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Mr. Rendel: I am confused by the hon. Gentleman's comments. He says that his is a rural area and that the distances between schools are likely to increase in future as some are closed. How, therefore, will charging people for the first time for bus services covering greater areas decrease the number using cars and increase the number using buses? It is surely clear that the opposite will happen.

Jim Knight: What I am saying is that the LEA will have to find some imaginative solutions. Currently, there is no real choice for those living in rural areas. They have to use the school for which they can get free school transport, pay a lot of money for an alternative, or take their children by car. I am interested in finding imaginative solutions that take into account a range of possibilities, including an affordable flat rate that enables people to exercise choice and access the school that they want for their children. For example, I am interested in the use of staggered start times for schools in that cluster, so that we can integrate transport more carefully. I am also interested in the use of walking buses in Swanage. Such a development has begun at the
 
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middle school and I was pleased when the Prime Minister's wife paid a visit to help us launch it last year. I would like to see more cycling in the area and greater use of safe routes to school, particularly in Swanage.

It was interesting to hear the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford about his constituents' experience of yellow buses. As he described it, it sounded like a dedicated fleet that offers all sorts of solutions for a local authority to think creatively about, such as integrating transport across schools and improving supervision. When I talked to some of the operators of yellow buses, they mentioned their ability to alter the routes in order to pick everyone up along the way and to find out what might have happened if someone does not turn up at the bus stop. That offers potentially good advances in respect of supervision of children and child safety.

The dedicated fleet could, perhaps, also be used in turn during the summer holiday when there are many visitors to the Purbeck area, a popular tourist destination. It could be used for park-and-ride schemes to take people to the beach or even to deal with antisocial behaviour. There are already interesting examples of some of our more difficult youngsters being taken by the police on outward bound-type courses to burn off some of their excess energy in a more constructive way. Dedicated fleets of vehicles used for school transport could be used imaginatively in the public interest to help with some of those problems.

Obviously, there are concerns about charging, but it is up to the LEA to make the calculation. The Conservatives recently consulted on the bizarre idea of imposing a congestion charge on tourists wanting to visit Purbeck as a means of tackling the summer congestion. I thought that that was a potty idea by the Conservatives at the local county hall and I made some representations accordingly. I am not saying that I support every form of congestion charge or road pricing, but it is interesting that one Opposition party supports the London congestion charge but opposes the charges in the Bill and the other supports road pricing but opposes the Bill. I see no consistency beyond a bit of political opportunism.

Mr. Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con): Can the hon. Gentleman tell us what level of charging for school transport he would support?

Jim Knight: I would be interested in seeing an appropriate improvement in the service, which people would value enough to want to pay a little extra for. The yellow bus service, for example, might be so valued by some parents that they would gladly pay more for it. I have spoken so far mainly about the Purbeck area, but in Weymouth, where I live, a probable solution for a more urban area would be a concessionary bus fare scheme that would be available to everyone in particular groups. Currently, there is a concessionary bus fare scheme for pensioners—the Government have ensured that all pensioners have half-price bus travel—and for disabled people, so it would be interesting to explore the idea of having a concessionary bus fare scheme in semi-urban areas perhaps for young people across the board to enable them to access clubs, sporting activities and so forth.
 
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I have sought to illustrate the merits of the flexible approach that the Bill offers. As I said, I would love to see more imaginative ideas coming from Opposition Front Benchers, who have offered only criticism and nothing constructive about how to deal with the real problems of congestion and school transport in this country. I support the Bill vigorously and I hope that Dorset will, in turn, manage to find imaginative solutions to clear up the school transport problems in my constituency.

4.14 pm

Mr. Peter Atkinson (Hexham) (Con): I follow the hon. Member for South Dorset (Jim Knight), but he leaves me somewhat confused. He spoke about the Conservatives failing to produce any solutions; for his part, he talked about other people finding imaginative solutions, but I did not hear any such solutions from him that would solve the problems. The only imaginative idea that I heard was the excellent one proposed by Dorset's Conservative county councillors to charge visitors for going into a special part of his constituency in order to contribute to subsidising the bus service used by local people. I would have thought that that was an excellent idea.

Mr. Eric Martlew (Carlisle) (Lab): The hon. Gentleman represents a very beautiful part of the country that attracts a lot of tourists. Would he favour a congestion charge for people visiting Hadrian's wall, for example?

Mr. Atkinson: I would certainly see some value, if it was practical, in asking visitors to make a contribution, when that is for the benefit of the local community. I do not see anything wrong with that. It is an imaginative idea, and I would be happy to discuss it. No doubt, the hon. Gentleman could find a way of charging visitors to enter the city of Carlisle. Ken Livingstone does it in London, after all.

I shall certainly vote against the Bill because, as one sees Labour Ministers introducing legislation over the years, one begins to identify the ways in which they present Bills. This is a classic new Labour Bill, presented by the Secretary of State as surrounded by worthy ideas: it is to reduce congestion in cities, make the atmosphere cleaner by keeping us off the roads, make us healthy by encouraging us and our children to walk to school, even tackle obesity, someone said. In fact, however, the Transport Committee had it spot on when it identified it as a method of charging people for something that they currently get for nothing. Paragraph 45 of the Committee's report clearly states:

"The Bill will allow LEAs to charge parents for school transport for children".

I shall vote against the Bill because it singles out people who live in rural areas such as my constituency and who depend much more on school transport than people in urban areas. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Collins) said that about 22 per cent. of school journeys are by car, but my guesstimate would be that in Northumberland the figure is much lower. Because journeys to and from school are much longer than in urban areas, buses are far more important, especially for couples who both work and cannot take the time to run their children to school.
 
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In my constituency, the journey to school can be more than 30 miles. Some of my constituents' children board weekly at the high school because the distances are so great. If they are charged for the journey, it is sure to amount to a substantial sum. The average cost of transport per ordinary, not special needs, pupil in Northumberland is between £400 and £500 a year, so logically that must be somewhere near the sum that they will be asked to pay, which will be a very heavy burden indeed.

As a lot of us in the House are old and grey, we bang on about pensions but sometimes forget the time when we were starting out in life and having children. At this point, I should apologise to the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Twigg), who is neither old nor grey—yet. Children are an expensive accessory to life these days, and getting more expensive all the time. In Northumberland and other rural areas, average incomes are much lower than in cities. Of course, there are people who commute from their lovely country homes, but for many people in the country life is a bit of a struggle.

For the first time, young people from families with lowish incomes are staying on in the sixth form and then going on to further education, putting yet more expense on those families. Any further burdens on them, such as the Bill imposes, will be very damaging.

Mr. Beith: In the hon. Gentleman's constituency, as in mine, there must be families of shepherds and agricultural workers who have to ferry children a mile or two along a farm track in the Land Rover before they are met by a taxi, paid for by the county, which takes them another 5 miles to a bus, which takes them the next 10 or 15 miles to school. The thought that those parents should have to pay a charge, when they are already making a significant contribution in time and effort to that school transport, seems totally unreasonable.

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