators to be carried out within six months, to ensure that only reporting requirements that are strictly necessary for safeguarding purposes are retained. Amendment 224 would remove the requirement for carers of children in special schools to secure local authority consent to be home educated. New clause 53 would ensure that home-educated children are not excluded from national examinations because of financial or capacity constraints.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  A number of measures in part 2 of this Bill are to be welcomed. However, after a decade of neglect by the Conservatives, I want to ask Ministers this: when our schools are crumbling, when we cannot find specialist teachers, when special needs provision is in crisis and when we have a huge persistent absence problem, why have the Government chosen to tinker with academies and governance arrangements as their priority education policy? The one strong message coming through from education leaders, including those who have no ideological axe to grind, is that the way that the Government have gone about part 2 of the Bill shows a lack of coherent vision for the school system, with no White Paper and no consultation with those on the frontline or in leadership positions across the sector. I turn to some of the new clauses tabled in my name. With all the pressures on family finances, new clause 7 would ensure that free school meals were available to children from households earning less than £20,000 per year and automatically enrol eligible children into this provision. Liberal Democrats have long believed that this is an effective, targeted intervention that would help children in poverty at both primary and secondary school to concentrate, to learn and to thrive. New clause 54 would require the Secretary of State to find out exactly how many children were eligible for, but not claiming, free school meals or were not registered for pupil premium funding. It beggars belief that, as spelled out in recent answers to parliamentary questions that I have submitted, the Government are flying blind on this issue, with the last proper study of uptake dating back to 2013. New clause 54 would require regular reviews of free school meal uptake. As we discussed at length this morning in Westminster Hall, and as the Chair of the Education Committee pointed out, an estimated 230,000 eligible children are missing out on a free school meal. Where local authorities auto-enrol children into free school meals, it makes a real difference. In Liberal Democrat-led Durham, 2,500 additional children now benefit from a hot lunch, and their schools benefit from an additional £3 million in pupil premium funding. In Committee, the Minister confirmed the Government’s intention to improve uptake by looking at auto-enrolment and data sharing between Departments. However, his suggestion that locally led efforts were more likely to meet the needs of local communities risks patchy action across the country. We believe that this requires a national response, and we therefore strongly urge the Government to look at auto-enrolment as well as increasing the eligibility threshold, to ensure that we are feeding some of our poorest pupils, whether they are at primary or secondary school. Staying on the theme of the cost of living pressures on families, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches strongly support the objective of bringing down the cost of school uniforms for hard-pressed families up and down the country. However, we remain concerned that the Bill as drafted, in setting a maximum number of branded uniform items, is highly prescriptive for schools and will not actually rein in the costs of those items. As the Chair of the Select Committee has just pointed out, there is nothing to prevent items costing £100 or more each. Furthermore, an answer to a parliamentary question that I tabled stated that, on average, girls’ uniforms cost £25 to £30 more than boys’ uniforms. If we want to tackle these inequalities, the best thing to do is to support our amendment 1. I want to put on record my thanks to the Clerks, because we picked up a drafting error in our amendment 1. The online version is correct, but the printed version is incorrect. Our amendment 1 actually amends clause 24 and proposes a monetary cap, rather than a cap on the number of items. That would be reviewed and updated in line with inflation through secondary legislation every year. It would also drive down costs as suppliers would have to compete for school contracts.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman expresses concerns that those of us on the Bill Committee found in the written evidence we received from families who home educate. My inbox certainly has such correspondence from home educators in my constituency. There is a real fear that this legislation, which is seeking to safeguard children who go missing from education, will over-police home educators, most of whom are doing a great job. In fact, a lot of them home educate their children not because they want to but because they feel forced to. That comes back to what I was saying about the crisis in our special needs system, and the fact that so much special needs provision just does not meet the needs of children, so parents give up work to be able to home educate their child. By virtue of their children’s needs, parents tend to be much more flexible in how they home educate. The very onerous reporting mechanisms will interfere with the flexibility that parents need to provide to their children. In conclusion, I say respectfully to Ministers that part 2 of the Bill is a bit of a muddle, because the second half of it was bolted on to some well-trailed measures that largely have cross-party support. I hope Ministers have heard the strength of concern from school leaders about the unintended consequences of some of their measures. If they are serious about helping families with the cost pressures they face, I trust they will listen to cross-party calls on free school meals, whether that is introducing auto-enrolment or raising the eligibility threshold, as well as to the more effective approach to managing the cost of school uniforms that I have set out.