Chris Coghlan
MP for Dorking and Horley · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“I have given the Government evidence that hundreds of children with special educational needs and disabilities are avoidably killing themselves because of public authority negligence and misconduct, including my constituent Jen Bridges-Chalkley.”
“Three years ago, my 22-year-old constituent, Hannah Byrne, whose family are in the Gallery, died on the first night of her holiday in Corfu. Two British women left the scene without ever being interviewed by police.”
“The Bill has been drafted by one of the most prominent mental capacity lawyers in the country, Alex Ruck Keene, honorary King’s counsel. It has two key clauses: a duty to assess capacity where a person is reasonably understood to have any impairment or disturbance in the functioning of their mind or brain; and a duty to assess capacity wh…”
“Charlie had Prader-Willi syndrome, which, in his case, gave him a genetic compulsion to overeat. Annabel repeatedly begged the authorities for help. They repeatedly ignored her. She locked the food cupboards but she could not prevent Charlie from buying food or going to food banks.”
“My mum had died a few months after I was born, and I was a sensitive boy. Well, they moved in. Christopher grew up in my childhood bedroom, and he loved the house as much as I did. As a young autistic man living alone in Leeds, Christopher was in danger.”
“The police knew about his paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis and his impaired judgment, yet they took no action. Under this Bill, the police would have had to refer Glover for a mental capacity assessment, which might have saved an innocent 12-year-old boy.”
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“I have given the Government evidence that hundreds of children with special educational needs and disabilities are avoidably killing themselves because of public authority negligence and misconduct, including my constituent Jen Bridges-Chalkley. Does the Minister agree that the first step in tackling this problem is knowing how many of these suicides there are? We cannot do that unless we have a national oversight mechanism and a preventable death tracker that measure it.”
“Three years ago, my 22-year-old constituent, Hannah Byrne, whose family are in the Gallery, died on the first night of her holiday in Corfu. Two British women left the scene without ever being interviewed by police. We know that the Greek authorities have submitted two requests to the Home Office for mutual legal assistance, but the family know little else. Will the Minister meet me and the family to help them get the closure and answers that they so desperately need?”
“Ordered, That Chris Coghlan, Ed Davey, Dr Danny Chambers, Sir Jeremy Hunt, Andy Slaughter, Florence Eshalomi, John Grady, Wera Hobhouse, Liz Jarvis, Vikki Slade, Manuela Perteghella, and Ben Maguire present the Bill. Chris Coghlan accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 29 January, and to be printed (Bill 114).”
“The police knew about his paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis and his impaired judgment, yet they took no action. Under this Bill, the police would have had to refer Glover for a mental capacity assessment, which might have saved an innocent 12-year-old boy. In 2014, a House of Lords Select Committee recognised the failures in the Mental Capacity Act. These past 12 years, Parliament has failed to act. The cost in lives lost is unimaginable. Among the hundreds of dead, Fiona lost her Christopher, Annabel lost her Charlie, and Jo lost her Harley. These three mums are here today not only in grief, but also with the highest of all hope: to save lives. I commend their courage and this Bill to the House. Question put and agreed to .”
“Charlie had Prader-Willi syndrome, which, in his case, gave him a genetic compulsion to overeat. Annabel repeatedly begged the authorities for help. They repeatedly ignored her. She locked the food cupboards but she could not prevent Charlie from buying food or going to food banks. Ultimately, his weight reached 30 stone, and he ate himself to death. Charlie was 35. Under this Bill, authorities would have had to grant Annabel that assessment, and Charlie might still be with us. Harley Watson’s mum Jo is here too. Harley was 12 years old when he died, after paranoid schizophrenic Terence Glover drove a car into a crowd of schoolchildren. Glover had told the police beforehand repeatedly in 999 calls that he intended to run over and kill schoolchildren.”
