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Mrs. Dunwoody: I am listening to this nonsense with great attention. Has the hon. Gentleman talked to Conservative-controlled Cheshire county council? That council could explain to him, as he obviously finds it a difficult concept, that it is not the children of rural households who block roads, but people who live within a short distance of the schools, who for various reasons—some legitimate, some not—use cars when there are a hundred better ways to get their children to school.

Mr. Collins: The hon. Lady makes my point, not hers. The problems that she sees in her urban areas—and
 
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those that the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey) sees in hers—have nothing to do with the provision of free school transport which, principally but not solely, benefits rural areas. In other words, if she believes that the Bill provides a solution to that problem, she reinforces our suspicion—articulated by my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon)—that the Treasury will redirect resources from local authorities on the basis that they can now charge for school transport and from rural areas to urban areas. She said that there is a problem in urban areas and what happens in rural areas does not help. Something needs to be done, and she wants to redirect resources to do it.

Mr. Charles Clarke: If that is the case, can the hon. Gentleman explain why Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaders of county councils in rural areas support the legislation? I can give him names if he wants them. Why do those leaders support the Bill if what he fears could possibly come to pass? It could not: it is nonsense and a fantasy.

Mr. Collins: The Secretary of State says that, but he knows that many Conservatives in local government strongly oppose the Bill. He is right to say that some Conservatives in local government are quite interested in some of his proposals, although some of the people whom he believes to be in favour of the Bill have begun to revise their views. He might have meant Essex county council, which has expressed an interest in the Bill. It pointed out:

"We would rather not make a charge, but that would mean the Government giving us considerable grant aid".

The Government have created a system that has so boxed in many local authorities that, no matter who is in control, they will look at any and every method of giving themselves a little more flexibility. It does not follow that Conservatives in the House have to take the same line, any more than the Secretary of State could possibly say that his party was unanimously in favour of top-up fees. If he contends that political parties should be unanimous on the issues, he hardly managed to deliver that on his flagship legislation earlier this year.

Our third concern about the Bill echoes the logic, although not the conclusion, of the Education and Skills Committee.

When it considered the draft Bill, it concluded:

"The Government seems confused as to the objectives of its draft Bill. The Secretary of State has said that it will encourage more children to walk or cycle to their local school, yet this does not sit easily with Government policies to increase diversity in schools and to allow for the expression of parental preference: an approach that encourages greater mobility."

The Committee concluded, in effect, that the Government should keep the Bill and scrap choice. We urge them to do the opposite: make choice a reality and scrap the Bill.

The Committee is right to say, however, that Ministers cannot stick by both the Bill and their words on choice. For thousands of parents, perhaps ultimately hundreds of thousands, the Bill will make choice entirely unaffordable. They will have to send their child to the nearest school, whether or not that is their real preference, simply because it is the cheapest option for them.
 
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Worse still, the Government explicitly acknowledge that those who choose to send their children to a faith school may lose out. The explanatory notes refer to article 2 of the European convention on human rights, which provides that

"the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure . . . education and teaching in accordance with their own religious and philosophical convictions";

yet the Government state in the notes:

"However, in the Government's view this does not mean that there is any positive obligation to subsidise a particular form of education in order to respect a parent's religious or philosophical convictions. Consequently this Article does not of itself create any obligation to make arrangements for school transport or for free school transport to assist or enable parents to send their children to schools of their choice."

That means that, although at present about 80 per cent. of local authorities have provision for free school transport to denominational schools, under the Government's arrangements, such provision would be much less prevalent. Conceivably, it might disappear completely in some areas.

Mr. David Rendel (Newbury) (LD): The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the cost of getting to and from school is a critical factor in deciding which school one's children should attend and how they should get there. Is not it rather odd, therefore, given that the marginal cost of using a car—if one happens to be lucky enough to have a car—is often less than the cost of sending the child by bus, that the Government think the measure a good way to get more people on to buses?

Mr. Collins: I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. He is also right to remind the House that many parents, both in rural and urban areas, cannot run a car, or, because both parents work, cannot provide school transport for their children. For them the calculation would be straightforward: do they feel comfortable sending their children to walk what might be a considerable distance or are they prepared to pay several hundred pounds a year of their post-tax income on transport? The Government have not properly thought through the incentives and we could see many perverse consequences.

Mr. Fallon: Is not it equally possible that there will be a further perverse incentive? Parents who decide that they cannot afford to pay £400 or £500 a year may decide to change their work pattern and take their children to school by car, thereby negating the entire object of the exercise.

