House of Commons Hansard Debates for 3 Jul 1992

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Mr. Eric Forth) : I have heard serious allegations of the kind that my hon. Friend makes and they have proved to be unfounded and the result of scaremongering. I know that my hon. Friend would not indulge in that. If he is not prepared to name the authorities involved now, perhaps he will let me know later. I shall certainly want to look into those cases if what my hon. Friend says is true.

Sir John Hannam : I am convinced that the examples are based on evidence. In meetings of the all-party group with my hon. Friend's predecessors, specific evidence has been given, and I have letters in my office detailing the exact cases. I shall be pleased to give my hon. Friend the evidence. There should be no doubt in his mind that the crux of our concern is that the wide variations in local authorities' implementation of the Act has caused the problems. I hope that my hon. Friend will not feel that he must engage in a blanket defence of LEAs. After all, he had to write to me admitting that there were serious concerns about the implementation of the Act. Authorities' performance varies widely. Some are good and some are very bad, and we should surely aim to achieve a certain minimum standard of performance throughout the country.

Ms. Hilary Armstrong (Durham, North-West) : Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, when the Audit

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Commission examined the matter, it concluded that it was the Government's responsibility to give much clearer guidance on which children should be statemented and which non-statemented children should have help made available to them? It is not clear what is expected of LEAs, which have an open-ended commitment and which face increasingly tight controls on their expenditure. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is what has led to many of the problems that he has identified?

Sir John Hannam : That is the point that I am trying to make, and it emerged vey clearly early in the Committee stage of the 1981 Act. The resources that would be needed could not be defined : at that stage no one knew what they were, and local authorities certainly could not provide information on the problems that they would encounter when they set about the integration of education for disabled and handicapped students. As is so often the case, it was a question of that expenditure evolving.

Since then, expenditure on special needs education has expanded tremendously, but the power of local authorities to use the money allocated as they see fit and in the ways that are best from their point of view is still a major problem. That is why we have argued for strict ring fencing of certain types of expenditure, such as expenditure on community care, which is in the headlines at the moment. In this case, statutory requirements have been laid down and provision made ; if local authorities are failing to comply, we must ensure that they receive the necessary guidance to enable them to understand exactly what their statutory responsibilities are. Some local authorities complete assessments in a matter of a few months while others take a year or more. The Audit Commission pointed out that the average was running at about three months over the maximum period of six months allowed.

Another problem is the rewriting of statements and the annual review--often done without any regard to changes in needs or to the due process. An LEA in the north-west, for example, recommended the transfer of an 11-year-old boy with cerebral palsy and numeracy and literacy difficulties from a mainstream primary to a special school for pupils with moderate learning difficulties. The parents were told that there were insufficient mainstream places. The change was made without seeking professional advice or consulting the parents. That is strictly illegal under the Act, and the pupil lost a whole term's schooling before the case was resolved and his original statement reinstated.

The parents of an 11-year-old girl with multiple physical and learning disabilities were presented with a fait accompli by an LEA in the north- east, which told them that she would be transferred from an out-of-county residential school to a local school for pupils with severe learning difficulties 12 miles from her home. Those are typical of the cases that have been brought to hon. Members and we could produce many more examples to illustrate the problems that we face in ensuring that the Act is working properly.

The Audit Commission report confirms that many of those problems exist and pinpoints "deficiencies" in the Act and its implementation. First, the vague definition of special needs in the Act means that receipt of a statement can depend on where a pupil lives rather than on his or her real needs. Secondly, there is inconsistent statementing

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within LEAs so that children with lower levels of needs have statements while others with greater needs do not. That brings us back to the whole question of the determination, professionalism and resources of schools, parents and their advisers. Thirdly, schools are not properly accountable to parents for the progress made by SEN pupils or for the resources that they receive.

Important changes are taking place in education. The Further and Higher Education Act 1992 transfers responsibility for further education from LEAs to the new FE funding councils. All the disability organisations are concerned that, with only nine months to go before the new system will be in place, the administrative arrangements for the delivery and provision of special further education have still not been spelt out publicly.