“The Bill has been drafted by one of the most prominent mental capacity lawyers in the country, Alex Ruck Keene, honorary King’s counsel. It has two key clauses: a duty to assess capacity where a person is reasonably understood to have any impairment or disturbance in the functioning of their mind or brain; and a duty to assess capacity where a person properly interested in a person’s circumstances has raised a concern as to their capacity. Although those safeguards are in the existing code of practice, they are too often ignored. The Bill seeks to bring those existing safeguards into law in order to mandate compliance. It will enhance the presumption of capacity by ensuring that it is not used against people to their cost or to the cost of others. Charlie Gooding’s mum Annabel is here in the Gallery.”
“We have worked on a cross-party basis, with the Government, and with ITV, which has mounted a national campaign to expose this injustice across the county. I am grateful for all of that and for the result: that the Government have committed to review and reform the Mental Capacity Act. This Bill offers an opportunity to realise that commitment. The Mental Capacity Act states: “A person must be assumed to have capacity unless it is established that he lacks capacity.” Too often, public officials have used that presumption to not take action, failing vulnerable people, because if a person’s capacity is merely in doubt, but not yet established as lacking, then they are presumed to have capacity—and are too easily disregarded.”
“My mum had died a few months after I was born, and I was a sensitive boy. Well, they moved in. Christopher grew up in my childhood bedroom, and he loved the house as much as I did. As a young autistic man living alone in Leeds, Christopher was in danger. Despite Fiona raising credible doubts about his capacity on numerous occasions over eight years, she was never able to secure the mental capacity assessment that she needed to protect him. Horrifically, Christopher was exploited and murdered in his home by a man who had just been released from jail. Christopher was 24. Under this Bill, he would have been granted that mental capacity assessment, and he might still be with us. I have been working with Fiona for over two years to close this loophole.”
“I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require persons discharging functions on behalf of certain other persons to assess the mental capacity of those persons in specified circumstances; and for connected purposes. At issue is the devastating misuse of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, which has resulted in hundreds of preventable deaths. King’s College London found there were 160 of those deaths in 2023 alone. The Bill is in honour of Christopher Laskaris, whose mum Fiona is here. Christopher was not unlike many autistic children; he was a sensitive and intelligent boy, who once asked his mum to stop on the way to school to rescue a lamb stuck in a fence. I first met Fiona when I was eight. I had stayed in my bedroom and ignored her, perhaps because I was angry that she was buying my home off my dad.”
“My constituent is here. Her ex-husband sexually assaulted her children, and attempted to murder them and her by removing the brake pads from her car, yet the court appeared to listen more to the abuser’s allegation of parental alienation syndrome, a concept discredited by the World Health Organisation, than her evidence. The abuser today has unsupervised access to the children. What steps will the Government take to prevent discredited concepts from obstructing criminal justice, leaving children at risk of rape and murder?”
“Some 80% of US and UK historical war borrowing has been repaid not through debt repayments but through economic growth. Draghi has urged the EU to borrow for defence R&D to increase economic growth and repay debt. Does the Prime Minister’s statement this morning ruling out extra borrowing for defence risk not only our national defence but our economy, too?”
“T7. Last year, almost 4,000 non-commissioned officers— an entire brigade—left the British Army. One of them, an infantryman who has had four tours of Iraq and Afghanistan, told me that the reason he was leaving was that, whatever the policy says, in practice late entry officers are almost always employed only in administrative not combat roles. Will the Minister meet me to explain why we are losing hundreds of our most experienced soldiers entirely unnecessarily?”
“The Government are rightly concerned about more borrowing, but we can remove most of the credit risk for defence research and development borrowing by issuing bonds jointly with our European and Canadian allies. We should follow the advice of Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank, who urges the EU to reduce debt by borrowing for R&D at scale. Even with additional borrowing, the debt-to-GDP ratio falls as growth takes off.”
