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Mr. Williams: Yes, but I do not understand how allowing Powys county council to enter into some innovative arrangement will improve the situation. The hon. Member for South Dorset (Jim Knight), with whom I have lately had some communication, spoke about innovation, but my authority would like to look for resources rather than innovation. Very often, it is the quality and safety of school transport that is the concern of parents, and the fact that everything goes out for tender. Although certain basic safety standards must be met, many parents are concerned about the way in which children are looked after on the buses and some of the environments in which they travel.
The problem is not decreasing, but increasing. Just last week in my constituency, Trecastle school received final notice of closure. It has about 25 pupils who will have to make a bus journey from Trecastle to Sennybridge, which has the nearest school. As the almost inexorable closure of small rural schools goes ahead, the need for school transport will increase rather than decrease.
I do not think that the subject of further education has been addressed; if it has, it was only in passing. When further education was taken out of local authority
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control, authorities were left with the most difficult part to organise—transport. In my area, Coleg Powys has four bases in Ystradgynlais, Brecon, Llandrindod and Newtown. Those different parts of the college specialise in different things. Students based in Brecon who want to study engineering, for example, sometimes have to travel to Newtown 50 miles away. Yes, they sometimes get boarding in Brecon, but the 50-mile journey is made there and back every week. What will be the cost to those students? Yes, they get an allowance, and we are very pleased about that, because it encourages pupils to stay on in further education. If the money must all be spent on transport, however, it will not be a huge incentive.
One of the most encouraging aspects of the Bill is that it gives local authorities power to set up their own scheme, but that must be agreed by the Secretary of State in England or the Assembly in Wales. That provision gives power to local authorities on one hand, but takes it back on another. I know that the Minister will say that it is a safeguard.
Jim Knight: Surely it is right to have the safeguard to ensure that what happens is in the public interest and is not a cost-cutting measure. There may be some areas in which such an arrangement is inappropriate, because they are so rural and sparsely populated that it will create an unfair burden on those who live outside the 3-mile area, and that burden will not be countered by the huge benefit for people who live between 2 and 3 miles away from the school, who will get a much better and more safe and satisfactory scheme as a result of the pilots.
Mr. Williams: I agree that the measure will help, and I am sure that people will be able to put in place schemes in urban areas that are better than the current arrangements. It seems, however, that the Government cannot trust local authorities and want to take power to themselves. While the provision may be a safeguard, it certainly does not do much for devolution.
4.59 pm
Mr. Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con): We have had a good-humoured debate on an important subject, which is of significance for millions of hard-working families. Loyal, if somewhat gullible, Labour Back Benchers support the Bill, which is opposed by everyone else—all Opposition Members and millions of people outside this House are now wised up to the siren voices of new Labour.
The biggest problem with the school run is the large number of pupils who live between 1 and 3 miles from the school gate and who travel to school by car, which is a point that the Secretary of State conceded in his press release on 14 October:
"Twice as many children are driven to school now in comparison with 20 years ago—around 40 per cent. of primary pupils and 20 per cent. of secondary pupils. Most of these journeys are less than 2 miles, meaning decreasing numbers of children walking or cycling with serious health implications in terms of lack of daily exercise and the growing proportion of children who are overweight."
The Secretary of State did not tell us whether he used to cycle to school and what impact, if any, it had on his longer-term health. I used to cycle to school along Bath
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road. That journey was regarded as safe, but it is now totally unsafe and few people would cycle it today. We must address that problem, which has encouraged so many hon. Members to participate in this debate.
The issue of affordability is to the fore. The Government want families who live more than 3 miles from the school gate to cross-subsidise those who live closer. In an earlier exchange, the Minister said sotto voce that the problem is: who will pay for all the worthy things that could be done to improve the school run for those who live closer to schools? The Government's answer is that people who happen to live more than 3 miles away from a school must pay, because that is the only way in which to get extra resources into the system. A host of speakers have referred to affordability, which was also raised during the consultation process. The summary of consultation responses states:
"A majority of respondents accepted the principle that affordable fares could be charged, if this secured more comprehensive and higher quality school transport, though there was some debate as to what might be considered affordable".
What is the average cost likely to be? The only information that I can bring to the House is that for pupils in Dorset whose transport is currently provided by the county council, and it excludes those who get special school transport. The average cost to the county council is £570 per pupil per annum. If a family had to pay that cost out of its taxed income for perhaps two or three pupils, it would be unaffordable and unreasonable, yet that idea lies behind the Bill.
