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Mr. Tim Collins (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (Con): Let me begin with one of the few areas on which we may be in agreement: I agree with the Secretary of State that this is an important Bill with wide implications and join him in expressing thanks, on behalf of my party, for the work done by the Select Committees on Transport and on Education and Skills. I am sure that we will all draw on that work during this debate and, should the Bill get its Second Reading, in Committee. Unfortunately, that is probably as far as I will be able to go in cross-party agreement today.

Whenever the Government talk about modernising something, they end up wrecking it altogether, and, sadly, that is what is due to happen to the entitlement to free school transport under this Bill. For 60 years, children living long distances from their nearest school have had the right to use a school bus. For 60 years, it has not mattered how much their parents earn, how many siblings they have or whether they get a free school meal. The right has been simple: if the journey is too long, the bus will come along. Now, Ministers say that the right is a "legal straitjacket"—a phrase that the Secretary of State used repeatedly—and they plan to strip it away.

What will be the result? Yet more means-testing, yet more cost—hundreds of pounds a year—for families struggling to make ends meet, yet more problems for parents of disabled children, many of whom may lose out badly and yet more redirection of resources out of rural areas and into Labour's big-city heartlands.

Let me deal with one argument that the Secretary of State advanced in favour of the Bill. It is, he says, merely deregulatory. He asserts that it simply enables local
 
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authorities to volunteer. He also argues that, since some Conservative and Labour local authorities favour some or all of the provisions, our party should support it here too. It is strange for him to argue that no party can take a stance on an education issue unless every member of that party is wholly united behind it. He is, after all, the Secretary of State who pushed through top-up fees against the bitter opposition of rather a large number of his Back Benchers and party members. So let us dismiss that argument.

As for deregulation and setting local authorities free, it is an odd enabling of local government that gives councils no new powers or resources bar the power to levy charges for a service that has been provided free for six decades; but it has been a feature of the past seven and a half years that a declaration of a new freedom usually turns out to be a new tax, or what the Prime Minister prefers to call a "user fee".

We have five major areas of concern about the Bill. First, there will be many vulnerable people who will lose out, and lose out badly. More children will be forced to walk long distances in darkness and cold. Walking a mile or so along well-lit urban roads is one thing—perhaps it is the only world that Labour Ministers understand—but walking several miles up and down narrow, twisting, hilly and unlit rural roads in Cumbria or elsewhere is something entirely different. Do not the Government understand that in the Lake district, for example, the nearest school for many pupils may be a very long way indeed from where they live?

Mr. Charles Clarke: Does the hon. Gentleman believe that it is okay in those circumstances to walk 2.7 miles? Transport is now provided by law for those who live 3.2 miles away. What does he propose to do for those who live 2.7 miles away?

Mr. Collins: I favour providing a guarantee, as now, and as for the past six decades, that those facing long distances will, willy-nilly and irrespective of means-testing, have access to free school transport. Of course, I agree that providing better school transport for those who do not live quite such a distance away is desirable, but not at the expense of charging people for something that they have had for nothing for a very long time.

The Secretary of State has confirmed that parents on earnings well below the national average would, under the Government's proposals, if they want to spare their children such a long walk, be required to pay perhaps £400 or £500 extra for each child every year.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. David Jamieson): Scaremongering.

Mr. Collins: It is not scaremongering. The Secretary of State has confirmed that, under the Bill, anybody earning more than about £13,000 a year could be charged for a service that is now provided free. That is well below national average earnings and the threshold for the working families tax credit. Many people receiving the WFTC, whom the Chancellor deems to be on low incomes, would lose entitlement to free school transport.
 