Mr. Collins: My hon. Friend makes the point that I quoted earlier from the National Assembly for Wales, a Labour-dominated authority, which said that that could indeed be the case. In relation to the effects from carbon and our Kyoto obligations on greenhouse emissions, the increased usage of the car in rural areas, which is likely at least to counterbalance any reduced car usage in urban areas, means that the net effect on global warming will be negative or unmeasurable. The Bill will not achieve the Government's objectives and, as my hon. Friend says, it could result in many more cars on the road in some areas.
 
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Our fourth concern is that the Bill is, once again, a redirection of resources from rural to urban areas. Because the present system of funding school transport is based on distance criteria, it inevitably means that a large proportion of resources is directed to areas where significant numbers of children live several miles from their nearest school. We believe that that system actually reflects differences in need. A long journey is clearly more difficult and expensive to undertake than a short one. The Government are already providing far less funding per pupil for rural than for urban areas. That is at the heart of the cross-party campaign mounted by the F40 group of local education authorities, which seeks a fairer basis for distributing resources.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks has already pointed out the probable implications for the Treasury. The Secretary of State said something extremely interesting, which may result in a good debate in Committee. He said that there was no possibility at all—I think that that was his phrase—that the Treasury would use the introduction of charging in some areas as a means of redirecting resources.

The Opposition remember similar assurances from the right hon. Gentleman and from previous Secretaries of State for Education on whether the Treasury would take into account extra income raised from charging tuition and top-up fees. None of those assurances turned out to be worth the paper they were printed on. If the Bill receives a Second Reading, we shall attempt to do in Committee what we tried to do with the Higher Education Act 2004, and include a requirement for the Treasury not to redirect resources as a result of the introduction of charging. I suspect that Ministers will say, as they did then, "We can't accept that amendment, but don't worry, just trust us." Then, a few months or years down the line, it will turn out that they are doing exactly what we expected.

Our final major concern is that, although the Bill is often described by Ministers as merely an enabling mechanism for a few pilot areas, it actually includes a provision to make its changes permanent and, in all probability, universal. The Secretary of State referred to clause 3, which covers the power to repeal new provisions and accurately described what could be done if the Government concluded that pilots had not succeeded. What he did not point out, but which is clear in the explanatory notes, is that, as they state, if a repeal order

"is not made the new provisions will continue after the pilot is competed and there will then be no limit on the number of participating LEAs."

The system could thus become permanent and there would be an expectation that LEAs would volunteer for it, and we anticipate that there would be Treasury pressure for them to do so.

Although the Secretary of State mentioned a number of organisations that he believed were supportive of the measure, a large number have expressed concerns about some or all parts of it. The National Governors Council said:

"Affordable fares are a must and free school meals are not necessarily a good indicator".

The Secretary of State indicated that the Government might think again about making free school meals the determinant and I very much hope that they will.
 
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David Hart, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said:

"This will cause uproar amongst parents. They will ask whether this is the beginning of an attack on free education. It will be deeply unpopular and could be extremely expensive for those with several children."

John Dunsford, general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, said:

"This moves away from the principle of free education for all."

I shall quote from only one of a string of head teachers of individual schools. Ann Rogan, head teacher of St. Andrew's primary school, Fontmell Magna, said on the "Westminster Hour" last weekend:

"I think probably what brought it home to me was . . . talking to a set of parents who had moved and were actually going to need to buy a second car in order to bring their child to school if the free bus places were taken away."

That is the point. We are talking about something that will have a massive impact on the quality of life and living standards of large numbers of people, many of whom are not even remotely wealthy.

I have one final quote. Margaret Morrison of the National Convention of Parent Teacher Associations said:

"It's definitely going to be the rural families who don't have a choice . . . it's quite an anomaly isn't it, government are telling us to remove cars from the roads and yet they allow councils to make a provision that is no doubt going to increase the number of cars on the school run."

As recently as July, the Secretary of State indicated that he was undecided on whether to proceed with the Bill, telling the Select Committee that he was concerned that there was no cross-party consensus to proceed with it. He is right about that: there is no cross-party consensus to proceed with it. Let me make it emphatically clear to him today that Conservatives will oppose the measure vigorously.

The Bill will hit some of the weakest, poorest and most vulnerable in our communities; it will impoverish tens of thousands of parents and, yet again, disadvantage rural areas. It fatally undermines the principle of free education for all. The Bill should not have been introduced in the first place. We urge Ministers to think again and we shall fight the Bill tooth and nail until they do.

2.49 pm

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