Eleanor Wright is the Legal Officer for SEND law advice and support charity, SOS!SEN. SOS!SEN are part of the Save Our Children’s Rights campaign
Bridget Phillipson, the Secretary of State for Education, has taken an all-too predictable swipe at education lawyers to account for criticisms of the recently-published SEND White Paper. Apparently, every lawyer who has dared to suggest that there is any problem with the White Paper has a “vested interest in maintaining the failed status quo” because of the profits they allegedly make out of exploiting parents, and is desperate to keep the current system unchanged. However, her comments simply do not hold water on a moment’s consideration of the facts, let alone basic logic.
If lawyers are exploiting parents, how does Ms Phillipson account for the fact that they are winning well over 98% of the appeals they undertake? Or indeed the very hefty proportion of appellants who win despite having no legal representation? She refers to statistics showing that 11% of middle-class parents spend over £5K on applications for EHC needs assessments, compared to 1% of working-class parents. But she fails to mention that a substantial proportion of this spend will be on experts’ fees, not lawyers. Does it occur to her that parents are frequently driven to seek legal help by sheer exhaustion with the relentless task of looking after disabled children and battling with the very local authorities who are supposed to help, but instead, show much more concern for protecting their own budgets?
Of the majority of parents accessing the tribunal without lawyers, many are substantially assisted by legal advice offered by SENDIASS and charities such as IPSEA, SOSSEN and others. Who does the Minister think trains those advisers, vets the legal advice they give out, and actively participates in trying to disseminate legal knowledge to parents, if not those dreadful lawyers? Or are they also simply trying to protect their pockets?
How to cut lawyers earnings: comply with the law
Ms Phillipson claims that lawyers are not happy with the government’s wish to tilt the system to earlier and fairer support for all children. I would challenge her to name one who has done anything other than welcome such proposals. Many may have expressed scepticism about whether they would actually happen, but that is another issue. Is it so outrageous to point out these are initiatives that could have been put in place soon after the last election, without any need to change the law?
The Secretary of State artistically ignores the fact that a succession of inquiries into the SEND system, including that of the House of Commons Select Committee, concluded there was little wrong with the current law except for a lack of accountability, which means local authorities regularly break it because they are so inadequately funded to deliver on their SEND responsibilities. If she cares to investigate further, she will discover this was a point made by many lawyers across the private, legal aid, and charity sectors who contributed to such inquiries.
What we have all been advocating for is a system where LAs are incentivised to comply with the law by reasonable funding, disincentivised by a system of accountability, and which is much more easily accessed by parents than is currently the case. If the DfE put such a system in place, the supposedly “greedy lawyers” lobbying for it would lose out financially. Currently, the most effective way of enforcing the law is through the threat of an application to the High Court for Judicial Review, which is potentially both expensive and complex.
If parents were able to enforce the law without legal action, this significant income stream for lawyers would largely disappear. Likewise, if local authorities were properly accountable for repeated unlawful decisions over granting EHCPs and their contents, and for persisting with hopeless tribunal defences to the bitter end, lawyers’ incomes would plummet. However, statistics more than demonstrate that all too many LAs are selflessly doing their bit for lawyers’ earnings by making unlawful and erroneous decisions with ever-increasing frequency, and refusing to concede hopeless cases with similar regularity. As those lawyers keep pointing out, even though it goes against their own financial interests, one of the many major holes in the White Paper proposals is the failure to make any attempt whatsoever to get to grips with behaviour of this nature.
No meaningful accountability in the SEND proposals
The issue many have with the current proposals is precisely the fact that they do not address accountability in any meaningful way. If a parent is not happy with a school’s decision not to issue one of the proposed “Individual Support Plans” for their child, or not to move them to Targeted Plus provision, or not to put them in a Support Base or Inclusion Base, or to withhold the support set out in an ISP, the main recourse the White Paper proposes is that Ofsted will take a dim view. Unfortunately, the prospect of a school’s knuckles perhaps getting rapped in a year’s time is not a great deal of consolation to a parent whose child desperately needs help now.
The other recourse the White Paper suggests is a complaint to a school’s complaints panel. These are currently usually made up of three governors—unpaid volunteers undertaking what is already quite an onerous role. Nevertheless, it is proposed that the panel should be strengthened by a SEND expert who could be someone like a SENCo from another school, or a senior leader with responsibility for SEND. There is no suggestion that complaints panels will have any power to enforce their findings, or that parents will have any further recourse if they disagree with the findings of such panels. I am very sceptical indeed that governors with little or no training in SEND will want to take on this significant further responsibility. However, I am more concerned that the inevitable result of putting in such a system is that the government will achieve the opposite of what Ms Phillipson claims.
