Over three hours yesterday, MPs spoke, many powerfully, and from personal experience, about the state of SEND at the SEND Petition Debate in Westminster Hall. This was the debate that came about after the petition we, and our Campaign partners at Save Our Children’s Rights, have promoted this year smashed through the limit required to trigger a government response (and a second response), and then an official parliamentary hearing.
Introduced by MP Roz Savage, MP after MP spoke of lack of trust, lack of accountability, and of the painful, devastating experiences of families and their children with special educational needs and disabilities. This article will bring you just a few of the best quotes. Both Learning Disability Today’s Alison Bloomer and I did our best to live tweet using #SendDebate, but I was certainly flagging towards the end—and that was before I started writing this post!
How did the petition come about?
SNJ’s indefatigable Rachel Filmer started the petition at the end of last year, patiently waiting for it to be approved by Parliament’s Petitions Committee. When we started to promote it in earnest, it took off immediately. In a shorter time than we thought possible, we hit 10k signatures, then 50k, then 100,000, guaranteeing a government debate. By the end of yesterday, more than 125,000 people had signed the petition. You can still sign it here
At this point, I want to pay tribute to not only Rachel but to our whole Save Our Children’s Rights campaign team. We have worked together over the summer, going above and beyond to push the petition, make a noise and make a difference.
The rally
The day started off with the rally in the square outside Parliament. It was awash with parents, and well done to all those parents at SEND Sanctuary, Let Us Learn2 and Disabled Children’s Partnership (where we are members) who made it happen—and those parents who got themselves into London to participate (a feat in itself on a windy Monday).
You can see more of that event on the SEND Sanctuary Instagram, complete with speeches from Helen Hayes MP, chair of the Education Select Committee, and Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, himself the parent of a disabled young man who has spoken about his own family’s struggles to get support. You see, it’s not our children we despair over. It’s how difficult it is made, deliberately, to get the support our children are legally entitled to. And that’s a message brought home throughout the debate that followed in Westminster Hall. Stop blaming parents. You can also see our own photos on the SOCR Instagram.
Several of our team managed to get to London, attending the rally before moving into Westminster Hall public gallery. They were joined by around 90 MPs, something not often seen.
The SEND debate
The debate was the first chance for the new Minister for Schools and SEND, Georgia Gould MP, to speak on SEND in a debate. It didn’t go as well as she had hoped – but more on that later.
The most moving speeches were those of MPs who are themselves parents of disabled children. This included, Jen Craft MP, a SEND parent herself, who struggled to maintain her composure as she spoke.
“As many members will know, I have the privilege of being mum to two incredible girls, one of whom has additional needs. And like many parents of a disabled child, I keenly feel the unfairness in the challenges that my child will face throughout her life, challenges which are exacerbated throughout her early years and childhood by a system that is far too often adversarial, baffling and unsupportive. This is an experience that many of my constituents have gone through when trying to access the right support for their children.”
Jen Craft MP
Ms Craft listed a few of the things that she believes can be done:
“Inclusive schools, truly inclusive schools. A commitment to meeting need wherever it arises. Support for teachers and crucially, school support staff. Training for people who deal with our children on a day-to-day basis. Early intervention, speech and language support. Social and emotional mental health support.
Jen Craft MP
Funding for high needs placements. Holistic partnership working between local authorities. Education placements, healthcare services. Incentives for inclusivity and sanctions for schools who do not pull their weight when it comes to SEND. And above all, an acknowledgement that every single child deserves an education and the support needs. The only way we can fix the current system, I believe, is by taking an approach from those who have experienced it.
“My interest in my child does not stop at the school gates. It is holistic. It is looking forward to her life as she goes through childhood, into young out adulthood and into adulthood. It is looking forward to her life as she goes through childhood, into young adulthood and into adulthood. We need an acknowledgement that every single child deserves an education. But this is a matter of social justice, of fairness, of equality and of equity. Like many parents of a disabled child, I am tired, I’m constantly anxious, and I’m constantly ready to go into battle for my child. But what I am not, and what my beautiful child is not, is a burden. We, we did not cause this crisis, but we want to fix it. We want to work with governments to make things better for our children. I do not want a single other parent to have to fight for the very basic rights of their child to have to fight for.”
