Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300
- 319)
WEDNESDAY 12 MAY 2004
CLLR TONY
PAGE, CLLR
RAMON WILKINSON
AND CLLR
PATRICK COLEMAN
Q300 Chairman: It is very interesting
that it is a matter of priority when here is a bill that only
gives a pilot in 26 series and which is not really going to take
effect for a very long period of time.
Cllr Wilkinson: That is the way
to do it!
Q301 Chairman: You are talking about
2011. If it were a priority for Government, you would rather ask,
why pilots and why this drawn-out length of time?
Cllr Coleman: It is a priority
to address the issue and addressing an issue through pilots, innovation,
experimentation and local discretion is exactly the right way,
particularly from my own political perspective, to go about doing
things. It may take quite a bit of time but, if it goes through
and we get these pilots running, we will see just what we can
produce suited to local areas.
Q302 Chairman: You all represent
different local authority areas; will you all be bidding for pilots?
Cllr Coleman: I cannot say. I
am encouraging my authority but I am an opposition member.
Cllr Wilkinson: Cambridgeshire
went through their cabinet system two weeks ago and they said
that we would be bidding for one of the pilots.
Q303 Chairman: What about Reading?
Cllr Page: That remains to be
seen. We are certainly looking at it. I think the point to make
in response to what you have said is that this is an area of great
sensitivity, as you have just heard. The early days of the Thatcher
Government addressed this issue and it ran into the buffers.
Q304 Chairman: I remember that Mark
Carlisle resigned over it.
Cllr Page: Indeed, Chairman, and
I think you were a Member of the Commons at the time, so your
memory is better than mine. It is a subject where the provision
varies enormously and, as with public transport provision across
the country, you get areas where there is a good infrastructure
and you get areas where there is very poor or non-existent transport
and I think that because of this diversity of provision and the
huge range of circumstances locally, it is appropriate that the
Government should proceed with pilots that address this huge swathe
of diversity from deep rural areas where there may be virtually
no public transport provision to the metropolitan areas and London
where there is a good infrastructure and where the response can
be different.
Q305 Chairman: We are well into this
inquiry now and I have to say that the evidence we have had so
far does not show a great deal of enthusiasm for the Bill or even
the way in which the Bill is being introduced in terms of pilots.
Indeed, none of the LEAs we have interviewed so far have said
that they would be interested in bidding for a pilot, partly because
there is no money in the pilots.
Cllr Wilkinson: Now I think you
have struck the note! I was going to put a condition on ours that
obviously the LGA and all LEAs are pushing very hard for pump
priming and that for the Government to say this is cost neutral
is a nonsense and I think we all know that and that, if you are
going to do this job properly, as we need to, then we do need
some pump-priming money in order to get it going. I hope at the
end of the day there could be some savings in all of this to be
redistributed within the transport facilities for LEAs but, in
the early stages, the collection of the data, the development
of the whole of the project and to push the project through, the
Government are looking at this on the cheap and I do not think
that LEAs are prepared to do that. Funding is a big issue.
Q306 Chairman: The Secretary of State
might say that there is a whole diversity of provision out there
as you have said. There is some very good practice because local
authorities have the ability to be innovative and flexible and
do interesting things in the provision of school transport even
under present legislation, apart from charging. We have had evidence
from lots of areas where they are piloting the yellow bus and
they are piloting different kinds of flexibility across social
services and health and there is all sorts of interesting stuff
going on out there without this Bill.
Cllr Wilkinson: There are two
issues there. I think the first is that one size does not fit
all. If you look right across the spectrum of LEAs in this country,
all have different needs and I think these will emerge when the
pilots start to come forward. The second is that, in terms of
finance, if we look just at Cambridgeshire, for instance, we are
spending over £12 million every year just on school transport
and that is rising by between 7.5 and 10% every year. Over the
last three years it has risen over 17%. There is little that we
can do about that because of the restrictions that are placed
upon us by the 1944 Act in particular. So, unless that is released,
I think we are going to find ourselves year on year just pumping
money into home to school transport when we could be innovative
but we are not allowed to be because of the legal constraints.
Q307 Chairman: We just had the Catholic
Church in front of us complaining that actually local authorities
are becoming much meaner in some areas and reducing and withdrawing
the ability to give transport to Catholic schools.
Q308 Cllr Wilkinson: That
is a pragmatic financial decision and I think that all LEAs are
looking at that issue because whatever you put into the home to
school transport, you take out of the core funding going into
schools. Those are the sort of issues we are grappling with at
the moment and having the constraints of the 1944 Act and later
Acts is not helpful for us.
Cllr Coleman: We would like to
make a very clear distinction between the main focus of the Bill
and the issue of denominational transport. How you set up any
support, if you do support denominational transport, in your local
authority is entirely a local matter. It took a long campaign
in our own county until 1988 to get the ten free miles system
in. We reviewed it in 1993 and decided that it would save us about
£66,000 to wipe that out and that it was not worth the pain
and unhappiness. Since then, we have improved our partnership
with the churches, despite the pain of grant-maintained schools,
and we now, I think, have a much more satisfactory situation.