I received a letter from Deaf Accord which is a consortium of organisations for deaf, deaf-blind and hard of hearing people. Those organisations have long expressed their concern about the future of their children when their schools become grant maintained. They want local education authorities to retain their ability to provide adequate specialist services for hearing- impaired children. When deaf students go on into further and higher education courses, often at a later age than their peers, they will need adequate communications support.

While the new Further and Higher Education Act 1992 states that the funding councils

"shall have regard to the needs of students with disabilities", there is no guarantee that a student's needs will be assessed and provided for locally, which will often mean past the age of 19. Access to further education courses is essential for deaf students, not only so that they can compete on more equal terms in the job market, but because, as I mentioned earlier, many of them need extra time to catch up on the development of language skills and knowledge acquisition that has taken longer because of communication difficulties.

Whether it is lip reading, speech therapy, special equipment or other provisions which can help handi-capped students to increase their independence and enjoy a richer life experience, the reality is that much more needs to be done to achieve reasonable standards of provision across the country.

I welcome the Government's announcement of the consultation document on the proposals in respect of special education and especially the tribunals to resolve disputes between parents and LEAs. Substantial progress towards integration has been made, but we must not forget the crucial roles played by our special schools. Without their dedication to the severely impaired children, many people now living, working and fulfilling good lives would not have found that possible.

Let us put the final pieces of the 1981 Act into place and remove the worries and uncertainties facing the parents and families of handicapped youngsters. I am confident that the proposals go a very long way towards securing those objectives.

10.31 am

Mr. Tony Worthington (Clydebank and Milngavie) : I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell) on her excellent speech and success in the raffle which seems to run this place. I hope that she will always be successful in that regard. I also congratulate her on her choice of subject which is very important. I thank

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her for referring in her motion to people and not just to children. I intend to refer to the post-16 situation, although I recognise the importance of the pre-16 situation.

I realise that as I shall be referring to the post-16 situation the Minister will probably not be able to respond to my points. However, as a former Employment Minister, he may have some memory of the areas to which I shall refer. I cannot remember whether he was responsible for youth training or employment training.

Mr. Forth indicated dissent.

Mr. Worthington : I see the Minister shaking his head so, in this case, his ignorance will be forgiven.

The split between education and training is one example of the difficulties that we face. There is a transfer of youngsters at the age of 16 to the Department of Employment for youth training. That cannot be justified. We need an integrated provision post-16 and I should prefer it if that continues to be an education responsibility, rather than the responsibility of the Department of Employment. That would certainly be Labour party policy in Scotland.

I expect that the Minister will draw attention to the comments of Baroness Blatch who said that the Government had acted very quickly on the Audit Commission report. I should welcome the setting up of a special needs tribunal. However, I must point out that the report made some attacks on local authorities and the Government therefore reacted very quickly indeed.

Post-16 provision is conducted in secrecy. Youth training is a matter of commercial confidentiality. There is no right of appeal about whether one has received an adequate offer of training post-16. I am interested to learn from the Minister's response whether he is willing to consider, if there is to be a tribunal, that it should be applied to training appeals as well as to school-age education. At the moment, special educational needs are transferred at the age of 16 to local enterprise companies in Scotland or to the training and enterprise councils in England and Wales. Training in Scotland is swamped within the local enterprise companies. Perhapsunderstandably, the LECs are dominated by the idea of economic development. I have a report from Scottish Business Insider on Scottish Enterprise and the local enterprise companies. It is instructive that the chairman of Scottish Enterprise did not mention training when he described what Scottish Enterprise had done in its first year, even though the bulk of the money that Scottish Enterprise receives is for training.

It is obvious that economic development comes first in the ethos of Scottish Enterprise. That is not surprising, because that is how the body was recruited and how the local enterprise companies have been set up. The report to which I have referred contains 19 case studies from local enterprise companies and they all concentrate on economic development. The special needs educational training within training is mentioned only once in the document.

I am concerned that training, particularly for special needs, will be dominated by economic development within the LECs. That is not surprising, given that the LECs took over from the Scottish Development Agency. The SDA

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swallowed the Training Agency and its personnel. The Training Agency personnel were not skilled in special needs. In many cases, they were not skilled in training ; they assembled programmes. We must upgrade the quality of work.

When I heard about this debate last Thursday, I wrote to LECs throughout Scotland to inform them. I am grateful to the overwhelming number of LECs that responded and for the information that they provided. In some cases, I very much approve of the commitment to special educational needs.