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  Yes, we have been in touch with the Clerks, who have corrected the amendment online. The printed version is incorrect, but in the online version amendment 1 amends clause 24 instead of clause 23.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  The data in the book to which the right hon. and learned Lady has referred is alarming. Last week in Hampton, in my constituency, the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign organised a public meeting with local parents. It was pretty full, and the data shared there was also extremely alarming. I attended as both a parent and the local Member of Parliament, and I am afraid I came away feeling even less of a liberal than before I went in, and slightly more authoritarian. However, that was mainly because allowing our children to grow up with the freedom of being away from such a toxic environment is the right, liberal thing to do. Let me say gently to the right hon. and learned Lady, and to those on both the Conservative and the Labour Benches, that being at school is only a small part of a child’s life—it is only a small fraction of that child’s time—and we need to look at much broader measures than restricting phone use in schools. It is disappointing that during the Committee stage of the Data (Use and Access) Bill, neither Labour nor Conservative Members supported Liberal Democrat proposals to make the internet less addictive for children. After the Government decided to gut the “safer phones” Bill—the Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill, promoted by the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), which had a great deal of cross-party support—a Liberal Democrat amendment to the Data (Use and Access) Bill offered Members an opportunity to protect young people from the doom-scrolling algorithms that are making such powerful changes to the way in which they live and interact. It is disappointing that Ministers did not seize that opportunity with both hands, and I hope they will think again as that Bill progresses through the House. I welcome new clause 8, tabled by the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato), which would abolish the common law defence of reasonable punishment. We need to ensure that all children are properly protected in law, so that they can grow up safe, happy and healthy. The Liberal Democrats have been calling for this for more than 20 years. We supported the law change in Scotland and Wales, and it is long overdue in England. There is much in Part 1 of the Bill on which there is cross-party consensus. A number of amendments tabled by Members on both sides of the House seek to ensure that the Government go further in safeguarding and promoting the wellbeing of our children, which is surely one of the most important roles of Government. I hope that Ministers are in listening mode, and that even if they will not take on board some of the new clauses and amendments today, they will do so as the Bill progresses to the other place. After all, it is our duty to ensure that every child in the country not only survives, but thrives.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  It is always an honour to take an intervention from the hon. Gentleman, and it is great to hear about the pilot scheme in Northern Ireland. I have read that the Government in the Republic of Ireland have spent about €9 million on issuing those pouches to schools across the country. It would be useful and instructive for the UK Government to look at how that pilot goes, but I am not sure that we even need to wait for that. School leaders and parents are pressing us to go further now, and we must listen. Putting the guidance into law will ensure that schools have the necessary support when they are challenged on their policies, and the resources to implement a mobile-free environment. A headteacher in my constituency told me that it would cost his school budget £20,000 to install lockers or issue the pouches described by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). Children must be able to learn in an environment that is free from the distraction of phones and the threat of bullying. We have also seen a significant reduction in truancy in schools where restrictions have been robust.