Christmas Adjournment

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I know that he takes a special interest in the subject. The only advice I would give him is that if something has been written into a statement of special educational needs and it has been signed by the parent and the due authority, it is a legal document and there is recourse to ensure that it is enforced. I encourage Members to ensure that when statements of special educational needs are signed they are enforced, and if people are reluctant to act on them, to take matters a step further. I am informed by some local authorities that when people reach the point in the process when they threaten legal action, they more often than not settle out of court. That is not how the process should be, and it is a dire process for parents to have to go through, particularly if they are not supported. However, if that is what it takes, the answer is to cut to the chase, and to get to that point as quickly as possible. That is my philosophy. My hon. Friend alluded to an issue that I have already identified: joined-up government. I am sick of hearing and reading language to do with partnerships, consultations and working together—documents on such matters cross our desks all the time—when that is not what is happening in practice. My constituents have certainly experienced that in the past two or three weeks. What is important is the people at the sharp end. The new patient and public involvement—PPI—forums, which the Government themselves set up, have written about the closures that I have described. They were not consulted. They wrote to the primary care trust to say that the cuts had been made too soon—that it has come straight in and made the cuts—but although we would expect them to have been consulted, they were not consulted. Across the piece, we face a winter with services cut and professional members of staff—nursing staff and doctors—uncertain about what ““temporary”” means when they are told that the measures will be temporary. It is not said that the service will be re-established at the end of March, but it is stated that the closures are meant to be temporary. However, there is no guarantee of what that actually means. The Government have had much to say about the NHS and all the people who do such a fantastic job in it and who built it up, but the Government are now knocking it down piece by piece. Patients, and the people who live in my constituency and in other parts of the country, deserve better.