What definition of special educational needs or special training needs is used within LECs? I received a letter from the Parliamentary Under- Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart) about the Government's youth training and employment training programmes. He wrote :

"Both programmes are primarily intended to cater for people who are capable of completing a course of training within a reasonable timescale and of taking up employment afterwards. This definition can, of course, include people with mental handicap ;"

He said that, because that was what the letter was about. he continued :

"where this is so, the Government require that they be given, along with other unemployed disabled people, a priority for places on Employment Training ; or, in the case of young disabled people, the guarantee of an offer of a Youth Training place."

However, the priority is that one should be almost immediately capable of taking up a job afterwards. The Government's guarantee remains only for two years and there is then a black hole in respect of provision. Voluntary organisations consider that there is no clarity. The Scottish Society for the Mentally Handicapped says that it is not clear what special needs mean and that

"The definition of special needs' is not clear, and the emphasis on positive outcomes, with the implication that the only real positive outcome is a job, is a deterrent to providing for people with learning difficulties."

In a city such as Glasgow, where male unemployment is 20 per cent., many people with special needs certainly have no chance of a job. Because of the private sector's neglect of those with special needs, only schemes that are run by agencies such as the Scottish Society for the Mentally Handicapped cater for them. As the Scottish Society for the Mentally Handicapped says, that is not ideal in terms of integration into the community.

A huge issue is mounting up for the Department of Employment, and it had better face up to it soon. I refer to meeting the training guarantee. Ministers north and south of the border say that it is being met. Careers officers north of the border, and certainly in the west of Scotland, say that it is not being met. In March 1992, the Strathclyde careers service reported a shortfall of nearly 3,500 places in the west of Scotland and a 1,316 shortfall in the Glasgow area. In Glasgow terms, those 1,300 places are equal to two secondary schools. In terms of fourth-year leavers, that is about the output of 10 to a dozen schools for which there are said by the careers services not to be places.

In contrast, the Government and many local enterprise companies say that they are meeting the guarantee. Mr. Stuart Gulliver of the Glasgow Development Agency states :

"In Glasgow, we have so far been able to meet the needs of all young people who have actively sought a training place."

That is interesting--

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"actively sought a training place."

In other words, if one feels that the training is no good, that there are no opportunities or that the Government's training is a synonym for exploitation and one stops looking, the Government are meeting that guarantee. However, bearing in mind the Glasgow shortfall of 1,300, for instance, that is not good enough and Ministers cease to be credible in respect of what they are providing. In Scotland in 1988, 41,000 employment training places were available. This year, the figure is 18,000, yet the Government say that guarantee and A groups are being met.

There is evidence of people with special needs--the Scottish Society for the Mentally Handicapped has reported on this matter--being pushed away from employment training towards employment action in which there is no training component. Scottish Borders Enterprise states :

"With yet another cut in the Adult Training budget expected for 1993-94 it is difficult to see how this LEC can again ring fence training for special needs at this level."

So far, it has been able to meet the need for special needs provision only by taking from other sectors of its funding. It goes on :

"In any case no increase in funding levels reduces the quality of training when taking account of inflation."

The quality of training is falling as well. Scottish Borders Enterprise further states :

"The cost of training people with special needs is high in comparison to mainstream training. Presently an LEC can deliver this type of training, but only if all other training provision can be delivered at a reduced cost. The unit price for Special Needs Training is far in excess of the unit price drawn down from Scottish Enterprise. Some recognition of the high cost of this training should be given by Government and a separate funding structure introduced." Considerable problems are stacking up in terms of the quality of training for those with special needs. It is particularly objectionable that that is occurring in such an atmosphere of secrecy. We have a world of commercial confidentiality. I do not agree that publicly funded training should involve commercial confidentiality. That is the wrong approach. Contractors and subcontractors are told that they must not breathe a word about the contents of the contracts that they sign with local enterprise companies and that such matters are subject to complete commercial confidentiality.

I recently received a very useful letter from the relevant Minister in the Department of Employment. He said that one could not allow information about training places to be made public because that would break the commercial confidentiality between the Government and the relevant local enterprise company. But who included commercial confidentiality? The Government did. The Government have said that that matter is in the world of commerce. If such information were available, it would not stop firms, private training providers, voluntary organisations or local authorities putting forward tenders.

