Five per cent of Parliamentary Labour Party, including Wes Streeting, have higher number of EHCP children in their constituencies than their winning general election margin

Exclusive Education Uncovered analysis shows 22 Labour MPs have higher number of EHCP pupils in their constituency than their majority last July.

 

A total of 22 Labour members of Parliament won their seats at the last general election by a smaller margin than there are pupils with Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) at schools in their constituencies, Education Uncovered can reveal.

This is the case for some five per cent of Labour’s Parliamentary party, and six per cent of its party in England – potentially underlining one aspect of the difficulty that the government could face if it cuts back on the provision of EHCPs, as is currently being mooted as a possibility.

Wes Streeting is the highest-profile name on this list, the Health Secretary having 1,358 pupils with EHCPs at schools in his constituencies, but with a majority at the last election of just 528.

Westminster has been abuzz in recent days with talk that special educational needs provision could be the next element of the public finances to face controversial cutbacks, after the government was forced into a u-turn last week on plans to cut the benefits/”welfare” bill.

The government’s plans on the future of provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are due to be set out in a white paper to be published in the autumn.

Asked by the BBC yesterday whether she could rule out removing EHCPs, the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, did not do so, although she said: “What I can say very clearly is that we will strengthen and put in place better support for children.”

This morning, Helen Hayes, the chair of the Commons Education select committee, and herself a Labour MP, said the SEND reforms needed to be carried out in a way that “builds the trust” of parents who had lost faith in the system.

She told the Today programme that she hoped ministers would “learn the lessons from the welfare Bill and the events we saw last week in Parliament”.

On the BBC’s World at One, the BBC political correspondent Jack Fenwick stated that Labour MPs, some of whom had worried that there were more people in their constituencies receiving PIP (Personal Independence Payments), might now be in the same position with regard to EHCPs.

He said: “What happened with those changes to PIP was that many Labour MPs with quite small majorities, because there are a lot of MPs with small majorities, looked at the numbers and said ‘well actually, my majority is smaller than the number of people in my area with PIP’.

“That’s one of the reasons why they felt like they had to speak out about this, and obviously the government ended up u-turning on that. Now, once we get the government’s plans about what changes they want to make to SEND provision, in October, it wouldn’t at all surprise me if we see similar things, where people say ‘this is how many children in my area have this sort of plan, and this is my majority’.

“And it may well be the case, again, that those two numbers start to look quite worrying for some Labour MPs.”

Education Uncovered crunched the numbers, and found that this was indeed the case.