My Lords, we appreciate the concerns that have prompted the amendments in this group and noble Lords’ determination to ensure that we move things forward for children with special educational needs, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to the discussion. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for saying that the local offer has the potential to be transformative for these children.
We understand the reasons why the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Touhig, seek the publication of an action plan if the education and social care is deemed insufficient. I assure them that there is already scope in our provisions for children and young people with SEN and their parents, and local providers, to be involved in improving provision where it is insufficient. Clause 19 clearly sets out the guiding principle of the SEN provisions, which is all about putting children, their parents and young people at the heart of what the local authority does. It sets out the importance of involving children, their parents, and young people as fully as possible, and includes the need to support them to achieve the best possible outcomes.
Children and their parents, and young people, are also central to the local offer. Local authorities will be under a duty to review their local offer in Clause 30(5) —noble Lords have made reference to that—and regulation 4 of the draft local offer regulations sets out who they must consult in such a review. Local authorities will also be under a duty to publish comments on the local offer under Clause 30(6). Noble Lords, again, made reference to that.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, was probing on accountability and how the review would then, as it were, have teeth. We understand the noble Lord’s points about accountability, and we will be discussing this in a later group. Perhaps we can return then to how that will be done. However, I would say that the local offer in Clause 30(6) will require local authorities to publish their response to comments that they get from children, their parents and young people, so there is a major incentive there to act.
That is also made clear in Chapter 5 of the code of practice, which says that local authorities should publish an explanation of the action they are taking to respond to the comments. It is not simply a case of publishing what that response is. This brings transparency—a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, made previously—and potential publicity. We must bear in
mind that local authorities are themselves accountable to their electorate. In the debate on the previous group, I mentioned other ways in which people could hold local authorities to account. However, I do not think that it is going to be very comfortable for local authorities to have to publish critical comments and to have to justify why they are doing what they are doing. That is certainly worth bearing in mind. As I mentioned, local authorities must consult widely and involve children and young people with SEN and the parents of children with SEN in shaping local provision.
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The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, and others raised the issue of funding, and we have talked about that to some extent. Clause 27 specifically states that local authorities need to consider resources. Subsection (2) requires them to look at whether special educational and social care provision is sufficient to meet the needs of those children and young people. It follows that, in considering whether provision is sufficient, local authorities must consider whether the funding is sufficient. I appreciate the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, about difficult economic times, as well as his important point about working together. I also appreciate what the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said in this regard.
We agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said about local authorities working together and commissioning services jointly to secure cost-effective, high-quality provision for children and young people with low-incidence needs. Many authorities already have such arrangements in place and it is clearly in their interests to do so. I covered this matter when we debated the previous group.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, talked about support services for deaf children being cut. We firmly believe that all young people should be helped to achieve their best, regardless of their background or circumstances. I assure the noble Baroness that we are not cutting services for deaf children. In terms of funding, we have protected the dedicated schools grant so that overall it is at the same cash level per pupil over the period of review of government spending. We have also ensured that we will not be reclaiming SEN funding from the local authorities as part of academy funding arrangements for SEN services. That said, we obviously recognise that the current financial climate means that everybody is under pressure to work together as effectively as possible, to share approaches to supporting deaf children and to get ready to implement the reforms in the Bill.
Perhaps I may draw out a little more the question of financing in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, and others. The funding that we have provided this year, which is £75,000 per authority, is to help them to develop their systems in preparation for these reforms. Overall, we are investing around £47 million to support implementation this year, including £9 million to non-pathfinder local authorities, £6 million to pathfinders, £19 million via the voluntary and community sector, and £9 million for workforce development. I hope that noble Lords will welcome that investment. Going forward, any new burdens on local authorities
created by the implementation of this part of the Bill will be properly assessed and funded by the Government. I hope that that is reassuring.
The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, raised a point regarding Clause 28(1), and I liked his reference to how it was written. We will be very happy to write to him with clarification regarding the weakening of the strength of local authorities’ obligations elsewhere in the Bill.
I assure the noble Countess, Lady Mar, that any evidence of illegal exclusion is taken extremely seriously by the department and Ofsted. The department’s statutory guidance on exclusion lays out the responsibilities of schools, and states explicitly that excluding pupils simply because they have additional needs, or sending them home to “cool off”, is unlawful. We are grateful to the Children’s Commissioner for her report on this issue.
I am sure that I will not have totally reassured noble Lords. However, I hope that what I have said about what is in place here and the transparency and accountability that we have put on local authorities, and what I have said about funding, will help to reassure noble Lords, and that they will be content to withdraw, or not to move, their amendments.