Surrey Skulduggery
Surrey County Council was mentioned a number of times, and not in a good way. MP for Dorking, Chris Coghlan spoke of a mother he recently met whose daughters both have profound disabilities
“The other day a mum called Jenny came to see me about her daughters Isabel and Sienna. They are severely learning disabled, epileptic, blind, nonverbal, tube fed. Isabll and Sienna have difficult lives but they thrive when they are together. Jenny had had to take Surrey County Council to tribunal four times to fight for their rights, not only to get their needs met, but simply to get them in the same school together. Although she actually won her fight, it cost her her life savings and her marriage. I said to her that if she was my mum, I would have been incredibly grateful, but I hope she is proud of what she’s doing because she should be. It is not only profoundly disabled children who are mistreated by local authorities.mI have today published almost 500 family testimonies of unlawful, harmful and unethical behaviour on SEND across 92 local authorities across the entire country.”
Chris Coghlan MP
Ben Coleman MP, backed calls from IPSEA and ourselves for SEND Support to be placed on a statutory footing. He pointed out that for SEN Support, schools only have a “best endeavours” duty, something he called a “…vague obligation. Some schools step up magnificently, but others, under financial pressure, reduce or remove support”
A number of MPs spoke about the need to retain EHCPs and not to dilute rights.
Clare Young MP said not supporting children with SEND isn’t just bad for them, it’s bad for society as a whole.
“Whatever the new system looks like, it must give legal backing to ensure all children get an appropriate education. And it must see parents as partners, not adversaries. … Support in education is not a favour, it is a legal right. Yet too many families are having to battle to get what the law already promises…. The SEND system should not have to depend on a parent’s stamina.
Claire Young MP
Families want to know their rights will be kept. They want the 20-week duty to mean something, not be a best-case scenario. They want to know where deadlines are missed. Their child won’t be left without support. In the meantime, families need confidence that when their child needs support, it arrives without unnecessary barriers, without a post code lottery, and without them having to beg for what they are entitled to.”
Parent voice at the front
Jess Brown-Fuller, MP for Chichester, said the drawn-out EHCP process and tribunals waste money that could be spent on provision, and that parents’ voices must be at the centre of reform.
Of course, that goes double for the voice of young people and we must never forget that.
Marie Goldman MP said it was because of parents’ campaigning and emailing MPs that so many made it to the debate. She warned the minister not to let parents down:
“I could tell you about the stories that they told me just today about one parent who’s been waiting 91 weeks to get her EHCP, another parent who told me about the rigid attendance rules which punish children who are unable to attend school because of their special educational needs.
Marie Goldman MP
And I could tell you about the grandmother who was in tears because she was worried that she wouldn’t be able to get the support that her granddaughter needed. But most of all, they told me about the worry of EHCP rug being pulled from underneath and with nothing else left to catch them. And that is what I’m particularly worried about…. Any new system that comes in has to be properly tested. It has to be trusted by parents as well. And that trust simply isn’t there at the moment. So I say to the government, tread very, very carefully with this because parents are really worried and they will be very, very cross indeed if they don’t get the support that they absolutely need. And governments do not have a very good reputation of getting is right.”
Although the government in 2014, and Ed Timpson, the SEND Minister at the time, did get it right with the Children and Families Act. It’s far from perfect, but it is good legislation on the whole. Where they got it very, very wrong was in the implementation, in the funding, and in a lack of real, biting accountability measures –something Mr Timpson acknowledged in our podcast last year
What out team thought
“There has been so much that is positive about today’s debate but what has struck me the most is the overwhelmingly supportive and informed positions of the 90 MPs who requested to speak in this debate. Hearing so many MPs sharing stories about their constituents with SEND, understanding the complex issues so clearly, and underlining the importance of existing legal rights.The overwhelming majority of MPs stated explicitly that legal rights must be protected, alongside the need for accountability, inclusion and early intervention. The question remains: if the white paper doesn’t deliver on these issues, will these MPs go to bat for our children? Time will tell, but the overwhelming defence of our children’s rights in a packed hall has been a moving experience which has restored some of my hope.”
Rachel Filmer, SNJ, SOCR, SEND Rights Alliance
SNJ’s Renata Watts, who was (sort of) name checked by her Hertfordsire MP as a co-director of SNJ, was also watching today in the public gallery. Renata said,
“It’s great to see so many MPs speaking passionately about their constituent’s experiences of the SEND system. It’s also heartening to see that almost all the MPs in attendance (and it was standing room only) are raising the issues that the SOCR campaign has highlighted. Now we just need to wait to see if these words will convert into action. Georgia Gould MP has been given a very clear message today, let’s see what she does with it!”
