Speech Therapy Services (Children)

The hon. Lady will be aware that the consultation closed just before the comprehensive spending review. We will be making a much more detailed announcement on the pupil premium shortly, but we want to ensure that local authorities know much more about the scheme when they get their settlement. I was about to speak about some of the issues raised by the hon. Lady in her speech. Early identification is vital for the child and the family; as she said, it will reduce costly interventions later. It is essential that more timely referrals are made to specialist services. That is why I asked Dame Claire Tickell, who is leading a review on the early years foundation stage, to look specifically at how to improve early identification of such problems by the EYFS. She is leading the process at the moment, and she will soon be reporting her findings to the Government. For the same reason, we have extended the two-year-old offer to significantly more disadvantaged young children. About 130,000 disadvantaged two-year-olds will benefit from 15 hours of early education a week. That point was raised by a number of Members. Indeed, the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) said that children often arrive at nursery without the required language skills because they have not been exposed to language in the usual way. Offering high-quality early education is vital in giving those children the chance to pick up those skills. The hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) spoke about Sure Start centres. Many already provide speech and language therapy, but more use of such evidence-based programmes is definitely part of the reform programme that the Government want to institute. The Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne Milton), who is responsible for public health, recently confirmed the Government's intention during this Parliament to recruit and train 4,200 health visitors. Health visitors will be key in picking up on speech delay in very young children, ensuring that they are referred to the appropriate services, including Sure Start centres.