My limited knowledge of economics--it goes back a good many years--tells me that the perfect market is one in which people know everything, an open market. It is one in which people know what others are offering. The Government seem to believe that if there is competition in secret, quality will go up. In general, if something costs less there is a cut in quality rather than an increase in quality. Certainly, there are exceptions to that. For example, the

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current edition of Which? warns that one should not buy Rayban sunglasses. With Rayban sunglasses at their current prices, one is not getting anything extra, according to Which? Generally, the pattern is that one gets what one pays for and that, if unit prices are constantly forced down, quality will go.

There must be openness about training contracts. One should know how public money is being spent, what it is being spent on, and who is being trained by whom and for what purpose. That should not be a matter of commercial confidentiality. There is a squeeze on special needs and it will get worse next year because local enterprise companies or TECs will not be able to ring-fence their training. The ethos of the local enterprise companies is to provide funding which is related to output. When people contract with the LECs 25 per cent. of their money is held back and is not paid unless they achieve results. Therefore, there is payment by results. I do not disagree with some aspects of that. Output and results in youth training and employment training have been woefully low in terms of

qualifications. However, such an ethos puts pressures on the LECs to back out of special needs training and concentrate on sections of youth training and employment training where it is easy to achieve results.

The LECs and, I assume, the TECs have responded to the requirement to produce results by introducing literacy and numeracy targets for special needs training. I have no quarrel with that, but there is a lot more to special needs training than literacy and numeracy. Training must involve physical, social, emotional and recreational competence as well as occupational competence. There must be much more monitoring of quality in the LECs and TECs. We shall certainly press for that.

I wish to spend a little time on anxieties about the Further and Higher Education Act (Scotland) 1992, which has its equivalent in England and Wales. The Bill was considerably improved in Standing Committee for the purposes of special needs.

I pay tribute to the Minister who was involved and to the Opposition members of the Committee. We worked closely together to improve special needs provision. We are delighted that for the first time in a Scottish Act, special needs of the post-16s are mentioned. We had it written into the Act that local authorities should be consulted and that development plans should be drawn up. The Scottish Office was required to lay down guidelines for the independent boards of management of the newly independent colleges on meeting special needs requirements. That is all to the good, but it leaves some problems.

A particular problem is that the responsibility for paying for a great deal of special needs training has been left with the local authorities. The bursaries have to be paid by the local authorities. I believe that the further education sector should not have been taken away from the local authorities in any case. Tensions have been created because local authorities have had their colleges taken away, but have been left with responsibility for payment. The Secretary of State and independent people will set the fees that the local authorities have to pay.

Considerable sums of money are involved in special needs provision. My local authority sometimes has to make decisions that involve fees and residential charges of about £25,000 a year for one person. I wish to ensure that, between them, the local authorities and the Government guarantee that quality of provision continues.

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In the past, larger local authorities have created an integrated service. In Strathclyde every college provided a full -time course for those with special educational needs, but some made specialist provision. Motherwell college of further education has made specialist residential provision because the region was not able to evade its responsibilities. We said that one of our colleges must make residential provision. Another makes specialist provision for the deaf.

I am worried that, even though we altered the Bill a great deal in Committee, colleges have been told that the drive of further education colleges should be overwhelmingly vocational. If the private sector is brought in to run a college, clearly the vocational element will be strong. However, good further education provision involves a great deal more than vocational training. It is still feared that colleges will run the courses that attract cash. The people who have cash tend to be in the private sector. They tend not to be those with special educational needs.

In Scotland the ethos of special needs training is a complete mess because the Government have not thought it out. The colleges and the Secretary of State have a duty to provide all forms of further education, yet the local authorities have the ability and the power to do that. Co-ordination will be extremely difficult.

I am especially worried about a neglected matter which we must consider. Employment, education and training are an important part of community care. There seems to be a massive deficit in the debate about community care. We talk about health and social work provision and about the Department of Employment, but there is a chasm. What do people, either those in institutions or those whom we avoid putting into institutions, do from Monday to Friday during the time of the day when other people go to work? What do they do from nine to five? Clearly, employment, training and education have a major part to play. However, in all our discussions about community care there is a chasm which is not filled by transferring responsibility for education and training to LECs or TECs. Community care is about more than that.