“Of course we must restore economic relations with Europe, but we must also dramatically increase defence research and development to power economic growth and defend liberal democracy. Academics now agree that the economic dominance of the United States is powered by public research and development, especially in defence. It was through American and British research and development that we learned how to mass-produce penicillin, which saved thousands of lives after D-day, yet for the last 30 years we have failed to use at scale the No. 1 policy to maximise growth. The Government have made some progress, but today we spend £22 billion a year on public research and development while the fastest-growing advanced economies spend double that.”
“Last year I attended the funeral of my step-grandmother, Diana Faure Walker. I adored her, and I was so proud that she had been decorated in the war for her service as a nurse after D-day. She believed that Britain was a hope for the world. That was not naive idealism, but the resolve of the generation who won the war. Today, liberal democracy in Europe is under threat from a dictator again, and too many of our generation are turning to fear. We are facing a Reform party Government, consisting of the same people who cost us £100 billion a year with the Brexit vote. Put them in government and the current chaos will seem like nothing. But there are still three years until the next election: enough time to set a new national mission, achieved with a new economic model to bring new hope.”
“I entirely agree. Imagine where scaling up defence research and development could lead our country. In three years’ time we could have a resurgent economy and Putin defeated. Together with our European, Canadian and Ukrainian allies, we could have defended liberal democracy. As I left my grandmother’s funeral, they played Fred Astaire’s “The Way You Look Tonight”, a song that she loved and danced to with British soldiers. The hope of that generation lives in us.”
“Park home owners in my constituency tell me that site owners have pressured them into selling, in order to get that 10% commission. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is wrong and that the 10% commission should be abolished?”
“T6. It has been widely reported in the press that the Chancellor is rightly considering issuing defence bonds. I know that the Chancellor agrees with me on the value of defence research and development. Does she or the Minister agree that defence bonds could be a powerful way to increase R&D and raise economic growth?”
“On Friday the United States agreed to extend the partial lift on sanctions on Russian oil exports. Does the Minister agree that this helps President Putin to fund his illegal and murderous war in Ukraine, and that it works directly against the national security interests of both Ukraine and the United Kingdom?”
“I believe that the Government are serious about SEND reform, and I am grateful to the Minister for coming to Dorking tomorrow to meet Surrey SEND families, but family after family has testified to me that the legal rights that the Government are seeking to reduce can be the difference between life and death. When a council officer determines that a child does not need an EHCP when they know that that child does in fact need an EHCP, that is serious misconduct. We know that this is happening on a massive scale because families win the resulting tribunals 98% of the time. Councils are betting that they can save money because the families are too exhausted to take them to tribunal. Children are killing themselves as a result. Under-resourcing is no excuse.”
“I suggested how he could get help and put him in touch with his MP, but then two weeks ago he wrote to me again. He said: “My son is very unwell, and I can no longer carry on. I am mentally and physically exhausted, and I am electing to end my life. I intend to find peace. I simply cannot continue, and I refuse to see my son deteriorate further. There will be no one to care for him, so now the NHS will have to care for my son.” We called 999 immediately, and the emergency services sent an ambulance. We have seen too many families like this. I presented to the Government and published in The Times evidence that hundreds of SEND children are avoidably killing themselves due to public authority negligence. ITV has published evidence of misconduct and law breaking on SEND by 117 local authorities.”
“I first want to address the comments from the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen). I have enormous respect for him, but his underlying argument is flawed, because there is the same number of SEND children now as there was in 2010 and in 1978. The question is why the number fell so much up to 2016 and then rose, and I would suggest that the answer probably has something to do with the scrapping of Sure Start by my party and his, but that is for another day. One month ago a SEN dad messaged me on Facebook about his autistic son, who has been out of school for seven years, with his tribunal delayed three times. He said that his son will now be out of education and employment for the rest of his life. He said that his son had been “left to rot” by his local authority and the NHS. I wrote to him to say how sorry I was.”
“I entirely agree. An under-resourced officer can still determine need, still issue an EHCP and still be transparent about what cannot yet be delivered. That, at least, is honest. I know that many council officers do the right thing, but when a council officer commits misconduct that results in an avoidable death, why are they not criminally prosecuted? Here we are, with pervasive local authority law breaking, hundreds of children avoidably killing themselves, and a Government who plan to cut the rights that can save their lives.”