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I had not shared my speech with my hon. Friend, but she has anticipated the next couple of points that I was about to make. I agree with her strongly. I preface my comments by saying that there are many independent special schools run by private or voluntary sector providers that do an excellent job and are certainly not profiteering in the way that I am about to set out. Clearly, however, that is not the case across the board, with some firms making upwards of 20% in profit on what they charge. We must challenge whether that is justified. The crisis in state special educational needs and disability provision and the lack of specialist places have led to a growth in private provision that is crippling local authority finances, as my hon. Friend just said. In 2021-22, councils spent £1.3 billion on independent and non-maintained special schools—twice what they spent just six years previously. The average cost of one of those places was £56,710, which, as my hon. Friend said, was twice the average cost of a state-run special school place. Many of the companies running these schools are the very same private equity companies running the children’s homes and fostering agencies that clause 15 is designed to deal with, so I am at a loss as to why the Government have not included independent special schools in the clause. I urge them to think again and accept our amendment. My new clause 29 would impose a requirement on the Secretary of State to introduce a national wellbeing measurement programme for children and young people throughout England. I pay tribute to #BeeWell, Pro Bono Economics and the wider Our Wellbeing Our Voice coalition for their hard work in this area. As I have said several times during this Bill’s progress, I am more than a little surprised to find so little about children’s wellbeing in a Bill with this title. One in four children in the UK reports low wellbeing, and according to the programme for international student assessment data, our country is the lowest ranked in Europe on that head. Data on children’s wellbeing and mental health is fragmented across the NHS, schools and local authorities. It is crucial that we collect data to understand the challenges that young people face and to develop solutions, and that we seek to understand the efficacy of those solutions through the use of robust wellbeing data. I welcome the Conservatives’ new clause 36 on wellbeing, phones and social media, both as a parent and as a parliamentarian. In this unprecedented digital age, we need to treat children’s social media and phone addiction as a public health issue. We have long supported the last Government’s guidance that schools should try to restrict mobile phone use during the school day, with—importantly—proper mitigations that teachers and heads can employ for young carers and those with medical conditions who use their phones as medical devices, and in other local circumstances that teachers and heads are best placed to identify.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure and a privilege to rise to speak on part 1 of the Bill, and in particular on the new clauses and amendments that stand in my name. When the Bill had its Second Reading, I said that there was much in it that Liberal Democrat Members welcomed, alongside areas that we would seek to amend, probe and strengthen. Its progress in recent weeks has seen plenty of debate, discussion and opportunities to constructively strengthen the legislation, although the Government have failed to accept any amendments that were not their own, despite the Minister’s comments in his opening speech. I am grateful to colleagues from across the House who served on the Committee, in which we had some excellent debates. However, I was disappointed last week to see the sheer number of amendments tabled by the Government ahead of Report. I really hope that the Government do not make a habit of depriving Committees of their chance to properly scrutinise Bills, even if most of those measures are welcome and uncontroversial. Turning to the new clauses and amendments that stand in my name, as the Minister knows, care—particularly kinship care—is a subject that is close to my heart and those of my Liberal Democrat colleagues. In Committee, we discussed a number of encouraging provisions that are included in the Bill, including those dealing with the definition of kinship care, setting out in law the support that kinship carers are eligible for, and providing additional educational support for children in kinship care. However, what we agreed in Committee falls far short of the ambition that I heard the Secretary of State herself set out at a reception for kinship carers just a few months ago. At that reception, the Secretary of State—unusually for somebody in her position—called on campaigners and policymakers to keep pushing her. I believe that new clauses 25, 26, 27 and 28, which stand in my name, do just that. New clause 25 would ensure that kinship carers are entitled to paid employment leave; new clause 26 would put into statute an entitlement to an allowance on par with that of foster carers; new clause 27 would extend the pupil premium plus to all children in kinship care, based on the definition that is in the Bill; and new clause 28 would prioritise those same children for school admissions. Kinship carers are unsung heroes, often stepping up at no notice to look after a child they are related to or know because that child’s parents can no longer do so. Time and again, we hear from kinship carers that they want to do the right thing out of love for those family members, but financial and other barriers often stand in their way. One survey revealed that 45% of kinship carers give up work, and a similar proportion have to reduce their hours permanently, putting financial strain on the family. These carers are disproportionately women, and they are over-represented in the healthcare, education and social care sectors, so this issue simply exacerbates our workforce crisis in public services. In Committee, the Minister pointed to the kinship financial allowance pilots, which ran in a tiny number of local authorities and involved a very small subset of kinship carers. That was not ambitious enough. We must go further and give kinship carers parity with foster carers. That will help save money in the short and long term.

