They say that history repeats itself, but the Labour party won’t be expecting it to happen quite so quickly. Last week, a ‘Starmtrooper’ rebellion forced the government to make a series of last-minute concessions and compromises on its welfare bill for fear of a humiliating defeat in the House of Commons.
Now, Labour is facing a similar battle, but this time over special educational needs (SEND) provision. MPs are criticising ministers’ refusals to rule out cuts as part of its SEND overhaul, the details of which will be unveiled in the autumn. As one Labour MP warned, ‘if they thought taking money away from disabled adults was bad, watch what happens when they try the same with disabled kids.’
These children risk becoming trapped in a cycle of dependency
As with the welfare system, special education needs provision has become an unmanageable behemoth. Around 1.67 million pupils in England have SEND – 18.4 percent of the school population, and a 31 per cent increase since 2016. Around 576,000 children also have an EHCP (Education, Health and Care Plan): a legally binding document, replacing the old system of ‘statements’, which entitles students to specialist support, paid for by local authorities.
EHCPs are designed for students with the most severe needs, but the last decade has seen an astronomic rise in applicants – there are now 140 per cent more EHCPs than there were in 2015, with the total SEND budget costing more than £12 billion a year.
It’s easy to see why parents are nervous that the government is considering scrapping EHCPs as part of its reforms: EHCPs provide some statutory certainty in a system that is overstretched and underfunded. Yet the problem is the same one that lies at the heart of so many of our public services: society feels morally obliged to spend on the care, protection and education of those most in need, but we don’t actually have the money to do so.
Even when we do increase spending, the outcomes are not always positive: a report from the National Audit Office found that, despite the increase in funding, the system is ‘still not delivering better outcomes for children and young people’.
Governments then promise reforms – which rarely mean anything other than spending less money – but MPs clearly do not have the stomach for reality. We saw this with PIP: we spend over £320 billion on welfare, and yet the government could not even successfully shave off £5 billion from the bill.
A similar retreat on SEND reform seems inevitable. As unsustainable as the current system is, preserving the status quo seems more politically palatable than daring to change eligibility criteria.
Yet the government has to find its backbone here. The current system is bankrupting councils: in 2023-4, Kent spent £17 million on assessing and delivering EHCPs, and an eye-watering £70 million transporting children to and from school or medical appointments. The County Councils Network (CCN) projects that the cost of ‘free’ transport will reach £3.6 billion a year by 2030.
If the financial arguments won’t persuade MPs to follow through here, then perhaps the emotional ones will. To put it simply, we need change because the families who most critically need support are not receiving it. Diagnostic inflation means skyrocketing waiting lists and increased competition for limited resources: for example, almost a quarter of families with disabled children now have to wait over a year to see social services.
The numerous stories of people abusing the system – for example, an 8-year-old with ‘behavioural difficulties’ in Gainsborough who was given daily private cars to and from school despite no formal assessment or diagnosis – must be sickening to hear if you are the parent of a severely disabled child who cannot access vital support.
Our obsession with neurodivergency has backfired on those most in need; I often wonder what parents of severely autistic children, who may never communicate, socialise, or perform basic tasks independently, think of the endless carousel of celebrities who pay for an autism diagnosis to ‘understand themselves better’.
The system doesn’t work now, but it will be even worse in future. The Department for Work and Pensions predicts that the number of children entitled to disability benefits will rise by a third by 2030 – one of the fastest-growing benefits categories. Only 4 per cent of EHCPs are currently going to children with severe learning disabilities associated with physical incapacity; the vast majority of plans go to children on the autistic spectrum, with the third most common reason being social, emotional and mental health (given to over 130,000 children last year).
These children risk becoming trapped in a cycle of dependency: told that they cannot function independently at school, told that they need support but not actually given it, told that they are too mentally unwell to hold down a job. For once, change needs to be non-negotiable.
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