Can Bridget Phillipson convince jaded families to have faith in Send changes?

In her first week as a cabinet minister Bridget Phillipson held a meeting for new Labour MPs with one subject – special educational needs. Almost 100 MPs came to that first meeting.There were new MPs for whom the issue was personal to their own families – Jen Craft, Daniel Francis, Steve Race, as well as the then business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds. Dozens more knew the system was at breaking point because of their previous work in the charity sector, for unions and in the disability sector.But many more knew because of how the issue was dominating their emails from constituents. It was after that meeting in July 2024 that she told colleagues that she knew it would be her biggest task in the job.It has become Westminster lore that Phillipson learned how support from MPs can crumble after the dramatic failure of the welfare vote – and how a similar rebellion on Send was all but inevitable.But departmental insiders say that is not quite the case and that the biggest lesson came earlier: the attacks that she sustained for her first big piece of legislation, the children’s wellbeing and schools bill.The bill’s biggest changes, including to academy trusts, led to sustained criticism in the rightwing press but also bafflement among Labour MPs who could not really understand the argument for them. No 10 seemed unwilling to own them and there were briefings that Phillipson could lose her job.The bill – and Phillipson – survived but she and her team were badly bruised. The lesson, they said, was to make sure that they communicated the scale of the problem and the arguments for change.“This is major public service reform, the like of which no other cabinet minister has been able to deliver on this scale,” one ally of the education secretary said.But the welfare rebellion still loomed large and MPs have drawn favourable comparisons with how the case for Send reform was presented.When Liz Kendall put forward the proposals last spring, MPs were invited to briefings with aides in No 10 to be shown graphs and charts showing the scale of the problem with inactivity and the ever-rising costs of personal independence payments.Then came the spring statement, where extra funds had to be found to balance the budget by some last-minute further freezes. It was Politics 101 on how to lose the confidence of MPs already worried that the changes were no more than a cuts exercise – and never given a real moral argument.Many MPs said they feared the same exercise would occur with Send – and it showed No 10, the Treasury and the DfE that there was no way they could hope to get the changes through without upfront investment.“We have never put a target on reducing EHCPs, even though the hope is they will go down, because primarily this should be about reforming the system to improve it,” one departmental source said.Even the PLP’s most cynical groups have said they felt as if their concerns had been heard – though MPs may still feel like there are hidden issues yet to uncover in the white paper.Phillipson made a point of meeting the Socialist Campaign group of leftwing MPs – led by John McDonnell – as well as the powerful Tribune group of soft left MPs, many of whom rebelled against the welfare cuts.The new schools minister, Georgia Gould, spoke to 8,000 people over a number of months as part of a bigger conversation drive with parents and special needs charities.There is significant goodwill now from the parliamentary party – but it does not mean that the reforms will not ultimately fail. It took many weeks for doubt to begin to creep into the minds of those MPs who ended up rebelling on welfare changes.Phillipson knows the success of the reforms will ultimately come down to something which is in short supply – trust. Parents may be losing a defined legal avenue to pursue what their children deserves, on the promise that they will be delivered better provision without having to fight for it.For many jaded by the system, they simply do not believe this is possible even with the extra £4bn in funding. Already there is cynicism about if schools will really properly train every teacher in Send, or how to recruit all these additional speech and language specialist.There is also a real fear that if appeals to schools and local authorities are the only recourse some parents will have, they may not be able to trust those institutions to treat them fairly. That lack of trust often comes from bitter experience.Whether parents and MPs ultimately accept the changes will come down to if Phillipson can convince them that is possible for a better system to exist. It is a difficult political climate to win support based on hope.