“I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention and I completely disagree. Think about the autistic boy I was talking about at the start of my speech. He has been out of school for seven years and his father has quit his job to look after him. We have lost a lifetime’s earnings from that person and we have the costs of social services. I am convinced that by the time we take all that into account, an effective system based on effective early intervention, rigorous accountability for local authorities and legally enforceable rights would, in the long run, be far cheaper than what we have today. The public will ask Members of this House what they knew about this scandal of hundreds of children avoidably killing themselves while there are myths about over-diagnosis and everything else, when they knew it, and what they did about it.”
“The green firms that innovate the most, and young firms, have been shown to be particularly credit constrained. Will the Minister meet me to discuss what measures the Government are taking to increase credit supply, raise research and development, and increase economic growth?”
“I welcome President Trump’s statement that he is apparently now in talks with Iran. Sadly and predictably, Iran seems to have achieved escalation dominance by closing the strait of Hormuz, so what plans is the UK making for a post-conflict region in which Iran retains the upper hand because it can dictate global energy prices and continue to threaten Gulf nations?”
“My rural constituency is lucky enough to be only 21 miles from London, but the train from Dorking travels at 21 mph, which, according to my arithmetic, means that it takes one hour to get there. Some 1,900 people have signed a petition calling for a faster train, and the director of South Western Railway is interested. Will the Minister meet me to discuss faster trains to Dorking?”
“A constituent of mine, who aspires to be a GP, like the hon. Member, left university £44,000 in debt. She is actually paying more in interest than on her loan repayments. Does the hon. Member agree that the system deters graduates from following the very careers that we so desperately need them to follow in this country?”
“Given the fate of the Russian Black sea fleet from maritime drones and that of ground forces from first-person view drones, does the Minister agree that there is unlikely to be a military solution to reopen the confined waters of Hormuz, and that we therefore need to find a diplomatic solution as quickly as possible?”
“This last week has underlined our perilous national security situation and the potential risks to growth. Does the Chancellor agree that now is the time to raise defence spending to 3% of GDP, perhaps funded by borrowing, along with our European and Canadian allies, to reassure the bond markets and to drive growth and protect our national security?”
“Eivie White was 13 when she killed herself, after years of denials and failures by her local authority to provide the support she needed for her autism. Her older sister found her body. She had to continue sleeping in the same bedroom in which Eivie had hanged herself because the local authority would not provide new housing. Six months later, Eivie’s best friend killed herself, aged 13. Those are just three of over 200 testimonies I have received about avoidable SEND child suicide—it is an epidemic. It is our country’s duty to protect our most vulnerable citizens. How can the Government even consider cutting children’s rights?”
“Despite 13 referrals by the police to the council, it refused to provide him with any of the support he needed. After a history of suicide attempts, Sammy died, aged 13, after falling from a harbour wall. His inquest concluded that he died from “inadequate support from the local authority and mental health services.” My constituent, Jen Bridges-Chalkley, started college in October 2021. She was 17 and had been diagnosed with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Her local authority failed to update the college, through her EHCP, about her risk of suicide. One month later, she was dead. Her 81-page inquest report detailed continuous and prolonged failures by her local authority to provide the support she needed.”
“How is breaking the law by all these services allowed and not prosecuted?” To this point, Mathew Purchase KC has said that the schools White Paper has “a lot of good intentions, but which, on the face of it, are going to reduce the ability for children and families to enforce what they are legally entitled to.” Last week I published, with The Times , 20 cases of avoidable SEND child suicide caused by failures by local authorities. All 20 of those children would have had their education, health and care plan rights removed under the Government’s plan, so would potentially have been even more vulnerable. Three of their mums have asked me to speak about their children. Patricia Alban is here today. Her son Sammy was autistic. His local authority removed his EHCP.”