The Government will put pressure on those local authorities that opt in to the scheme to force people who live further than 3 miles from the school gate to pay substantial sums towards the cost of school transport, which is neither affordable nor fair. It is interesting that the Minister and the Secretary of State have not denied that £570 per pupil per year is the likely outcome if the Bill gets on to the statute book.
My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) made an excellent speech in which he raised a number of unanswered questions and anomalies, and drew attention to the initiatives that he introduced when he was Secretary of State. Those initiatives did not need to be pushed through the legislative process. The then Department of Transport undertook them, using common sense and discretion.
My right hon. Friend is a great enthusiast, if not a fanatic, about cycling. I share his enthusiasm for encouraging cycle training and wearing cycle helmets. However, under the Government, the amount of money that is spent on road safety training in schools has been cut. That also applies to the amount of cycle training, yet the Government have given themselves a fund that could be used to finance more cycle training and more ordinary road safety training for pupils in our schools. The so-called safety camera partnerships now hold the fund and the Government refuse to allow it to be reinvested in road safety education. That money can be used only for propaganda or putting up more speed cameras. What folly!
My right hon. Friend also identified the conflict between choice and being forced to attend the nearest school. The Government have not tackled that issue properly.
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This morning, I attended an important conference about sustainable transport. The chief executive of Sustrans drew our attention to events at Kesgrave school in Ipswich, where 70 per cent. of the children cycle to school. He said that there are only 11 schools in England where more than 20 per cent. of pupils cycle to school and only 19 where more than 10 per cent. cycle to school. It does not need the Bill, with the extra burden and stealth tax that it imposes on people in rural areas, to encourage more cycling to school. If the Government are genuinely interested in sustainable transport and encouraging more cycling, they should get on with it in any event.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) made an excellent speech, which demonstrated the enormous chasm of understanding between Labour Members, who do not understand rural areas, and those on this side of the House, who know what it is like for people who live in large and disparate communities. He made it clear that a system of charging for services that are currently free would have an enormous impact on the people of Northumberland. It would affect the bus services and result in reduced educational choice.
My hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) made an important contribution in which she emphasised her concerns about affordability and highlighted some of the key worries of the Select Committee on Education and Skills. They included the Bill's impact on parental choice.
The hon. Member for South Dorset (Jim Knight) reminded me of an incident that happened in the summer. I went to Swanage to participate in a television programme about transport. Ironically, a Labour Member of Parliament who was due to appear on the half-hour programme was unfortunately unable to get there before it concluded because he was held up in a traffic jam. There is a congestion problem on the roads in Dorset and it was interesting that a Government spokesman was unable to reach the destination because of it.
My figures for the total cost of transport for Dorset are higher than those of the hon. Member for South Dorset. He claims that the cost was £8.3 million, but the county council told me that it spent no less than £9.5 million on school transport. That is a significant part of the local education authority budget. However, the hon. Gentleman implied that it would be reasonable to charge people in Dorset who live further than 3 miles from the school gate for the cost of school transport. That is unacceptable to people in Dorset generally and, I am sure, to his constituents.
The solutions that the hon. Gentleman was putting forward, including walking, buses and cycling, could be arrived at without the need for this legislation. Staggered school times could be achieved, as I understand it, through the use of statutory instruments in certain circumstances to change the times of the school day, but the Government could deal with that by giving extra discretion to all local education authorities without the need for the Bill. The hon. Gentleman inevitably had a go at his Conservative county council, but it was a pity that he did not mention that Dorset county council is the worst-funded county council in the
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country and is therefore not in a position to be able to afford all the fancy expenditure that he was talking about.
The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) mentioned Northumberland and thought, as I do, that we must embed a statutory right to free school transport in our legislation. He reminded us of the impact on educational choice of charging those between 16 and 19 the cost of getting to school or college when the distances involved are quite large.
The hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) was worried about affordability, the impact of the provisions on rural railways and the stigma of means-testing. He thought, as we do, that the Bill was highly discriminatory against those who live in rural areas.
The hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) referred, in his thoughtful contribution, to the success of yellow buses in his constituency. He was enthusiastic about the innovation, but I challenge him to tell me why the scope for innovation should be limited to 20 pilot authorities doing the Government's bidding. Why not allow a certain amount of deregulation, where that would be sensible, and why not encourage more local authorities to be more innovative within the existing framework?
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