My Lords, if I may say a few words now, let me first say that I will speak to Amendment 26 in my name. It was originally in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, who has just sent me a note saying that he wishes me well but he has an appointment he must go to in the City. All right for some, but it was his idea in the first place.
Anyway, I have a few comments about the clerical Bench’s series of amendments here. What I like about these is that when we deal with special educational needs, often it is as special educational needs going forward into the outside world. The fact is that talking about the employment gap for people with disabilities is something we should spend more time on and is sometimes a better way of looking at it to get clarification.
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There is no point in having training if it does not have a result; otherwise, you are just marking time and keeping people off the streets. There is enough of that in the system at various times and we all know it has happened and is going on. If they are being trained, people should have some end product from it. They should have the dignity of being able to sustain themselves.
In the disabilities sector, across all the myriad bits of it, there is a shared problem of underemployment. We do not seem to be getting that right; we do not seem to be getting the information across correctly that people who have minor disabilities can do ordinary jobs. It is not happening and consistently does not happen. This is not the problem of this Government; it is the problem of Governments over a long period of time. I hope that when the Minister responds she will give her full attention to this because it is a very good
way of looking at an existing problem. I salute those who have raised it and brought it forward. It brings the point home very clearly.
I turn to my pirated amendment: the review every three years to look at what SEN is achieving and how it is going. Something like that must be in the Bill because we talk too much about SEN. The Government tend to retreat into saying, “We have got lots of legislation, if it all worked properly and people refer back to each other and do other things they’re supposed to do, we will have a look at it and we will change it.” They do not. The SEN sector is in crisis at the moment. We have punched through the £100 million barrier that local authorities spend on appeals to stop people getting the high end of education and healthcare plans. They lose about 85% of these on a good day, more commonly 90%. That is at the high end. Further down—this is something that has come out in this Bill—those who are not going to get this are getting ignored a lot of the time.
The language has improved over this Bill, and I salute the Government Front Bench and the noble Baroness’s immediate predecessors for this. They actually helped and recognised this, which is a step in the right direction. But can we make sure that we are looking at this in the round so that you do not have to be a tiger parent in the future? We need to look at this properly and review it, both in terms of the final product and the process which brings people forward. It is something that must be integrated if it is to work.
We have been doing this for too long. I have been here for more than 35 years and I think it is nearly 35 years since I made my maiden speech. That was on SEN and the problems of it. One lifetime is surely enough for this.