I am critical of all parties. We have allowed post-16 provision to be segmented. One profession has control of a group of people for a time. So from nought to five years old people belong to the Department of Health. From five to 16 years they belong to education. Post-16 they are transferred to the LECs for a couple of years. We must examine and integrate provision for people over 16 with special educational needs.

I cannot remember all the schemes that the Government have introduced over the years. They started with the job creation programme. The Government have introduced various schemes designed for the so-called normal population. The local voluntary organisations have sought to skew their provision to obtain money from the Manpower Services Commission, the Training Agency or, now, the LECs. Therefore, provision for special educational needs always comes from programmes that were not designed for that purpose. We must consider education, health, social work and voluntary provision on a cross-departmental basis and ask what we should provide. Until we do that, we shall continue to make inadequate provisions. The process should be transparent and open and all parties should take part. At present, the position for those leaving school is unsatisfactory. We cannot find out what is happening to them in terms of training, its quality and its adequacy,

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because that is covered by commercial confidentiality. We must open up training. All parties must admit that our provision for adults with special needs is inadequate. I hope that the Government will respond to some of the points that I have made.

10.59 am

Mr. Harry Greenway (Ealing, North) : I hope that the hon. Member for Clydeband and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) will forgive me if I do not follow him down the paths that he has trodden. It is not because the matters that he raised were not important, and I hope that he will understand.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell) on introducing the debate and giving us the opportunity to discuss this important subject- -it could not be more important. I hope that the House will forgive me if I have to leave for a time after speaking. I have the Adjournment debate today and I have to do some other work in between.

In 1981, I was a member of the Select Committee on Education, Science and Arts and, like my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam), I served on the Standing Committee that considered the Education Bill in that year. That Bill made provision for children with special educational needs. The Select Committee has also studied special needs education since that time. We came to a number of important conclusions.

First, the Select Committee felt that there should be a standard procedure for statementing children. We came to that conclusion because we found extraordinarily divergent arrangements for statementing when we visited schools in different local authorities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter said, some of those procedures were working well, but we felt others to be inadequate. Secondly, the Select Committee felt that in many cases it took too long for a child to be statemented. We wanted it to take not more than two years--that is quite long enough. At my surgeries I meet people who have asked for statements, have had to wait an undue length of time for them and have not found them satisfactory when they arrived. No doubt my colleagues have had the same experience. I would fence with the hon. Member for Cambridge over her statement that only one parent in seven learnt anything from statementing--

Mrs. Anne Campbell : No.

Mr. Greenway : I hope that I am not misrepresenting the hon. Lady.

Mrs. Campbell : That information came from the Audit Commission's report, which stated that 13 per cent.--about one in seven--of parents find the information given in the statement valuable. The rest find it valuable for other reasons or do not find it valuable at all.

Mr. Greenway : I accept that. There is no disagreement between us over the facts. Many parents find statements valuable and learn much from them. From my experience in education--and I have quite a lot--I know that many parents are stabilised by the process of talking with informed psychologists or teachers about the behaviour of their child and the child's educational needs, and that in itself is a valuable process, as I am sure that the hon. Lady would agree.

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Special schools continue to have special value. I do not disagree with Warnock, but special schools have done, and continue to do, a marvellous job for children. The special school continues to have a place, as it gives children security and concentrates on the needs of the children being cared for. There is a great deal more to be said for them, but those two points are substantial. Parents relate to an institution which deals with the needs of their child, and that is almost beyond price in educational and social terms.

I do not want special schools to disappear, as Warnock advocated, but that does not mean that I do not understand the strong arguments for integrating children with special needs in the education process.

My last school had 2,200 pupils between the ages of 11 and 18. It was a mixed comprehensive and contained a partial hearing unit for 70 children. They integrated into the school very well and came out of the unit for about 80 per cent. of the week. As deputy headmaster, I was responsible for the curriculum, for discipline and for various other aspects of school life. That ensured that I watched how those children integrated in the school, how they responded to ordinary pupils and vice versa. It was invaluable for all concerned. Therefore, I accept what Warnock says, but let us not get rid of special schools or advocate that we do so.