The simple fact is, if no satisfactory accountability mechanism is built into the system, parents will be left with no choice but to take unresolved disputes back to the courts—by judicial review. If she is correct about lawyers’ pecuniary motivation, they should be welcoming the prospect of exponentially increased opportunities for judicial review that she is lining up here.
Who are these “fat cat lawyers”?
With the phrase “fat cat lawyers” apparently trembling on the Minister’s lips, it’s worth looking at who these terrible people are, and just how rich. Education law is a fairly niche area, and on the parents’ side of the fence, specialist lawyers are very roughly divided between those in private practice, those offering legal aid, and those in the voluntary sector. Contrary to popular belief, legal aid lawyers are the reverse of fat cats: one very little-known fact is that legal aid pay rates for work of this type have not gone up since 1996. Just think about that – inflation means what you could buy for £100 in 1996 would now cost over £200. MPs’ salaries in 1996 were £43K a year; now they rejoice in salaries which are about to be increased to £98,599. Frankly, I doubt that Ms Phillipson would get out of bed for what a legal aid lawyer earns.
As for the earnings of lawyers working for charities, discretion limits me—as one of them—simply to confirm that church mice have little cause for envy. Yes, of course private firms will charge higher fees, not least because education cases can be complex and require considerable levels of expertise and investment of time, but even they have to, and do, take into account the financial strains that parents of children with SEND are inevitably suffering.
Additionally, private solicitors’ fees are always open to checking by the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority. Lawyers in this field are simply doing their jobs by working to uphold the rule of law and pointing out the deficits in the Department for Education’s proposals. In my experience, all legal professionals who work for claimants are very much driven by a desire to seek the best results for extremely vulnerable children and young people.
It is hoped that Bridget Phillipson will take responses to the White Paper consultation more seriously, but lazy thinking processes such as this do not give much cause for optimism.
Eleanor Wright will join public law barrister, Steve Broach KC, Hayley Mason-Seager of SEN Legal, and Kate Cox, of IPSEA, on SNJ’s Legal RoundTable webinar on Monday 23rd March 7pm-9.30pm to discuss the legislative proposals in the Schools White Paper. There are only a few free spaces left. Register here
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Key Content
Also read:
- Beyond EHCPs: Why Inclusion Needs More Than a Document
- The Unacceptable Truth: 20 SEND legal rights at risk from the Government’s SEND reforms
- How health and family support systems are failing children starting school
- WEBINAR RECORDING! The implications for children’s legal rights to EHCPs and EOTAS of the Government’s SEND proposals
- When things go right: Shining a light on SEND Practitioners making a positive impact [Giveaway!]
- From suspicion to support: why the Government’s child protection reforms matter for disabled children
- Have your say on the future of transport for disabled children and young people
- Unison voices major concerns over SEND reform health plans for sick and disabled children out of school in the EOTAS consultation
- Top Tips for the EOTAS & EHCP consultation: Protect your child’s rights to statutory SEND support
- Navigating constraints: Why a former PCF chair thinks the current model is missing the mark for families
- Dear Secretary of State for Education, Lucy Powell: an Open Letter from Special Needs Jungle and SEND legal charity SOS!SEN
- Research: Disabled young people define inclusive education as “learning in the place that’s right for them”
Also read:
- Philippa Stobbs OBE: Reform plans must have a clear line of sight from children and young people with SEND to better outcomes.
- Why my daughter’s SEND experience means we’ll take this consultation judicial review fight wherever it needs to go
- DfE backtracks over consulting on planned SEND legal changes. Parents MUST respond to the consultation to say Not in Our Name!
- Consultation: Supporting pupils with medical conditions at school. What’s new, what’s missing and what you need to know
- Legal challenge launched against government SEND proposals that “significantly weaken the legal rights of children and young people”
- The law on SEND HAS NOT changed! But restricting EHCPs would be legally-sanctioned gatekeeping and a decimation of rights
- Leaking poorly thought-through plans and cuts to SEND rights will only end in tiers
- “We are living on a knife-edge” SENDCo research sounds the alarm about the high cost of mainstream inclusion
- Why the Government’s “SEND conversation” fell flat with parents: It’s failing to learn from voices of past experience
- Down Syndrome Act Guidance Consultation: Why you should care (even if you don’t have Down’s syndrome)
- Why the Human Rights Act matters when advocating for your child with SEND
- Reforming disabled children’s social care: a disappointing fudge as Law Commission rows back proposals
What kind of government is “bold” enough to scrap statutory EHCPs from vulnerable children?May 16, 2025
The SEND reforms in the Schools White Paper reveal rights given, and rights stripped awayFebruary 24, 2026
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She provides the legal oversight that underpins the support and services we provide, updating staff and volunteers on any changes in legislation and guidance that impacts the support we give. Eleanor delivers monthly training to both new and existing volunteers and is responsible for monitoring and oversight of the work they undertake.
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