• NAO Report on SEN provision: “urgent reform” needed, say Lib Dems
• Nearly 6,000 crimes went unsolved every day last year
• Government have “missed an open goal” on new football regulator, say Lib Dems
• Reeves announcement: Chancellor must prioritise investment in crumbling hospitals
• Cole-Hamilton: Greens have wasted £30m on care centralisation
• Welsh Liberal Democrats demand action on NHS waiting lists

NAO Report on SEN provision: “urgent reform” needed, say Lib Dems

A new National Audit Office report has revealed that the Special Educational Needs (SEN) system is “financially unsustainable”, with 43% of councils at risk of effectively declaring bankruptcy.

It also found that there has been “no consistent improvement in outcomes for children and young people with SEN” since 2019, with 50% of children waiting more than the statutory 20-week target for an Education, Health and Care plan.

Responding to the report, Munira Wilson MP, the Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Education, Children and Families, said:

Every child should get the help they need at nursery, in school and throughout their lives, to achieve all they can. But far too many children are being left to struggle because the support they need simply isn’t there.

The last Conservative Government woefully underfunded both schools and local councils, forcing thousands of parents to battle against a system that just isn’t working. That is unacceptable. No child, or their family, should have to wait so long or fight so hard to have their needs met.

Now this crisis is pushing councils to the brink of bankruptcy. I hope the Government will urgently reform the whole system to save council budgets and make sure children and parents get the support they need, without having to wait for months or go to court.

Nearly 6,000 crimes went unsolved every day last year

The Liberal Democrats have slammed the previous Conservative government’s “legacy of failure” as new statistics reveal the extent of unsolved crime in the year ending June 2024.

The figures were revealed by the Home Office’s own statistics on crime outcomes, released earlier this morning.

2,156,075 crimes went unsolved across England and Wales in the year ending June 2024, equivalent to 5,907 crimes going unsolved every day. Ths accounted for 40% of all crimes recorded that year.

Meanwhile, just 361,328 cases resulted in a suspect being charged or summonsed – accounting for less than 7% of all cases.

The number of unsolved crimes have remained consistently high for a number of years, with 2,159,583 cases going unsolved in the year ending June 2023.

The Liberal Democrats have slammed the previous Conservative government for these figures, arguing that years of ineffective resourcing at their hands have left frontline police overstretched, under-resourced and unable to focus on solving crime.

This includes their decision to take more than 4,500 Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) off the streets since 2015.

The party is calling on the new government to urgently deliver a return to proper community policing, where officers are visible and trusted, with the time and resources to focus on solving the crimes that impact local communities the most.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson Lisa Smart MP said:

This is the Conservative’s legacy of failure on crime. Thousands of victims left without the justice they deserve every single day, thanks to years of Conservative incompetence and neglect.

Things cannot continue like this. Our communities deserve to feel safe – and that includes being confident that if you’re the victim of a crime, the police will turn up and properly investigate.

Now, the government needs to deliver the change they have promised – and Liberal Democrats will be pushing for a return to proper community policing, keeping our neighbourhoods safe and reducing crime with more bobbies out on the beat.

Government have “missed an open goal” on new football regulator, say Lib Dems

Responding to the government’s plans to establish an independent football regulator, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Culture, Media and Sport, Max Wilkinson MP, said:

The government have missed an open goal with this bill.

Football fans deserve a stronger voice and clubs need a sustainable future, so we support the creation of an independent regulator and welcome changes to fix the mistakes of the last Conservative Government.

But if the Government really wants to put football fans at the heart of this bill, they still need to make two big additions. They should strengthen the rules governing who can own and be a director of a football club to stop takeovers by anyone responsible for human rights abuses, and they should take up the Liberal Democrat proposals to make for more matches free-to-air.

Reeves announcement: Chancellor must prioritise investment in crumbling hospitals

Responding to Rachel Reeves’s announcement that she will change the fiscal rules to allow for more investment, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP said:

The Chancellor must invest any extra borrowing wisely and that should start by fixing the previous Conservative government’s legacy of crumbling hospitals and GP practices that plague our communities.

Crumbling hospital roofs, creaking ventilation systems, and lift-shafts on life support pose a danger to patient safety and are demoralising for frontline NHS staff.

At the Budget next week, the Chancellor must announce new and immediate funding for our crumbling NHS buildings, ensuring that patients no longer have to worry about the roof falling in when they just need to recover.

We must finally see the productive investments that will get our economy growing again.

Cole-Hamilton: Greens have wasted £30m on care centralisation

Responding to reports that the Scottish Greens will debate dropping support for the Scottish Government’s care centralisation at their forthcoming conference, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said:

Scottish Liberal Democrats are the only party to have opposed this billion-pound bureaucratic ministerial takeover of social care from day one.

I hope the Greens do finally u-turn because this needs stopped before it does any more damage. But the Greens must also apologise for wasting four years and £30m on another hare-brained scheme while the crisis in our care services deepens. It’s money that should have been spent on care staff and service users.

Welsh Liberal Democrats demand action on NHS waiting lists

Responding to the news that hospital waiting times figures in Wales have hit a record high, Welsh Liberal Democrat Leader Jane Dodds MS said:

These figures, which are the worst in the UK for waiting lists, are obscene and they paint a clear picture of how much damage Welsh Labour’s failings have had on our NHS.

Out of a population of just over 3 million people, nearly one third of them are waiting for some form of treatment.

This is quite frankly unacceptable, and the Welsh Government must tackle this waiting-list fiasco immediately.

To add insult to injury, the Welsh Government published their five priorities for reducing the NHS waiting list backlog back in 2022 and almost all of these targets have been missed.
Patients and staff should not be expected to pick up the pieces from the fallout of Labour’s mismanagement.

We cannot delay action any longer, if we want to see a brighter future for our NHS here in Wales then we must take a bold and fresh approach with the aim of cutting down these sky-high waiting lists and making accessible healthcare a reality for all.

The Welsh Government need to set binding targets and stick to them in order to bring these lists down, not just issue more empty promises.