I do not share that view: I think that there is a need for a diversity of provision, by which I mean a mix of children who have been properly and well integrated into mainstream schools, of special units attached to mainstream schools and of special schools which exist, for example, for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. There will always be a number of EBD children who may be better educated outside the mainstream.

Different children have different disabilities. The hon. Member for High Peak (Mr. Levitt) is not present at the moment, but he said in Committee, and again today, that he considers that children with profound hearing problems are often educated better in special schools. The same will be true of children with other problems.

A point made in Committee is worth repeating today—that we should remember that special needs are dynamic. There may therefore be a need for children to move in and out of mainstream schools as their special need changes. I am thinking particularly about children with acquired brain injury, which is a special interest of mine. The special need of such children is hard to define, and it will change and have to be redefined. The skills to teach those children are difficult to impart to teachers. Those children may at some times receive better education outside the mainstream, although they may be moved back into the mainstream at certain points in their educational progress and personal development.

I therefore do not entirely share the view expressed by the hon. Member for Crosby (Mrs. Curtis-Thomas), but I acknowledge—I thought I had done so already but I shall repeat the point—that it is not enough to say that patchy provision means that all children do not receive a good education. Education delivery may depend on the relative success of integration strategy: authorities that took such a strategy seriously early on are probably further down the road to the successful integration of special needs children into mainstream schools. That will have an effect on the number of special schools that remain in existence in those authorities.

However, it is not possible to assume that that will always be the case. I do not mean that as a partisan statement. Some local authorities give greater priority and emphasis to special educational needs than others, and some have integrated children into the mainstream much more successfully than others. Some allocate greater resources for the task, and place greater emphasis on good special schools than others.

The word that I used earlier to describe that variable provision was "patchiness", which affects detrimentally the availability for many children of appropriate education that is in line with statements. The new clause would strengthen the rights of parents and children to have statements that are appropriate and quantifiable. It would ensure that statements were sufficiently specific to allow proper education to be provided in line with children's needs.