The John Chilton school in my constituency is a complex of first and middle schools--there is soon to be a primary school--a nursery school and a good comprehensive. Children escape--perhaps that is not the right word--from work in the special school to go to the high school, and to what will become the primary school, and then return to the special school. That seems to me to be the ideal. There must be a combination of the two-- special schools which work with ordinary schools. That is where children score best and that is what I want to happen, but it is not the full integration recommended by Warnock and provided for in the 1981 Act.

The hon. Member for Cambridge and her colleagues are mistaken to vilify grant-maintained schools. They are out of touch with political and social developments that they will have to come to terms with. There are some signs that they are beginning to do so, but if they do not, they will be left miles behind and will not move with the educational developments of the times, which are in tune with pupils and parents.

Mrs. Anne Campbell indicated dissent.

Mr. Greenway : The hon. Lady shakes her head. She is entitled to her view, but that is what I and my colleagues feel and many Labour Members agree with us. However, that is not my point. I want the money for statemented children in grant-maintained schools to be ring fenced. That is the only way to ensure that they get the proper provision that they must have. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will at least consider that suggestion. If money is ring fenced for such important provision, schools-- whether they are grant maintained, within local authorities or under local management ; whoever is putting up the money--will not be tempted to refuse children on the grounds that they are statemented and therefore

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require special resources, such as one teacher to a child, which will be expensive. In the intersts of our children and of the nation that temptation must be put aside.

I think that the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley) wishes to intervene.

Mr. Dafydd Wigley (Caernarfon) : No, I was agreeing.

Mr. Greenway : I am delighted that we agree. I feel strongly that the Department of Education and the Welsh Office should issue guidance to define a child's level of need, which should trigger the procedures of the Education Act 1981. That was a valuable suggestion from the Audit Commission, and if the Department could set out those guidelines and procedures we would be on our way towards a standardised procedure. Much would be achieved by establishing the standardised procedure that I have described, which was called for by the Select Committee. There would no longer be unequal provision. It is not fair for children with a special need to have good provision in one area but be under-provided for in another. How can that be fair in any society?

I should like to issue a warning, as a longstanding practitioner in and out of the classroom. The Warnock report showed clearly and persuasively that 5 per cent. of children have special educational needs. In large schools such as those that I described earlier, many children have special educational needs of some kind, whether behavioural or emotional. Ordinary schools have a responsibility and an ability to absorb children with various difficulties. If the teaching profession does not make it its business to do that, the line can become blurred and more children can be said to have special needs and behavioural problems which cannot be contained, simply because the profession is not doing all that it can for those children. It is a tragedy when children are put out of school, especially when they have emotional difficulties.

I recently heard of a boy living not far from my constituency who was suspended from his school. His father had died two or three months previously and the boy had a row with a teacher. He went back and vandalised the teacher's car, the teacher called the police and the whole affair built up. The boy has now been through a nasty court case and has been sent away. His mother is beside herself. She is a good and responsible person with a strong religious faith and has done her utmost to help. The boy has been pushed out of the system, to his great detriment. That tragedy should have been avoided. I strongly agree with the joint Audit Commission and HMI report, which said :

"Statutory time limits for the completion of assessments and statements should be set, with redress for parents if these are not met."

At present, parents have no redress if a statement is not produced for them within a reasonable time. That is unfair and places strong emotional pressure on parents, which they should not have to bear. Time limits should and could be set. It will require hard work by all concerned and may require additional resources, but it should be done.

11.12 am

Mr. Dafydd Wigley (Caernarfon) : I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell) on introducing the debate and giving us an opportunity, at an appropriate time, to comment on special education for those with special needs. It is particularly appropriate in

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the wake of the publication of the Audit Commission report, a valuable document which has brought many new aspects to our attention.

When the Education Act was passed in 1981, there were high hopes. It was the International Year for Disabled People and we saw the Act as a substantial step forward and hoped that it would achieve real changes. Some of those hopes have been achieved, but there is a long way to go. At that time, I had a personal direct interest because I had two boys at a special school. Since then, I have tried to be involved, through the all-party disablement group and in other ways, in issues which arise.