• 13 Mar 2025 · Mental Health Support: Educational Settings · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) on securing this incredibly important debate. I have spent much of the past five and a bit years in this place talking about children’s mental health, which, frankly, I do not think we can ever have enough debate about. It is so incredibly important. We have heard many statistics from hon. Members today, to which I will add. OECD evidence, based on a survey of 15-year-olds, shows that UK students have the lowest reported wellbeing in western Europe. In 2024, the Children’s Society found that the happiness of UK children aged 10 to 15 was at its lowest since recording began in 2009-10. As we have heard, NHS reporting shows that a staggering one in five children—six in every classroom, on average—have a mental health disorder. I would argue that it is not an exaggeration to say that we are heading towards a public health emergency as far as our children’s mental health is concerned. Yet, as is so often the case, children and mental health are both overlooked and low down on the priority list. The Darzi report highlighted that children account for 24% of the population but only 11 % of NHS expenditure. The latest evidence from Rethink Mental Illness states that people who need mental health are treatment eight times more likely to have to wait over 18 months than those seeking treatment for physical health. Despite that, the Government’s targets to bring down NHS waiting times exclude mental health. Given that more than 100,000 children are waiting for over a year to be assessed for mental health treatment, it is clear that children have been deprioritised, but as I have said repeatedly in this place, putting money into services that support children is the greatest investment we can make as a country. When budgets are tight, support for child and adolescent mental health should not be pushed aside. I do not think it an exaggeration to call the situation a public health emergency. In public health, prevention and early intervention are absolutely key. That is where the role of schools, colleges and universities comes in. As we have heard, half of lifetime mental health conditions arise before the age of 14, so ensuring that mental health support is available in schools, from primary upwards, is a critical intervention. The Liberal Democrats have long called for a mental health practitioner to be placed in every primary and secondary school. In the light of the impact of online harms on our children’s mental health, we have made a strong case for the “polluter pays” principle, whereby big tech giants bear the cost burden of the measure. A trebling of the digital services tax would fund a practitioner in every primary and secondary school. I am slightly confused because, as the Minister said during the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee, and as I have seen in Labour party material, the Government are committed to “introducing specialist mental health support for children and young people in every school”. However, Labour had previously committed to having a counsellor in every secondary school, and indeed the hon. Member for Redditch talked about having a counsellor in every school. I hope that the Minister will clarify that point of policy when he speaks in a moment. My impression during the Bill Committee was that the Government intended to build out from the mental health support teams that were established by the previous Government. The Minister confirmed in Committee that only 44% of children and young people have access to such teams, which will rise to 50% in April, but he did not set out a timeline or a plan for how or when the Government will meet their commitment by ensuring that every school has access to specialist support. MHSTs are brilliant. I have spoken to staff who work in those teams, both in my own constituency and in Carshalton, with my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean). However, the reality is that MHSTs are spread far too thinly across a number of primary and secondary schools, with some schools only getting half a day or a day of support. That is not enough. Last year, one teenager in a secondary school in my constituency took their own life. Another school in my constituency had three teenagers end up in A&E in the space of about two months, having attempted to take their own lives. Clearly, that level of mental ill health requires much more acute intervention than therapy in school, but the reality is that if we start early—if we start young—with proper support, some of these truly awful incidents might be prevented. The MHST model may well be the best model for support in schools, but I urge the Government to be ambitious in the resourcing of those teams, so that every school has the full-time equivalent of one person in the provision of this support. I know that many schools are trying to top up the resource out of their own funds, but with budgets being stretched ever further, sadly, mental health support is one of the areas that headteachers and governors tell me they are having to start cutting back on. We know that the epidemic of mental ill health is driving the crisis of persistent absence in our schools. As the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Dan Aldridge) said, we have heard a lot in recent days about the million or so young adults who are not in education, employment or training, often because of mental ill health. For the sake of those young people’s futures, our economy and our society, we must do better, and we must do more. I do not have time today to talk about school staff, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare, but we have a recruitment and retention crisis in our schools, and that is because many teachers see themselves as the fourth emergency service. We have to support them with their mental health if we want to stop that flow out of our schools. In higher education, I hope the Government will look at introducing a duty of care, because we have heard too many tragic stories of students taking their own lives and their loved ones knowing nothing about their mental health problems. I pay tribute to the charities around the country that are plugging the gaps in mental health support. In my constituency, we have amazing charities such as the Purple Elephant Project and Off The Record working with children and their families. Anstee Bridge works across Richmond and Kingston with children who are no longer engaging with school. As I said, there have been a number of attempted suicide cases in my constituency, and when I have been to Anstee Bridge, I have heard many more stories of children attempting to take their own lives. These services are critical if we want to keep those children and young people safe and help them to recover. I want to touch on two more points. Childhood bereavement is a really important and often overlooked issue. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), who has long championed the need for a register of children who have been bereaved. We know that childhood bereavement has a terrible impact on children’s wellbeing, potentially their mental health and their educational outcomes. I hope Ministers will look seriously at introducing a register, so that we know how many of these children there are, where they are and what support they need, because that information is not available at the moment. Additionally, there is no national mandate from the Department for Education for schools to have a bereavement policy, nor is there any national policy to support schools with this. I hope that will be addressed. The hon. Member for Redditch mentioned children growing up in kinship care. The Minister will know that I have long been campaigning cross-party on support for kinship carers and children growing up in kinship care. Like other Members, my inbox has been filled recently with emails from constituents who have either adopted children or are kinship carers for children whose parents can no longer look after them and have benefited from the adoption and special guardianship support fund. It is a critical fund that carers often access to provide therapeutic support for children who have experienced terrible trauma, loss and instability. However, there has been no reassurance from Government about the future of that fund. I think at the moment we only have funding confirmed until the end of this month. There is a huge amount of uncertainty, and hon. Members from across the House have tabled written questions but there has been no clear answer on the future of this fund. I hope that when the Minister rises at the Dispatch Box, he will put on record the plans for the adoption and special guardianship support fund as it is crucial and we cannot lose it. Our children cannot thrive and cannot achieve their full potential if they are not happy and if they are not well, so I implore the Minister to work closely with his counterparts in the Department of Health and Social Care to treat this public health challenge as an emergency. Our children and young people are only young once; they deserve the best future they can get. They cannot afford to wait; we need to prioritise this.

