I have received the letter below from the Secretary of State for Education regarding the Special Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision Plan for England.

The Government recognises the need to deliver a more positive experience for children and young people with SEND and make it easier for their families to obtain the support they need for their children. The Improvement Plan sets out how it will achieve this through a single national SEND and alternative provision system.

I know from my constituents who have children with SEND that is often difficult to navigate the system to access support and I also know how the children flourish when they do get the service they need. I am always happy to help where parents are finding it difficult to get the right support.

You may be interested in reading the full Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1139561/SEND_and_alternative_provision_improvement_plan.pdf

Dear Colleague,

SEND AND ALTERNATIVE PROVISION IMPROVEMENT PLAN

I passionately believe that it must be the government’s utmost priority to ensure that no matter where you are from or what stage of life you are at, every child and young person should always be able to get a high-quality education and receive the right support in the right place at the right time – and this is particularly pertinent for children and young people with SEND or those in alternative provision.

I am writing to inform you that today the Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care have jointly published the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan for England (SEND and alternative provision improvement plan – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

Publication of the Improvement Plan marks our response to the 16-week consultation period on the proposals set out in the SEND and alternative provision green paper. Through this consultation period we attended 175 events and heard from over 4,500 people, as well as receiving thousands of responses to the consultation.

I would like to put on record our thanks to all children, young people, and their families, organisations and sector groups across education, health and care who have provided feedback including via the SEND and alternative provision green paper e-consultation and through our consultation events.

It is time to deliver a more positive experience for children and young people with SEND and to restore families’ confidence in the system. The Improvement Plan sets out how we will achieve this through a single national SEND and alternative provision system with the mission to fulfil children’s potential, build parents’ trust and provide financial sustainability. New National Standards will improve early identification of needs and set clear expectations for the types of evidence-based support that should be available in mainstream settings, to give parents confidence in the support that should be made available for their child.

To deliver the National Standards in local areas, new local SEND and alternative provision partnerships will create evidence-based local inclusion plans that will set out how the needs of children and young people in the area will be met. These plans will be in line with the National Standards and the vision for alternative provision. By improving early identification and the quality of support, we expect that more children and young people will have their needs met consistently through ordinarily available provision in their mainstream setting, preventing escalation of need that pushes some children to Education, Health and Care Plans.

For children and young people who need a plan, we will reduce bureaucracy by introducing new standardised plans and supporting local authorities to use digital technology consistently. Our investment into specialist and alternative provision places, including opening 33 new special free schools with 49 in the pipeline, means that more children will have timely access to the right support in their local area. A three-tier alternative provision system will focus on targeted early support in mainstream schools, time-limited intensive placements in an alternative provision setting, and longer-term placements to support returns to mainstream or to sustainable post-16 destinations.

We know how important an expert workforce is in supporting children and young people with SEND or in alternative provision to fulfil their potential. We will invest in the workforce across education, health and care to build the capacity of the specialist workforce and to improve confidence and expertise in supporting children and young people with SEND promptly and effectively. This includes funding up to 5,000 early years staff to gain an accredited Level 3 early years SENCO qualification. To increase the capacity of specialists, we will use a £21 million investment to train two cohorts of educational psychologists between 2024 and 2025.

To help build parents’ trust we will strengthen accountabilities, with every partner held to account, including through the new Ofsted/CQC Area SEND Inspection. From autumn 2023, local and national inclusion dashboards will provide increased transparency to parents.

To help all children and young people to lead healthy and fulfilled adult lives, we will support young people into employment including investing £18 million between 2022 and 2025 to double the capacity of the Supported Internships programme. These are complemented by the Adjustment Passports we already produce with the Department for Work and Pensions, to support young people with SEND to enter work.

Children and young people can only get the right support within a system where costs are managed effectively. An over 50% increase in high needs funding to over £10 billion by 2023-24, compared to £6.1 billion in 2018-19, will help children and young people with SEND in both special schools and mainstream schools receive the right support. We are working hard with local authorities to improve services and address deficits, including through the existing Safety Valve programme, which has already helped authorities begin implementing plans to reform their high needs systems for the benefit of children and young people. We are also continuing to invest, through an additional £2 billion a year, from this April, secured in the Autumn statement. Of this, £400 million has been earmarked for special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision.

Our goal is to deliver a system that is more responsive to the needs of individual children. To make sure we get this right we will use our £70 million Change Programme to establish up to nine Regional Expert Partnerships who will help us co-produce, test and refine key reforms.

The steps in the Improvement Plan cannot be delivered by government alone and local system leaders can start now in learning from and adopting good practice that already exists across the country. We look forward to working in collaboration with system leaders, parents and families, directly and through a National Board that will be co-chaired by Claire Coutinho, the Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing and Maria Caulfield, the Minister for Mental Health and Women’s Health Strategy. It is important that we work together to deliver a single national system that delivers consistently for every child and young person with SEND and in alternative provision.