The House and the Government have significant problems with which to deal. None the less, I pay tribute to teachers in both special and mainstream schools who work with those with special educational needs. They do sterling work and any criticism is not directed at the teachers in question. We have two excellent special schools in my constituency-- Pendalar in Caernarfon and Hafod Lon near Pwllheli--and I accept that there will always be a need for a certain number of speical schools, although we should move towards as much integration as possible where appropriate.

The problems with the Act fall into five categories. First, integration has not worked as fully or evenly as we had hoped. Secondly, the statementing system is far from satisfactory. Thirdly, the availability of specialist staff, support services and therapists is inadequate, which has obvious resources implications. Fourthly, changes in the education structure as a result of recent legislation have caused problems. The local management of schools, in particular, has implications for special education. Fifthly, a potential problem may arise more quickly in Wales than elsewhere, but will also arise in England, is the effect of changes in the structure of local government on those provisions.

There has been a great variation in integration from area to area. The services and approach that a pupil receives often depend on where the pupil lives. Some local education authorities have been slow in implementing the 1981 Act which, again, may be due to lack of resources. I remember noting the comments made by the Select Committee on Education in its fifth report on staffing for pupils with special educational needs in 1989-90. Paragraph 24 of that report says :

"The extent to which LEAs and governing bodies can implement the suggested staffing model, given existing staffing levels and current financial circumstances, requires clarification. The previous Committee noted that lack of resources had restricted implementation of the 1981 Act and that a commitment of extra resources would be needed if further significant progress were to be made. This is still our view. The DES should not recommend staffing levels to LEAs unless it is prepared to make funds available for these to be implemented." The Committee's comment still bears scrutiny today. I believe that there should be minimum staffing recommendations, and the funds which are needed should be made available centrally.

In that context, I wish to point out the needs of certain categories of children and young people with special educational needs. The integration of deaf children into mainstream schools can be achieved only if adequate advisory and peripatetic services are available. Those are not always available due to lack of resources. Our attention has been drawn to the fact that only 26 per cent.

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of blind children receive mobility training and, in mainstream schools, 90 per cent. have no mobility training whatever. The hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) spoke about provision for children over the age of 16. The provision of education in long-stay hospitals for those with severe problems will be in question when funding goes from the LEAs to the further education funding councils. Will resources be made available for education provision at long- stay hospitals?

At the other end of the scale, it is worth reminding ourselves that the statementing procedure can be commenced at the age of two. That has an implication for nursery education under the 1981 Act. It is important that one identifies special educational needs at an early age. Some LEAs have not been providing nursery places, and some parents of children with special needs have had to pay for those provisions.

MENCAP has drawn attention to the problem, saying :

"at least one Local Education Authority parents whose children have statements of special educational needs are no longer receiving their nursery place free of charge. This development has occurred since the implementation of the Childrens Act. It is now the case that assessment places once paid for by the LEA are no longer being funded and social services who run the education provision are charging parents under the Childrens Act for the nursery place their child occupies.

In other words, children and parents are being charged for provision made under sections of their 1981 statement."

The Minister may wish to consider that serious matter.

Defects occur in the current statementing system. The recent Audit Commission report has drawn attention to the massive variation in statementing reports. The proportion of statemented pupils varies from 0.8 to 3.3 per cent. That is an enormous variation. One would not expect such a statistical variation if the same policies and guidelines were being implemented in all areas. The workings of the present system need to be investigated.

The length of time one has to wait for a statement also needs to be investigated. The guidelines are designed to achieve a statement within six months, but in practice the process can take as long as three years. Such a delay makes the entire system useless, because if one has to wait that long for a response to needs that were perceived three years ago, vital time in a child's development is lost. An example of such delay has been passed to me by the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation, RADAR. It concerns a young girl, Janine, an eight-year-old pupil with epilepsy, little motor control and behavioural and learning difficulties. RADAR states :

"An assessment was begun by the former ILEA in February 1990 and handed over to her new Inner London LEA in April 1990. She is still without a Statement. Clearly this situation is not attributable to administrative transfer or delay. It indicates that the LEA is stalling so that expenditure on the pupil can be deferred until resources allow."

The Minister asked his hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam) for examples of such delay and I believe that that example cited needs to be examined.

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