• 13 Mar 2025 · Mental Health Support: Educational Settings · Hansard source

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  The Minister has referred to access to specialist mental health support. For the benefit of the House, could he clarify what level of resource he expects that to be—will it be half a day a week, a day a week, or full-time equivalent? The previous commitment had been a counsellor in every school.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  I recently met a distressed constituent who escaped a very abusive marriage, only for the courts to order a financial settlement that allows her ex-husband to still exert financial control over her. I was shocked to discover that the financial remedies court relies on outdated legislation—the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, which does not allow domestic abuse to be taken into consideration in a settlement. What consideration has the Minister given to the Law Commission’s recent scoping report on the issue, which recommends significant reform?

• 11 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  Could the Minister clarify for the House whether the provisions on the school support staff negotiating body will provide a ceiling as well as a floor on pay, or will it just be a floor? There are certainly a number of school and academy leaders who say they want to pay above what the Government might recommend for support staff and that this may limit them from doing so.

• 10 Mar 2025 · Schooling Costs · Hansard source

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  The Child Poverty Action Group estimates that the parent of a child in secondary school spends, on average, over £480 a year on school uniforms. The Government’s move to limit the number of branded uniform items to three or four is well intentioned, but there is nothing to stop the overinflation of the price of those items. A cap on costs, reviewed annually, would not just guarantee pounds and pennies saved for parents, but give schools the freedom to set their own uniform policies, rather than Ministers in Whitehall telling headteachers and school governors what to do. Will Ministers think again and back the Liberal Democrat amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill next week?

• 10 Mar 2025 · Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Funding · Hansard source

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  Some of the huge cost pressures on SEND budgets are being driven by the lack of state special school places, with many councils forced to send children with complex needs to private special schools that can cost two to three times more than local authority provision. There are many brilliant independent special schools providing value for money, yet we know that some private equity firms are profiteering with upwards of 20% profit margins from the schools that they run. Why will Ministers not back Liberal Democrat amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to include special schools in their proposed profit cap backstop for children’s social care providers?

• 4 Mar 2025 · NICs Increase: Impact on Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  20. What assessment she has made of the potential impact of the planned increase in employer national insurance contributions on economic growth.

• 4 Mar 2025 · NICs Increase: Impact on Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  As the poor growth figures show, the Chancellor’s jobs tax is really hurting businesses, not least in our hospitality sector. In my constituency, pubs such as the Eel Pie and the King’s Head, as well as the family-run restaurant Shambles, are really struggling with soaring costs and putting off hiring people. If the Chancellor will not reverse her jobs tax, will she at the very least consider extending the current 75% business rates relief for hospitality until the new system that she has announced is in place?

• 3 Mar 2025 · Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Relief · Hansard source