“I welcome many aspects of the special educational needs and disabilities White Paper, especially those on early intervention and increased funding. We know that most local authority SEND staff care deeply, and we are grateful for them for that, but local authority SEND provision is chronically underfunded and too often this has led to corner cutting, a culture of dishonesty and brutalisation. I fear that the Government have seriously underestimated the scale of harm. One mum wrote on my Facebook page: “My daughter is self-harming and suicidal. EHCP behind by weeks. Discharged by CAMHS as educational setting is the main reason for mental health struggles and has to change before any work can be done. We are just left watching our children suffer.”
“I agree with what the Minister says, and it is good that all this provision is coming in, but I simply do not understand why, if she is so confident that these reforms will work, it is necessary to reduce children’s rights. I know that she is likely to say that the Government are not doing so, but it is the view of KCs—an authority I trust—that that is happening. In theory, if the reforms succeed, the demand to exercise those legal rights should naturally fall, because families should not need to use them, so whether or not those rights are there should be slightly irrelevant. However, if the reforms do not succeed, those rights gives families whose trust has collapsed the peace of mind that they can, in the worst cases, go to a tribunal and save their children’s lives.”
“To be frank, all I have seen from the Department for Education is a culture of protecting one’s own and of cover-ups. When will serious action be taken against local authorities that commit misconduct on SEND and systematic lawbreaking? The Secretary of State for Education said that local authorities will be held to account, but given what has happened with Surrey county council, how can we have any confidence that they actually will?”
“I have repeatedly raised with the DFE over the last year very serious misconduct by Surrey county council, including concealing for over 14 months the fact that it had the highest number of complaints in the country and reclassifying complaints as inquiries to reduce complaint volumes. As far as I am aware, no disciplinary action has been taken. This is not a party political point, because it is a Conservative county council, and I know that, off the record, some Conservative county councillors feel exactly the same way about their own administration. I worked with the Department of Health and Social Care on reforming the Mental Capacity Act 2005, and I was very impressed by its willingness to acknowledge misconduct and the need for accountability and transparency in that case.”
“I fully believe that the Minister’s heart is in the right place, but for me the test is what lawyers and KCs—not to big them up too much—are saying about the White Paper: specialist educational lawyers are clear that the White Paper is reducing children’s rights. I would love to support the White Paper, but our country desperately needs reforms in this area, as this debate has highlighted. If the Minister wants my support, she will have to satisfy KCs that there is no reduction in rights, and at the moment there is.”
“The Minister is being very generous with her time, and I am being slightly cheeky. I have a horrendous case involving a child in Dorking who is 12 years old. I saw the mother in September, a week after the child’s second suicide attempt. The child and adolescent mental health services wrote to the GP one week later, saying that their risk of suicide was low, but there have been more self-harm incidents since then. This child has autism, and last week the county council rejected them from getting an EHCP, so I am literally at my wits’ end about what to do on this case. First, if I were to write to the Minister about this particular case, I would be hugely grateful if she could intervene. Secondly, how would she envisage this child’s situation improving after the reforms?”
“British Lance Corporal Brodie Gillon was killed by an Iranian ballistic missile in Iraq in 2020. When I arrived as a soldier three months later, our base came under attack from Iranian proxy militias eight times. The Iranian regime has gunned down tens of thousands of protesters in recent weeks. Morality is complex. I entirely support the Prime Minister’s view on the need for a negotiated settlement, given, sadly, the risks of regime change, but does he agree that any negotiated settlement needs to include protections against reprisals for protesters?”
“Q14. How we answer the call for justice of SEND families will be a measure of who we are. Christopher Laskaris, who was autistic, was murdered aged 24. His mother, Fiona, who is in Public Gallery, spent eight years begging authorities to protect him, but they refused because they presumed that he had mental capacity. Will the Prime Minister support Christopher’s law, which creates a duty to assess mental capacity where it is in doubt, to save the lives of others?”
