This is The Guardian.

Only a week after the government's massive retreat on benefits, there's now huge controversy

about its plans for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.

We have a legal framework that's needs, focus, that places children and young people at the

heart of it. And any dilution of that, I think, is a source of national shame.

Meanwhile, there's going to be another NHS doctor strike.

Numbers of so-called small boats crossing the English Channel have reached a record high, and the budget watchdog says the UK is facing daunting risks to its public finances.

It looks like a mess.

But according to one government minister, it's getting better all the time.

The sun is shining, the sea is warming up,

wages have risen more in the first 10 months of this government than the first 10 years of the last one.

There's a long way to do, but the gloomsters, they can get stuffed.

I'm John Harris and you're listening to Politics Week in the UK for the garden.

I'm going to start with a bit of context and what journalists call full disclosure.

I'm the parent of a child with special educational needs.

My son James is 18.

He's autistic and he has some learning disabilities.

I've just written a book about James and, in fact, our family's experience of the special needs education system.

That book's called Maybe I'm Amazed. Plug over. James has an education health and care plan or EHCP, things we've been hearing

a lot about this week. That plan meant that until he was 14, he had the kind of legal rights to

support that meant he could go to a mainstream school. Without those rights, that wouldn't have happened.

Now, much to the dismay of parents like me, it's looking increasingly like this is where the

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