Today’s Schools White Paper on SEND reform is, in certain respects, a document Liberal Democrats should welcome. The investment is substantial: £1.6 billion for an Inclusive Mainstream Fund, £1.8 billion for specialist services, and a long-overdue write-off of 90 per cent of local authority SEND deficits that were pushing councils toward effective bankruptcy. The aspiration, a well-resourced, inclusive mainstream, with early intervention, genuine specialist support, and families treated as partners rather than adversaries, is the right one.

The problem is not the destination. It is the route the government has chosen to get there.

A right is not the same as a promise

The Education, Health and Care Plan, for all its bureaucratic weight, is one of the few places in the British welfare system where an individual holds a judicially enforceable claim on the state. Not a guidance note. Not a promise from a minister at the despatch box. A right. Local authorities that fail to deliver what an EHCP specifies can be taken to the SEND tribunal, and families win the overwhelming majority of those cases, most conceded before a hearing takes place. That near-universal success rate tells you not that the tribunal is lenient, but that the system routinely under-delivers and only corrects itself when legally compelled.

The White Paper proposes to replace many of those plans with Individual Support Plans. ISPs would carry a statutory duty and be monitored by Ofsted. What they would not carry is tribunal enforceability. That mechanism remains available only for EHCPs, which would be reserved for children with the most complex needs. The government projects that EHCP coverage will fall from 5.8 per cent of pupils today to 4.7 per cent by 2034/35. That is not a side effect. It is the stated aim.

When Schools Minister Georgia Gould was pressed this morning on whether children could lose their plans at reassessment, she declined to give a direct answer. She said her job was to talk about the investment being put in. That is not good enough. And Liberal Democrats should say so clearly.

The sequencing problem

The new plans are not proposed to come into force until 2030. The narrowed threshold is intended to begin operating sooner. Children currently in Year 2 and below will face reassessment of their EHCP at the primary-to-secondary transition under the new, tighter criteria.

This timing could not be worse, and it contradicts what we know about how neurodivergent children experience school. Many autistic children, particularly girls, spend primary school masking their difficulties. They exhaust themselves performing adequately, and the cracks appear precisely when secondary school changes the demands on them: different teachers every period, less structure, more social complexity, higher academic pressure. The ‘secondary crash’ is documented in attendance figures, CAMHS referrals, and late diagnosis rates. Removing or weakening legally enforceable support at that exact transition is not evidence-based policy. It is the opposite.

The Children’s Commissioner has called on ministers to confirm that no child will lose their EHCP as a result of these changes. That confirmation has not been forthcoming. The assurance that “effective support” will not be removed is not the same as guaranteeing that no child loses what their current plan specifies.

Who bears the risk?

Lib Dems understand, better than most, that equality of formal rights is not the same as equality in practice. The Sutton Trust’s October 2025 report found that among parents of children in special schools, 41 per cent from wealthier backgrounds had successfully secured a place, compared with 25 per cent from low-income families. The gap exists because navigating SEND requires resources: private assessments, legal advice, time. When the legal mechanism weakens, it is not wealthy families who absorb the loss.

This is a liberal argument as much as an equalities one. Freedom that can only be exercised by those with the means to assert it is not freedom. It is privilege in freedom’s clothing.

The White Paper asks families to accept a weaker backstop on the promise that something better is coming. For a community that has spent years learning, through hard experience, that the system withholds support until crisis is the only option, that is a very large ask.

What the Lib Dems should push for