I am grateful for the opportunity to bring forward this debate. I know that the Labour Government have inherited a broken system of special educational needs and disabilities provision—broken by 14 years of Tory under-investment, mismanagement and chaos.

Even knowing this, I was shocked by the number of Amber Valley parents and carers who have reached out to me desperate for help. They have been let down by a national SEND system in measured decline and, in Derbyshire, by a county council demonstrating “widespread and/or systemic failings”.

SEND provision throughout the country is in a bad state, but in Derbyshire it is at crisis point. This Government are committed to “breaking down barriers to opportunity”.

Where previous Conservative Governments failed, we will succeed in rebuilding our SEND system and ensuring it is properly funded. In Derbyshire, however, we must go further. Derbyshire county council is failing our children.

That is the story I have heard over and over from parents, carers and educators in Amber Valley. It was therefore no surprise to read of widespread and systemic failings in Ofsted’s damning report on Derbyshire county council’s SEND provision.

By the time Ofsted published its findings in November 2024, I had already heard about those failings at first hand through countless emails and surgery appointments. Wanting to get a true picture of the scale of the issue, I conducted a survey on SEND provision in Amber Valley.

The results spoke for themselves, with 88% of respondents rating SEND provision in Amber Valley as poor and only 2% saying it was good.

Some 83% complained of long waiting times, 81% said that provision in mainstream schools was insufficient, and 70% said that they had experienced problems obtaining an education, health and care plan, which is the first step in accessing support for their child.

I commend the hon. Lady on bringing this debate forward. I spoke to her beforehand. It is heartbreaking to hear what she is saying about her constituency, and I understand that, but the situation is replicated across this whole great United Kingdom.

The number of Members who are here to speak is an indication of how many want to voice their concerns. She is right to talk about those who are waiting. Does she agree that early diagnosis and early intervention are all that really matters? If we can get that done early, we can save a child.

It can give a child a future and an opportunity, and it can take the pressure off the parents as well.

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention on a matter that I know is close to his heart. He is absolutely right. The delays are a real concern, and diagnosis at an early stage is important, but that is not what we are seeing in Derbyshire. That is the worry.

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I think that every Derbyshire MP will testify to the same thing: that phones are not answered and emails go un-responded to. It is not sustainable for this to be the status quo. So many people in Amber Valley wanted to talk to me about their experience.

What was planned as a small, intimate roundtable event soon became a large town hall meeting full of concerned parents, each with a story to tell. From this, a clear picture emerged. Children and young people are being failed at every step in the process.

Families are waiting far too long for the education and health assessments to allow them to access the specialist help that they need. As a result, many children are missing significant portions of their education, with some falling out of school altogether.

That is all while Derbyshire county council fails to communicate, just as my hon. Friend said.

As my hon. Friend knows, I represent the nearby constituency of Rushcliffe in Nottinghamshire, where the average waiting time for neurodevelopmental assessments is 54 weeks. That is actually an improvement from a year ago, when it was 68 weeks. Does my hon.

Friend agree that a lot of what she is describing is systemic, as has been mentioned, and that this Government need to address it urgently?

I have been supporting parents in Derby North who currently face a wait of more than a year for their children’s SEND tribunals, causing agony as they are left in limbo.

We know that the historical lack of funding for local authorities, suitable school places and educational psychologists has contributed to the delays. Does my hon.

Friend agree that the delays are yet another example of a SEND system that, as the Education Secretary said, had been “neglected to the point of crisis”?

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this incredibly important debate. My constituency neighbours Derbyshire, and I recently held a roundtable on SEND provision with parents and teachers from schools and colleges.

The issue that repeatedly came up was funding, and the disparity in funding not just between schools but across local authority areas. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need consistency of SEND provision across county lines in order to provide good-quality SEND provision for all our children?

Order. You can all see that a number of Members wish to contribute this evening. I will just issue a point of clarity: the Adjournment motion will have to be moved again at 7 pm, so whoever is on their feet at that point should be aware that I will interrupt them.

It would be a courtesy to fellow Members if you could all restrict your comments to five minutes or so.

My hon. Friend referenced a very high percentage—I think 40%. In Nottinghamshire, each month over the past 12 months we have seen a 50% increase in SEND diagnoses in comparison to the year before.

Does he agree that more research must be done to understand the relative growth in special educational needs, so we can get to the heart of the issue?

Yes, it is vital that we understand what may be driving some needs. At the end of the day, though, this is not a problem of increasing needs, but the result of absolute systemic failings in Derbyshire county council and the system more widely.

I am pleased that the Government are determined to fix this broken system and see that our mission to remove the barriers to opportunity for all our children is achieved. This is a fundamental part of that mission. Ending the years of failure of Derbyshire county council will not be easy.

I am determined to work with families in High Peak and with my Derbyshire colleagues to put pressure on Derbyshire county council to finally provide the support our children desperately need.

This Government have made a very clear and welcome commitment to turn 3,000 spare classrooms into nurseries. Does my hon. Friend agree that where demand for nursery support is lower, we could look at alternative ways of using those classrooms to enhance SEND provision at a local level?

I would like to start by thanking all the previous speakers for their heartfelt contributions. It is clear that this is an issue that affects us all, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth) for securing this important debate. Motion lapsed (Standing Order No.

9(3)). Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Gerald Jones.

One of the reasons the county council has got into this mess is because it was around a decade since Ofsted’s previous inspection of its SEND provision. When I approached Ofsted, officials said the reason is that that was what Ofsted had been contracted to do by the Government.

We need more agile regulation, as we discussed on the Second Reading of the Data (Use and Access) Bill today, but does the Minister have plans to look at Ofsted’s regulatory model and the frequency with which it inspects?

If the provision in Derbyshire had been inspected earlier, we might have less of a problem to deal with now.

I thank the Minister for speaking so clearly on this important issue. On the intervention I made earlier about empty classrooms, we are seeing in Nottinghamshire that there is not the demand for nursery places that there desperately is in other parts of the country.

Does the Department have any appetite to think about how those spaces could be used to try to deal with the issue we are talking about today?