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  It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell-Buck. I thank the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for introducing this debate and setting out the argument so eloquently. I also thank the almost 115,000 people who signed the petition, of whom 873 live in Twickenham. I start by apologising to you, Ms Lewell-Buck, hon. Members and people in the Gallery if I have seemed a little distracted over the past 45 minutes. I have just found out that my daughter got her first choice of secondary school—a state school, I should say—for this September, so I have been a little distracted. All her classmates’ parents have been messaging to find out, and I was trying to communicate with my husband to let our daughter know that she will be going where she wants to go. Forgive me, but I thought it was quite appropriate to mention that, given that we are talking about schools and independent schools. I am proud that my borough of Richmond upon Thames has outstanding secondary schools—in fact, all of them are outstanding or good—and some of the best primaries in the country, but that is not necessarily the case everywhere. It goes without saying that every person in this House, whatever their party affiliation, aspires for every child to receive an excellent education. Every child deserves the opportunity to reach their full potential, yet too many children are not being supported to achieve it. We Liberal Democrats believe in creating state schools that provide a rich curriculum together with rich extracurricular options—schools so high performing that parents do not feel compelled to send their children to the independent sector. That is why we set out an ambitious education offer in our manifesto last year; we see education as an investment, not a cost. However, as we all know too well, that is very far from the current reality of our state system. For too many children, our school system is just not working; too many are simply not getting the support they need and are entitled to, especially if they have additional needs. Teachers and other school staff as well as school leaders are struggling with ever tighter budgets to hire and keep the staff they need, especially in maths and science, with crumbling school buildings, and with a SEND system that is utterly broken. Is it any wonder that many parents, for some of whom it is far from an easy financial decision, choose an independent education for their children? They want to invest in their children’s future in the same way that I argue the Government should invest in our children, yet it is in that context that this Government have decided to tax independent schools and penalise families for making that choice. We Liberal Democrats oppose in principle the taxation of education, whatever form it takes—whether it is tutoring, higher education, nursery fees or music lessons. Even more, we believe this measure is counterproductive. Since the policy was announced, pupil movement out of the independent school sector has been three times higher than the Government predicted, with the fall being highest in transition years of year 7 and reception, at 4.6% and 3.9% respectively. The Independent Schools Council’s survey last year found that there were already 10,000 fewer pupils in independent schools. According to the ISC, this fall in numbers alone cost £92 million in state pupil funding, which is more than the Government will raise from business rates on independent schools that are charities. The majority of independent schools are small: 40% have fewer than 100 pupils. With apologies to the hon. Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin), we are not talking about the Etons and the Harrows here. What I really struggle with in this policy is that, as others have said, it is not the very wealthy who will be impacted by it. The Minister will be very pleased to hear that I have met some rather wealthy people who have told me that they agree with the policy—but they can afford it; they can absorb the extra cost. It is especially the parents who never deliberately set out to secure a private education for their children, but felt forced to for various reasons, who are bearing the brunt and will be priced out. The impact of Labour’s policy is to make our private schools yet more elitist, which is what the Government are waging a campaign against. I think the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) made this very point. I wish to talk about two groups who are particularly harmed by the Government’s policy. The first is families of children with SEND. As we have heard, there are in our independent schools almost 100,000 children with special needs who do not have EHCPs, and who, under this Government’s policy, are not exempt from VAT. Often, their parents opted for private schools as a last resort, after being continually failed by the state system and even rejected. This policy penalises parents for trying to do right by their children. One family in my constituency came in tears to a surgery last year, after it was announced that this policy was going ahead and would be implemented in January this year. Their son was in a local state primary school, but his challenging behaviour, which had manifested as a result of his additional needs, which the school could not support, had put him at risk of exclusion. His parents made the very difficult decision to move him to a local private school, where he is now thriving. They are paying an extra £18,000 a year on top of the basic school fees for the additional support he needs to learn and thrive. All those costs—not just the basic fees but the additional support fees—are subject to VAT under the Government’s policy. They do not know how they are going to meet the cost, but they know that if their son goes back into the state sector and to the primary he was at, he will be at risk of being excluded. I ask the Minister: why are the Government punishing families such as these? Arguably, they have saved the taxpayer a lot of money in terms of not just the child’s schooling costs, but all the further knock-on costs that we know result from a child being excluded from school. We all know that SEND provision in this country is utterly broken. Our local authorities and state schools are buckling under the demand, yet