“My hon. Friend is raising incredibly important points on the distribution of funding, but does she agree that the distribution of funding during life stage is also important? [ Interruption. ] According to the Early Intervention Foundation, the NHS is spending £3.7 billion a year on the cost of late intervention. In theory, the Government could spend an extra £3.7 billion on early intervention on SEND at no extra net cost to the Government.”
“On the point about the terrible fight that families face, the Minister will know that I wrote to the Education Committee to pass on the testimony of 653 families from across 114 local authorities about harmful, unethical or unlawful behaviour by local authorities on SEND. These testimonies have 195 references to suicide. One of them said: “My child now has ptsd, has lost the full use of their arm, is covered in scars from failed suicide attempts”. The Education Committee wrote to me saying that these testimonies corroborated its findings about the failures in local authority governance. Does the Minister agree that, on SEND, there can be no case for weakening EHCP children’s rights, and that families’ trust in local authority governance has collapsed?”
“In the 1940s, refugees fled the Nazis and built the atomic bomb; they pioneered a method of public research and development that has powered US economic dominance ever since. The EU Security Action for Europe defence bond fund offers us a similarly transformative opportunity: £20 billion invested in defence R&D could expand our economy by £100 billion. Will we join our Canadian and European allies, end our economic stagnation, and together defend the—”
“There have been many calls across the Chamber for sanctions and the proscription of the IRGC, which I fully support. I think we need to be honest and admit that those measures are unlikely to save the lives of protesters who are under a regime fearing for its survival, but I point out that the drone strike in 2020 against Soleiman, the head of the IRGC, did influence Iranian behaviour. These protests follow on from western military intervention. As was pointed out by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), the United States President has explicitly called on the protesters to overthrow the regime. That reminds me of the 1991 Shi’a uprisings in Iraq; President Bush did exactly the same in the aftermath of the Gulf war, and left those people to be massacred by Saddam Hussein’s helicopter gunships.”
“Foreign interference in British politics is of enormous concern to most Members, following the conviction of Reform politician Nathan Gill, who betrayed our country for a genocidal Russian dictator. In response, the Government announced the Rycroft review to investigate foreign interference, including by China. Will they delay the decision on the super-embassy until the Rycroft review has reported?”
“Exactly two weeks ago, the Foreign Secretary told me that I was quite wrong to describe Donald Trump as a threat to liberal democracy. Since then, we have seen the horrifying shooting of Renee Good, trumped-up charges against the chair of the Federal Reserve, and direct threats to Denmark and this country. I understand that the Foreign Secretary cannot publicly agree with me, but if the Government are serious, why are we not seriously re-arming, especially when that will help our economy anyway? Is the Foreign Secretary worried that the hour is getting too late to act?”
“Sadly, it appears that that light is now fading, but I believe it has burnt long enough for other democracies to see it. Now, it is up to us, the smaller democracies, to ensure that we are also humanity’s best last hope.”
“In the process, they developed a method of public research and development that academics now acknowledge has powered US technological and economic dominance ever since. The Chancellor has recognised that. In the spring statement, she used the £2.2 billion increase in defence research and development to upgrade long-term UK GDP growth by £11 billion a year. The current and former Presidents of the European Central Bank called on Europe to borrow to invest in defence research and development not only to deter Russia, but to lift Europe out of the economic stagnation that has held back the continent and the United Kingdom since the financial crash in 2008. We can do this too. President Reagan described America as a beacon.”
“European NATO GDP alone is 10 times the size of Russia’s, yet Russia has been spending $40 billion a year more than Ukraine and her western allies on the war in Ukraine. If we closed and exceeded that gap today, by seizing the $300 billion in frozen Russian assets, then not only could Ukraine secure a just peace, but we would deter Putin from crashing into eastern Europe and testing article 5. With President Trump disgracefully threatening NATO allies as well, smaller democracies must ensure that we are economically and militarily strong enough to defend ourselves together. It is the example of the United States, a country that I love, that can show us how. In the 1940s, refugees fled from the Nazis to the United States. They built the atomic bomb and they won the war.”