England's long-awaited reforms to special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) support will not be published until early next year, Education Secretary Lucy Powell has told MPs.

Appearing before the Commons Education Select Committee on 4 November, in her first accountability hearing in the role, Ms Powell said the government would publish the SEND reform bill, its full response to the SEND consultation, and the national inclusion standards "very early in the new year". Specialist provision packages for pupils with the most complex needs will be published at the same time.

The delay means families, schools and councils will wait several more months for the detail of a shake-up that has already been years in the making. The government launched its consultation on wide-ranging SEND reforms earlier this year, aiming to make mainstream schools more inclusive, and the consultation closed almost six months ago. Its response has still not been published.

The plans include reforms to education, health and care plans (EHCPs), a new three-tier system of support, and a statutory individual support plan for every pupil with special educational needs. Legislation to overhaul SEND provision is to be introduced through the government's Education for All Bill, as confirmed in the King's Speech earlier this year.

The timetable was first signalled the day before Ms Powell's appearance, when Dame Christine Lenehan, the Department for Education's strategic adviser on SEND, told an education conference that the bill would probably be published in the new year, but that it "will not run later than that". Dame Christine also said the DfE's expert panel, which is working on the national inclusion standards and specialist provision packages, would start to publish material in the new year.

She told delegates that the government was clear that implementation of the new system would start in September 2029, once the legislation has been through Parliament. That leaves a long run-in, but campaigners say the delay still matters, because a later bill leaves less time for scrutiny and preparation while keeping the original implementation dates.

Ms Powell told MPs the government was "working night and day along with our trusted partners" to finalise the plans, and said ministers would take as long as needed to "get it right". She did not, however, give MPs a firm date, and she had no answer to whether the response to a separate consultation on education otherwise than at school, known as EOTAS, would be published at the same time.

The hearing also exposed the questions that remain unresolved. MPs pressed Ms Powell on whether parents would be left with only judicial review if tribunals lost the power to name a specific school or setting in a child's plan. She said the mechanisms for challenging individual support plans were still being worked through, and asked the committee to wait for the detailed proposals.

Committee chair Helen Hayes, and MPs Mark Sewards and Manuela Perteghella, emphasised that trust from parents depended on rights not being discarded. Ms Powell said the government was "getting that buy-in", but parent campaigners say they have yet to see the evidence for that, after months of anxiety about proposals that could weaken existing legal protections.

The DfE has said it is working closely with parents and professionals to get the reforms right, and that the education secretary is committed to the timelines set out in the schools white paper. For now, though, the message from Westminster is that the most important document in English SEND policy for a generation will arrive in the new year, not before Christmas.