this policy threatens to place an ever-greater burden on the state SEND system, as parents are incentivised to battle the system for EHCPs—which many children probably could get if their parents tried hard enough—in order to secure the VAT exemption. Indeed, some parents of SEND children are simply being priced out of the independent sector and back into state schools, where the additional needs will need to be supported. I have repeatedly asked Ministers to monitor and report to the House on that particular impact of the VAT policy, and I ask again: will the Minister monitor and report on the impact on SEND provision for those children who do not have EHCPs and are not exempt? The second impacted group that I will briefly touch on is military families. Statistics from the Boarding Schools’ Association reveal that the Government’s new policy will have an adverse impact on military families using the continuity of education allowance scheme. Under the scheme, parents must make a minimum 10% contribution to fees, but even with the Ministry of Defence’s recalculation in response to the Government’s policy, parental contributions will have to increase by a further 18% on average, rising from £14,000 to £17,000 for a child in senior school. As my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) pointed out, that will be unaffordable for many families, and will impact retention in the forces. Those serving our country should not be financially penalised for doing so, and we should endeavour to provide service families with continuity and stability. I hope that the Minister, alongside his colleagues in the Ministry of Defence, will make a clear statement on how the impact of VAT will be monitored for CEA families, and the criteria by which they will decide to make further changes. I hope they will also commit to reviewing the CEA over the longer term to ensure that families are protected from the impact of VAT, or exempt CEA families from VAT all together. Aside from the two specific groups that I have talked about, who I think the Government have overlooked, I want to return to the wider principles. We Liberal Democrats would like to see independent schools routinely giving back to their community by way of recognition of the tax exemption they had previously benefited from, and that we believe should continue. Many of these schools already give back a huge amount to their communities through exemplary partnerships with local schools, where not only facilities but learning and experiences are shared between the state and the independent sector. Independent schools ran over 9,200 partnerships in 2024; each school involved in partnership worked with approximately 11 state schools and with 403 pupils in those schools. Examples of those partnerships include sharing sports facilities, theatre spaces, specialist teachers, mentoring schemes, cooking schools, higher education support and debating clubs, as well as bursaries and scholarships. The Liberal Democrats want to see that become the norm for every independent school, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding) pointed out, the VAT policy will mean that greater partnership work is the first thing independent schools cut back on. In these debates, I have often referred to Hampton and Lady Eleanor Holles schools in my constituency, which have a brilliant partnership with a Reach academy in Feltham that is serving a disadvantaged community that has typically not had many children going into further or higher education. That school has seen its results soar and pupils accessing university and medical school as a result of the partnership. The headteacher of Hampton, Kevin Knibbs, said to me this morning: “While it’s too early to identify the immediate impact of the Government’s policies on our schools…it is deeply regrettable and a missed opportunity that independent schools elsewhere in the country will simply be unable to replicate the Reach-LEH-Hampton partnership model due to the new tax regime. Moreover, the imposition of a tax on education will compromise our and other independent schools’ ability to provide transformative, means-tested free places that are such excellent examples of social mobility in action.” I thought that was something that the Minister and his colleagues were all in favour of. We should be making the most of the benefits that independent schools can provide, opening them up to more children, not making them more exclusive and adding to the state system’s burden. I am coming in to land now, I promise. The Government have dismissed the stories of families affected by this tax, choosing to prize numbers over human experience. I fear they are being driven by ideology, but I am perplexed as to why Ministers have been hellbent on this particular policy, which hits parents’ pockets directly, and yet they have resisted my party’s attempts to amend the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to ensure that private equity companies that are profiteering from private special schools are not being subjected to the profit cap that this Labour Government are imposing on children’s homes and fostering agencies that are often run by the same companies. They are making eye-watering profits, with margins of more than 20%, which local authorities have to pay. The Labour Government do not want to do anything about that, but they are attacking parents who want to send their kids to private schools. It makes no sense to me, and I hope the Minister will address that point. I understand that the fiscal situation right now is hard. Unlike the Labour party, during the election campaign my party laid out a whole host of areas where taxes could be raised fairly in order to invest in our children’s education and our country’s future. Whether that is properly reforming capital gains tax, reversing the Conservatives’ tax cuts for bankers or increasing the tax on big tech companies, we are ambitious for every child. We want to put a dedicated mental health professional in every primary and secondary school, to expand free school meals for all children in poverty and to ensure that those children who have fallen behind are supported through tutoring. That vision can be realised without penalising parents who are choosing to do what every parent naturally wants to do: to invest in their children’s education and future.