Renata Watts, SNJ Co-Director
“It’s very encouraging to see so many MPs standing up for children’s right to an education that meets their needs, and defending the law that entitles them to the special educational provision and support that can transform lives if it’s put in place soon enough. Our elected representatives have heard the message loud and clear: children and young people are being let down by a system that lacks accountability, that blames parents and waits for children to fail before putting in place the support they need. The ball is now firmly in the Government’s court to learn lessons from past failures and make the education system work for all children and young people with SEND.”
Catriona Moore, IPSEA Policy Manager & SNJ Columnist
SEND Inquiry this week
The only real news to come out of the debate came from Helen Hayes MP, the chair of the Education Select Committee, who has spent the summer writing up their SEND Inquiry report. This, she said, will be published this week, so stand by for that
“I began the inquiry with only a sense of the overwhelming difficulty of the challenge, but at the end of it I am convinced that meaningful reform of the SEND system is possible and deliverable.”
She pointed to the “big themes” that came through in evidence submissions (see our 80 recommendations from ours here) , none of which will come as a surprise
- There are major problems with accountability in the SEND system. “Accountability is overwhelmingly loaded on to the statutory part of the system, which means that if ordinarily available provision is not there or goes wrong, there is no recourse for parents. That problem needs to be fixed.”
- There is a problem with how we equip teachers. “There are children with SEND in every single school, in every classroom, up and down the country, but we do not routinely equip teachers to teach the children who are in front of them.”
- The funding system is broken. “There are problems about place planning, both in the inclusivity of mainstream schools and for specialist schools within the state sector.”
- Trust and confidence of parents in the system is utterly broken. “In seeking to solve the crisis, the Government must turn their attention to the ways in which that trust and confidence can be rebuilt, so that children across the country who deserve far better than they get at the moment can access the education to which they are entitled.”
What did the Minister say?
The new minister, Georgia Gould, was previously leader of Camden Council, so she is well aware of the system’s woes, as local parents will attest. But she did not seem to be prepared for the response from her fellow MPs when she declined to give any indication of what might be in the White Paper–specifically, no guarantee on EHCPs that MPs wanted.
The minister was pressed in her speech on what the government was actually going to do, but then Ms Gould just continued on without sharing anything. The longer she stuck to her script, the more impatient the gathered MPs became. One intervened to say that in the six of the 10 minutes available to her, she hadn’t told them what the government was going to do.
To be fair, she was never going to show up with the government’s plans for SEND tucked under her arm. To be even fairer, she has barely got her feet under the table, and while SEND is undoubtedly the most pressing matter in her portfolio, it is far from the only one that will be making up the upcoming Schools Bill.
She did say, however, that there will always be a legal right to additional support for children and young people with special educational needs. Whether that means all children, or just those in special schools, we do not know.
Ms Gould outlined her three guiding principles
- The voices of children, young people and their families, of teachers and those supporting them have to be at the forefront of reform.
- Children need to get support when their issues first appear. That early intervention has to be the basis of reform.
- Children with special educational needs shouldn’t have to go miles away from their families and communities to get the right support.
My commitment is as we move forward, that we need to work with the parents who’ve turned up, the parents who’ve signed the petition to get this right for families and to set out reforms that really transform young people’s lives.
Georgia Gould MP, SEND / Schools Minister
More reports out today
As well as the news of the SEND Inquiry report later this week, there are two other reports published today. First, the Law Commission’s final report on disabled children’s social care. Catriona has written this up and we will have it for you tomorrow, if not sooner.
Also, the APPG (All Party Parliamentary Group) on SEND, is today publishing a short report into “Reforming the SEND System in England” We have a copy but, as we only have a small volunteer team, with the debate happening, we’ve not yet had time to read it in depth—and it’s likely to be trampled by the SEND Inquiry report. However, one statement jumped out, where it said, “Local authorities are disproportionately affected by the current failures in the SEND system.” This has left us somewhat baffled, to put it mildly. Their report will be on their website today
Post-debate thoughts
Here’s Rachel below with her post-debate thoughts
IPSEA has also published a post on the debate that you can read here, as has Learning Disability Today here
Watch the debate on YouTube
You can watch the whole thing below
If you prefer to read, you can see the transcript here
Disabled Children’s Rights are Under Attack.
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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”
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 is a rare disease & chronic pain patient advocate with Ehlers Danlos syndrome.
- Dear Secretary of State for Education, Lucy Powell: an Open Letter from Special Needs Jungle and SEND legal charity SOS!SEN - August 4, 2026
- Research: Disabled young people define inclusive education as “learning in the place that’s right for them” - July 30, 2026
- EOTAS Consultation: A further assault on children’s SEND rights with cost saving and reintegration to schools at its heart - July 15, 2026
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