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As many voluntary groups concerned with children with special educational needs have said, the Bill provides no specific protection for children with disabilities. I welcome what the Secretary of State said on this point when I challenged him. He went some way towards reassuring some of the groups, but I am sure that they would want me to press him further. He said that he would guarantee that children with a statement of special educational needs would not lose any of the entitlements that they receive under that statement and that he anticipated that those children would therefore continue to be eligible for free school transport, but he will know—indeed, some Government Members pointed it out—that many children with special educational needs do not have a statement. Perhaps he can clarify the point now, or perhaps we can tease it out in Committee, but the implication of what he said was that the rather larger group of children with special educational needs would not be provided with free transport under the Bill, even if they live beyond the statutory distance. Furthermore, he specifically said that he could not guarantee that two thirds of spending on school transport would continue to be for the benefit of children with special educational needs. It is important to stress that point, because the thrust of his argument in the early part of his speech was that large amounts of public money were being spent and he believed that that money could be spent better. If two thirds of the money that is spent now is for the benefit of children with special educational needs, it is proof that that money is largely well spent, not that it is being badly spent.

Jim Knight (South Dorset) (Lab): If a more efficient form of transport were devised as part of an imaginative pilot scheme, which benefited the many and not just the few who benefit at the moment, it might be possible to deliver a successful scheme for children with special educational needs who are not on a statement and those on a statement at a reduced proportional cost in respect of the whole budget.

Mr. Collins: The hon. Gentleman invites us to believe that spending a smaller proportion of a relatively fixed budget on children with special educational needs would serve their interests better than they are served now. I am sceptical about whether that is what would happen.

The second major concern about the Bill is that it is based on a false analysis. The Government have given a seriously inaccurate account of how children get to school. The Secretary of State talked about the growth in the numbers of children who are driven to school. What he did not point out is that journeys to school by car remain a small minority of overall journeys. The Department for Transport's national travel survey shows that only 30 per cent. of children are driven to school and that proportion is falling, according to the most recent data. By contrast, nearly half—46 per cent.—of children walk to school and that proportion is both rising and officially thought to be under-recorded. A further 22 per cent. go to school by bus, train or bicycle and that proportion has barely shifted at all over the last decade. We must get the figures in perspective.

Valerie Davey (Bristol, West) (Lab): Proportions always obscure detail. It is important to look at
 
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individual LEAs, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State suggested. For example, buses into Bristol this week had a clear road because the lack of cars going to school—because of half term—meant a 15 per cent. drop in congestion. Nationwide, the hon. Gentleman's figures may be right, but in specific areas use of the car is higher and a new and imaginative scheme could therefore lead to much greater falls in numbers on the road.

Mr. Collins: I shall come in a moment to congestion, what really causes it and what needs to be done to deal with it. The hon. Lady put her finger on what is behind much of the thinking behind the Bill. Much of what the Secretary of State said concerned national figures, but she is right to say that there are differences between different areas. That is the whole point. Because the present system is pegged to assistance for long journeys, the bulk of the money spent benefits children who live in rural areas, not urban areas such as those that the hon. Lady and other Labour Members represent. I suspect that that is what the Government do not like about the present scheme. We fear that the Bill is about a redirection of resources from the countryside to other areas.

While there is of course a case for further encouraging alternatives to the car for school journeys, it is worth noting that many more than two in three parents already use them. The practical steps needed to encourage further expansion of alternatives to car usage, such as better bike facilities in schools or greater co-ordination of bus and school timetables, do not require this legislation. The fear of "stranger danger", which leads some parents to resist any option involving their children travelling on their own, relates to worries about the state of our society and of our criminal justice system that will not be addressed in any way by this Bill. The Bill can be seen as both an over-reaction and a distraction.

We therefore question the real motivations behind this Bill. The suspicion is that it is in part an attempt by Ministers to appear to be doing something about congestion, which has indeed got much worse in urban areas in recent years. However, the figures show that that has little to do with school trips. Indeed, as the Labour-dominated National Assembly for Wales has said:

"if charges were levied for transport that was previously free, then more parents might decide to transport their children by car."

Worsening congestion has far more to do with the fact that this Government have by far the worst record of investing in roads of any Administration in the last 200 years.

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