• 3 Mar 2025 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement expressing the United Kingdom’s unequivocal support for President Zelensky and Ukraine. In view of the Prime Minister’s cuts to the aid budget, and with the eyes of the world focused on Zelensky, Ukraine and Russia, can he please reassure the House that he will not forget about the middle east, and in particular the decision by Netanyahu’s Government to block aid to Gaza? What representations is he making on behalf of the Government to reverse that? It is a breach of international law.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Sudan · Hansard source

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  The Genocide80Twenty campaign group at Hampton school in my constituency recently met members of the Darfur diaspora who have fled the atrocities in Sudan, and they would like to know what the UK Government are doing to help those targeted simply for who they are. With a staggering 16 million children desperately needing food, shelter, healthcare and education, could I ask the Minister for assurances that we will not see any cuts to UK aid to the region, and what assessment has she has made of the impact of the Trump Administration’s cuts to US aid?

• 25 Feb 2025 · Sudan · Hansard source

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  16. What steps his Department is taking to support people affected by the humanitarian situation in Sudan.

• 25 Feb 2025 · SEND Education Support · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) on securing this important debate. Another week, another debate on SEND. Since the start of this Parliament, barely a week has gone by when we have not had questions or debates, either in this Chamber or the main Chamber, on special educational needs and disability provision. From what we have heard today—I particularly thank the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Jodie Gosling) for her courage in sharing her constituent’s moving story—we know that every Member’s inbox is bulging with casework from constituents about the dire crisis in SEND, which is why these debates are so oversubscribed. We are also getting report after report. In the last few months, the National Audit Office, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Public Accounts Committee have all come out with the same damning verdict about a broken system, with money coming in but outcomes for children going down. These are some of our most vulnerable children and young people, and we as a society must do our best to meet their needs. We know that families face a postcode lottery, with delays that can last months or even years and vulnerable children missing out on the support that they deserve and need. With special schools full, mainstream schools struggling to provide appropriate support because their budgets are so overstretched, and spiralling high-needs deficits leaving many local authorities on the brink of bankruptcy, it is clear that urgent reform is needed. As we heard in a Westminster Hall debate just a few weeks ago, the process to get an education, health and care plan is often far too lengthy and far too adversarial. Families are increasingly forced to take their cases to tribunal, with the number of cases doubling since 2014. Local authorities lose almost all those cases, wasting annually over £70 million of public money that could be spent on supporting children and young people rather than fighting unnecessary legal battles. Given the huge rise in demand for support, and the previous Conservative Government’s failure to keep up with that demand, local authorities are too often struggling to meet their statutory responsibilities, forcing families to navigate a broken system to secure even the most basic support. As the former Education Secretary Gillian Keegan described it, it is a “lose, lose, lose” system for all. Ministers have repeatedly, and quite rightly, stressed the need for mainstream schools to be more inclusive in order to meet the rising need for special needs support. I recently visited Stanley school in my Twickenham constituency which, like two other nearby primary schools, has a specialist resource provision. Children with complex needs are able to spend time with dedicated teaching assistants for support, but they have the opportunity to play, socialise and participate, where appropriate, in lessons and other activities with children in the school who are not part of the SRP. As the hon. Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper) referenced, we are seeing falling rolls in schools and space opening up. SRPs will be a key intervention in our approach to ensuring that mainstream schools can be more inclusive. However, finding and keeping the staff to support children in SRPs or other mainstream settings—or indeed in special school settings—is an ongoing challenge. SRPs need to be properly funded but, as things stand, the headteacher at Stanley explained to me, the maths just does not add up for him. He explained that his wider school budget is having to plug the shortfall in SRP funding. If we are to tempt schools to have SRPs, we are going to have to make sure that they have the resources to provide that SRP. Support staff costs have risen over the past two years, with unfunded pay increases and increases in employer’s national insurance contributions on the horizon. We know that local authorities, health services and schools are all struggling to recruit the number of staff that they need to meet growing demand—both to undertake assessments in the first place, when a child might be eligible for an EHCP, and then to meet that need in school. A national survey of headteachers found that only 1% of senior school leaders believed that they had enough funding to meet the needs of pupils with SEND. A report by London Councils on SEND inclusion in schools found that stakeholders from across the sector said that they would be able to be more inclusive if they had more funding. That is why the Liberal Democrats are calling for increased funding for local authorities to reduce the financial burden on schools. We know that the £6,000 per pupil notional SEND budget, which each school is meant to allocate before applying for an EHCP, is, frankly, a fiction in today’s school finances, given the pressures on budgets up and down the country. When I visited Stanley the other week, and when I visited a beautiful new school, Belmont school in Durham, last week, I was told by both headteachers that for many mainstream schools, the disincentive to take on children with SEND is the way that standard assessment tests and other public exam results are reported. Frankly, certain young people in those mainstream settings are not in a position to sit their SATs or GCSEs, yet their results, which will essentially be nil, are reported in the schools’ performance measures, which are available publicly. In a competitive schooling environment, where parents vote with their feet for the schools that typically have the highest grades, that sadly results in an incentive for too many schools to actively avoid taking SEND children on to their rolls. There are schools that are doing the right thing and including those children, but, as the Minister is considering how to make mainstream school more inclusive, I wonder what consideration she and other Ministers have given to this issue. I would like to spend a moment focusing on special schools. For children for whom a mainstream setting is not right, special schools should, and in many cases do, provide the necessary educational support. However, we know that in May 2023, two thirds of special schools were at or over capacity, and the impact of that is children with complex needs being inappropriately accommodated in the mainstream, where their needs cannot be met, which sometimes has a detrimental impact on other pupils and, indeed, staff. Many parents in those situations feel forced to home school. We know that parents who feel that they have had no option but to home school are concerned about what some of the provisions of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will mean for their being able to ensure that their child is in an appropriate environment. The lack of specialist provision is being played out in the eye-watering SEND transport costs that local authorities are having to fund to send children out of area. Add to that the cost of private special schools, which are being funded by the taxpayer. I will return to that subject in a moment, but I want to take this moment to welcome the provision in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that will allow local authorities to open new special schools. For too long, local authorities that have identified a need, and that want to bid for funding and open special schools, have been turned down. A number of applications from local authorities that wanted to open special schools were turned down during the previous Parliament by the previous Government, so I welcome that change in the Bill. Returning to private special schools, many private SEND schools provide an excellent education and are run as not-for-profit charities. However, the Minister is aware—I have raised this issue previously, not least in Committee on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill—that private equity firms and other profiteering companies are increasingly entering the special school market, as they see it, at an extortionate cost. Councils are spending £1.3 billion on independent and non-maintained special schools, which is more than double what they spent just a few years earlier. The cost of an independent special school place is, on average, double the cost of a state special school place. Some private equity companies running these schools are making a profit of 20%-plus. Typically, the private equity-owned providers, not the other private sector providers, have the highest level of profitability in the sector. I feel that our most vulnerable children and our local authorities are being held to ransom by some of these companies, which are not behaving in the best interests of our children.