NEW ROW OVER SPECIAL NEEDS CUTS SHOWS STARMER HAS LOST CONTROL OF HIS PARTY, TORIES CLAIM

REPORTS of a row over cuts to support for children with special educational needs shows that the Prime Minister has “lost control” of his party, Shadow Minister Matt Vickers has said.

Asked about plans to reform SEND provision, he told GB News: “Keir Starmer has been in office a year and he’s completely lost control of his own party.

“We saw it last week with that welfare bill that became an absolute sham. But actually this is a really serious issue for many people across the country, for many constituents in my part of the world, and those education healthcare plans that give legal guarantees to young people with special educational needs that they can get the care and the support that they need in educational settings.

“They need protections. They need this support and I think it’s right hopefully that some of those backbench MPs on the Labour benches are going to get stuck in and hold him to account so that these youngsters can get the care and support that they need.”

On a leaked recording about the Tories stopping apologising for their 14 years in power, he said: “Lots of people giving us lots of strategic advice and having lots of opinions, but actually it’s all about context.

“We just talked about SEND and education and health care plans, actually, we’ve got a record to be proud of on that in the sense that lots more to do, but actually record investment in creating SEND school places and alternative provision. That’s progress.

“When you look at things like immigration, and you see how tough that was and how badly wrong it was, when you look at the record of what’s going on, it’s on us to get involved in the issues of the day, look at them in the context, and have the debate of the day so that we can deliver that value for our constituents.

“Have a discussion about where we are, where we were, what went wrong. I’m sure the last government got lots of things wrong, but by gum are this government getting a lot more wrong.”

Asked about the government providing aid to Syria, he said: “Whenever we’re putting money abroad, we need to look at how it’s being spent, where it’s being spent, and how it could possibly be in our national interest.

“All too often we send money abroad for the wrong reasons and actually we see the challenges back home in this country. We see the damage that this Labour government are doing to our economy and the cost that it’s having for real people.

“Whatever it might be, unemployment on the rise, inflation almost doubled since this government came to office, and the amount of money that we’re paying to borrow is now through the roof. The debt interest is high, and the amount of money we’re spending on education, it’s all going the wrong way.”