Please do not hesitate to contact me should you want any further detail.

Yours sincerely,
Rt Hon Gillian Keegan MP
Secretary of State for Education

Now more of the detail is coming out about the Northern Ireland talks, it shows us  more matters need to be clarified in writing  and sorted out in the Joint Committee before accepting any changes to the legal position.

The EU spokesman has told MEPs  according to briefings that the ECJ will have an important role and substantial amounts of EU law will apply to Northern Ireland. He also pointed out the Stormont brake would rarely be able to work. It seems  the green lane would still be subject to EU checks and to possible EU interruption to the flow of goods.  That is why I have asked the government to show us a list of the EU laws that will apply to Northern Ireland from day one of any  new agreements. I have asked how many VAT and Excise rules will still constrain our tax policies, and want to know more about what information and form filling  people will  need to supply to allow green lane trade.  It appears that EU plant and animal husbandry rules will apply. We also need to know in what circumstances the EU could suspend or  modify green lane trade.

It is most important to get this right. The rest of the UK does not want to find it needs to align with the EU over tax and regulations, any more than Unionists in Northern Ireland wish to find their laws and taxes in part come from the EU where they have no vote or voice.  The UK fully accepts the need to avoid a border between NI and the Republic, but also needs to avoid a border between  GB and NI.  Any new arrangement at the very least needs a unilateral exit route for the UK should the terms prove onerous. It  remains to be seen if the Unionist parties find it acceptable so that they can rejoin the Stormont Assembly, one of the original aims of the talks.

The Prime Minister promised us he will stop the small boats that risk the lives of illegal migrants to get them into the UK. He made this one of his five aims. Last November he promised early action to deliver.

A previous Home Secretary introduced legislation to resolve this problem in UK law. Best Home Office and legal advice did not succeed in drafting a  lawyer proof law, so the Home Secretary’s aims were thwarted by legal challenges. Even criminals stayed in the UK with lawyers and the courts preventing their departures.

This week the PM and new Home Secretary I read may publish their draft bill. I have been urging them to get on with this since November. It will not work unless  it expressly overrides the Human Rights laws for these specific cases of people who have come here illegally. They should not be able to claim asylum from the UK after illegal entry . The Bill could contain a clause making this point and saying this applies, all other laws and Treaties notwithstanding.

We need to get on with this. Filling up hotels with illegals, keeping them there for many months and failing to send back those with no good asylum claim is unacceptable.

The Telegraph is writing the history of the pandemic lockdowns before the official enquiry gets underway. Today I provide an opportunity to comment on the stories so far.

I joined the group of MPs who wanted a solution more like Sweden, with fewer restrictions. I voted with them against the more extreme controls. I pressed for better protection of care homes, drawing attention to the discharged patients  from hospitals as possible carriers of infection. I pressed for isolation hospitals for covid, and for use of the Nightingales. I wanted the full  use of the contracted private sector hospitals for non covid work.

I and the group of MPs challenged the data, drawing attention to the important difference between dying with contact with covid and dying of covid. We pressed successfully for Parliament to meet, in hybrid form at first and then got the proper restoration. The Opposition supported all the lockdowns and urged more and longer. They did not press for early restoration of Parliament which some of us wanted to question and scrutinise government and experts more.

I have no comments on what Mr Hancock has saying and doing. I need to concentrate on todays issues.

The Chancellor needs to look to the investment figures. They are likely to decline this year. A hard pounding from windfall taxes and price controls to be followed by a 31% rise in business tax should push investment down and put big companies off investing here.

Yet  what we need is a surge in new investment to raise more capacity.

We need more domestic oil and gas. There is plenty to get out, saving imports and cutting CO 2 but high and erratic taxes and regulatory enthusiasm for imports over domestic is costing us dear.

We need more transport capacity. Crowded roads and poor junctions need alleviating with more bypasses and freer flowing main routes. Rail investment is dominated by an ill  judged HS2 which is cost and no benefit this decade. We need more local and de bottlenecking  improvements along with digital signals to raise capacity.

We need more steel capacity as we keep closing plants thanks to overtaxation

We need to grow more of our own sustainable timber

We need to put in more market garden all weather growing capacity. instead we offer wilding grants to stop farming.

We need more electricity generating capacity from reliable sources. Where are the contracts for Small Nuclear reactors? Where the new combined cycle gas stations to keep the lights on when there is no wind?

We need more reservoirs  to meet the demands of rising population

We need more grid capacity to convey wind power from Scotland to users

We need more ship and aircraft building capacity to meet defence and civilian needs

We need to rebuild our fishing fleet

Much of this can and should be done with private capital. To do it we need lower and stable tax rates. With it we will receive more revenue.

A few more complex corporation tax offsets will not fix this. It needs commitment to low and stable tax rates to grow the taxable capacity. On current policies businesses taxes will shrink.