Dr Al Pinkerton

“I thank the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) for calling this important debate. Like him, my inbox has overflowed since I was elected last year, with concerned parents writing to me about the state of special educational needs provision. They recognise that the system is broken, but also that the system that they experience in Surrey is perhaps more broken that almost anywhere else. I will start with one bit of good news and an acknowledgment: I thank the Department for confirming funding for the new Frimley Oak academy, which will open in my constituency in the near future and will cater to 170 people. It represents an important step forward in addressing a vital local need for children with special educational needs. The sad reality is that for too long, so many parents and children in my constituency have been failed, I am sorry to say, by Surrey county council. Surrey has had the highest recorded number of SEND tribunal appeals anywhere in the country for three consecutive years. That statistic is a symptom of systemic dysfunction and failure. Behind every one of those appeals are human stories. A constituent of mine recently wrote to me. Her opening words were simply: “Our life is crumbling right now.” Others described their children being stripped of their childhood, families being physically and mentally broken, and their finances being pushed to the brink. At a constituency surgery that I held recently, a parent described the process of navigating the SEND system as being like walking the yellow brick road, with every trial and tribulation thrown in their way, and then finally getting to the emerald city that might represent something a little better, only to pull back the curtain and find that there is nothing there—an EHCP with the wrong name, describing the wrong child, offering an inappropriate package of support. Sitting at the top of all this in Surrey are the senior leaders, who say that there is no problem with special educational needs in Surrey at all, just parents who are too articulate. They claim, outrageously, that there is not a problem; there are just parents who have too inflated an idea of their children’s wants. It is absolutely atrocious.”