This morning, parents of children with SEND met with Ed Davey and the leadership for the new East and West Surrey Councils. The new councils have an enormous responsibility to improve the lives of so many Surrey families. I’m so proud that five of our new Councillors in East Surrey are SEND parents including Caroline Joseph, who is leading on SEND working with Ashley Tilling, who is a former teacher and leading Children’s Services. This delivers on my commitment to put SEND parents in charge of SEND in East Surrey when they take over in April.

Alan Milburn’s recent report says that young people with SEND are 80% more likely to be NEET (not in education, employment, or training). More than 1 million people aged 16-24 are NEET- a staggering human and economic cost. A system built on effective early intervention, rigorous accountability and legally enforceable rights would better support young people with SEND to contribute to society, ultimately costing less in the long run. More crucially however, it would save lives.

I've been speaking with SEND parents about what an ethical local authority in East Surrey on SEND in a resource constrained environment might look like. Amongst other things on my list were the option of face to face meetings with case officers, rigorous transparency and absolute honesty, especially when things go wrong.

At my SEND coffee morning, covered tonight on ITV, parents expressed a wave of anger about cuts to their children’s legal protections from Local Authority misconduct and Surrey County Council's lawbreaking to the School’s Minister Georgia Gould. This included a mum whose daughter lost her life. I’m very grateful that the Minister came to Dorking, and I think she is serious about SEND reform, but she must listen to parents and finally act on Surrey’s routine lawbreaking. If the government wants to know what SEND parents think about cuts to their children’s rights they simply need to watch this. 

I have presented the government, and published in The Times, evidence that hundreds of SEND children are avoidably killing themselves due to public authority negligence.  ITV has broadcast evidence of misconduct and lawbreaking on SEND by 117 local authorities. The government is planning to reduce rights which family after family has said can save lives. The public will be asking their MP’s about this scandal: What did they know, when did they know and what did they do about it?

I said that Fiona Laskaris would succeed in changing the law that prevented her from saving her autistic son Christopher from murder in my maiden speech. Tonight, on national ITV news, Wes Streeting the Health Secretary confirmed that the Mental Capacity Act will indeed be reformed. ITV also broadcast another family devastated by the acts failings. Thank you to Jeremy Hunt, Jake Richards MP and Hilary Benn for all their support, as well as incredible ITV journalists Romilly Weeks and Elisa Menendez. Thanks to the ferocious determination of one grieving mother if in ten, twenty or thirty years time if another little boy or little girl is born in Christopher’s circumstances they might avoid Christopher’s fate.

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