There is a particular kind of cruelty in policy that comes dressed up as reform. The Department for Education's white paper, "Every Child Achieving and Thriving", was launched with the soothing language of inclusion and ambition. Behind the press release, the substance is harder. By 2035, Education Health and Care Plans — the legal documents that secure support for children with special educational needs — will be reserved for children with the "most complex" needs. The rest will lose their entitlement. SEND families have been here before. They know what this means.

The Vague Word That Decides a Child's Future

The single most important word in the entire white paper is "complex", and it is the one word the Government refuses to define. Parents at every consultation event have asked the same question: what counts as complex? Whose child qualifies, and whose child is told to make do with school-level support that may not exist? The Department has not provided a clear answer. That is not an oversight. That is the point. A vague threshold lets the Treasury control the volume.

EHCP numbers have risen for a reason. Awareness is better. Diagnoses are more accurate. Parents have learned, painfully, what is on offer and what to fight for. Behind every plan is usually a family who spent two years fighting their local authority because mainstream provision had collapsed under their child. To then turn around and say "the plans are growing too fast" is to mistake symptom for cause. The system is creaking because mainstream support has been cut to the bone, not because parents are inventing diagnoses.

The Local Authority Squeeze

Councils — Conservative, Labour and Reform-led alike — are buckling under the cost of SEND. The high needs block is in crisis. The "statutory override" that has kept those deficits off council balance sheets is due to end. Without reform, dozens of councils risk effective bankruptcy. So the Department for Education has decided the cheapest way out is to narrow the gate. Fewer children with EHCPs means fewer statutory bills. The accountancy is brutal. The politics is dishonest.

Labour's pitch is that the reduction in EHCPs will be offset by stronger mainstream provision: ordinarily available provision, better SENCOs, more inclusive classrooms. That promise has been made by every Secretary of State in living memory. The reality has been Teaching Assistant cuts, frozen budgets, and overstretched mainstream teachers being asked to do the work of specialist provision without the training or the time.

A Betrayal in Slow Motion

The timing matters. The squeeze begins now in policy terms but doesn't bite formally until 2035, conveniently beyond two general elections. By the time the reduction in EHCP eligibility actually lands on a family in Preston East — or in any constituency in the country — the ministers who designed it will be gone. The parents will be left to deal with the consequences.

I speak as a councillor in a county where SEND families are already at breaking point. Every casework week brings parents whose child has been waiting eighteen months for an assessment, who have been turned down for a plan they clearly need, who have had to remortgage to fund private tutoring or therapy because the state cannot deliver what the law promises. To these families, "narrowing eligibility" is not reform. It is an eviction notice from a system they have already had to fight to access.

What Reform UK Would Do

Reform UK believes every child with a genuine need deserves support that is timely, evidence-led and properly funded. That means honest definitions, faster assessments, real accountability for councils that drag their feet, and ringfenced funding so SEND budgets cannot be raided to plug other holes. It means an end to the postcode lottery that decides whether a five-year-old with autism gets specialist support or gets nothing. And it means telling the truth: if mainstream provision is going to take on more of the load, mainstream provision needs the resources to do it. Not a leaflet. Resources.

SEND families have been let down by every government of the last twenty years. The current proposals will let them down again, only with slower cruelty and gentler language. Reform UK will not pretend otherwise.