As long as you are working in a partnership, you have to measure
up the gains and the minuses. The point about cost neutral is
that the benefits of a pilot, assuming pilots come forward—and,
if they do not come forward, fair enough, the local authority
does not want to take the risk—we are not just talking about
cash, we are talking about improved air quality, reduction in
congestion, improving social habits, children learning to use
buses alongside adults perhaps and spreading the benefits of public
spending beyond a minority. We were given the Hampshire figures:
170,000 children in Hampshire and only 15,000 get free transport
and that costs £20 million. There is a perspective that says
that, on a two and three mile basis when transport habits and
travel habits and walking has changed so much since 1944, surely
that deserves a review, but you are immediately stopped from doing
a review because of the Act. We wanted to start changing that
in 1997—
Q309 Chairman: I do not think that
anyone in this Committee would disagree with that but we have
had some of the leading experts on transport saying to this Committee
that what this Bill actually would like to deliver is more people
going on to the roads, taking their children to school, which
would outweigh beneficial effect at all. That is from the leading
transport people, some of whom advise you. They are telling us
that the thrust of this Bill will put more children on the road
taking their children to school.
Cllr Page: I would be interested
to see that evidence because we have already given evidence to
Mrs Dunwoody's Select Committee on this issue and one of the points
we have been pressing is the fragmented regulatory regime outside
of London which actually is completely hostile to integrating
public transport and one of the points that we would like you
to consider and reflect upon, as we made to the Transport Select
Committee, is that the issue for travel for children at school
is not just an issue of home to school transport. It is of encouraging
and enabling school children to have greater use of public transport
outside of school hours in order that they can make better use
of extracurricular facilities, they can travel in the evenings
and at weekends and, if you can sell a home to school transport
benefit as part of a wider package, in other words that the parents
are buying for their children the freedom to be able to travel
much more than just home to school, then there should not necessarily
be that transfer to the private car. The comment I think you are
alluding to is the view that has just the narrow home to school
transport focus and a charge simply related for that journey.
If you are buying a season ticket or getting some form of discounted
travel which enables and encourages the children to make better
use of local public transport, then that surely is in the interest
of the children and the community and that is one of the things
that we would like to see. That requires a change to the regulatory
regime outside of London if you are going to make better use of
that money because you are going to have to integrate public transport
and provide assurances and stability to the operators. It is a
point that the Transport Select Committee has embraced and I am
pleased to say, Chairman, that, as of yesterday, we had a letter
from the Department for Transport who have picked up on the recommendation
of the Transport Select Committee and they are convening a group
to look further at recommendation 13 of the Transport Select Committee
which addresses this point. So, we would emphasise that we are
looking for a package that encourages children and addresses their
mobility needs and perhaps children in higher education as well
should be given that facility in order that they can make good
use of public transport and hopefully encourage its development.
Cllr Coleman: I am amazed that
you have academics who can tell you how a pilot is going to work
before anybody has written a pilot! Call themselves academics,
I will not employ them to do the monitoring and evaluation! If
you are negotiating and consulting local communities on how you
are going to make some changes, you take all these factors into
account and you make a balanced judgment. This is going to be
a local authority initiative enabled by the Government. Some will
work, some will not. Those that do not work very well will have
to be changed or dropped. Anybody who is not responsive enough
gets voted out. That is the system I understand and those of us
who are not brave enough to take on a pilot will not do it. Let
us be a little more relaxed about all this resistance to all change.
I think everybody agreed that we need some change. Pilots and
taking our time and being sensitive is the right way to do it.
Looking at things holistically, would it not be nice if you and
Mrs Dunwoody's Committee were sat here together in order that
we work across all our boundaries which is also quite a handy
way of doing things. I think it is just a case of being a little
bit robust about the criticisms that are being made because it
just shows that all the previous initiatives have always been
cost cutting and service cutting and people think it is going
to happen again.
Chairman: Patrick, that is exactly the
game we play in this Committee. We ask you questions and put you
on your mettle and we have been successful; we are getting some
good answers.
Q310 Valerie Davey: You are here
representing the LGA. There have been pilots on transport. What
is your analysis of what is coming forward from your members as
best practice?
Cllr Coleman: Our focus is on
getting out of this 1944 restriction. Yes, there has been a lot
of innovation and yellow buses have been tried in some areas,
not my own, but we have certainly been trying to do the social
services and special needs integration as far as possible. That
is quite tricky. It is one of the suggested questions you might
be asking us but there, of course, it is important to put the
user's needs first rather than the cart pulling the horse. My
impression is of the sort of innovation that would allow us to
spread benefits more widely, that would allow us to address the
changes in transport use and perhaps get rid of the rather arbitrary
thing that says that, unless you live exactly beyond three miles,
you get no help and that, after three miles, you get all the help
seems to be a little unfair. I think suitable protection is needed
for people in low income families. Nearly every authority now
charges for post-16 transport in rural areas. That was a huge
pain to bring in; I can remember doing it because we were capped
and all the rest of it. We immediately brought in with that—we
had full discretion—protection for people on low incomes
and then we brought in credit card payments as well and that was
a real innovation for county councils in 1990.
Q311 Valerie Davey: So, really looking
for an amendment to the 1944 Act rather than a new Act?
Cllr Coleman: We are looking for
a pilot to allow us out of those restrictions to see what else
we can come up with and then perhaps you might choose to make
an amendment to the 1944 Act when you have monitored and evaluated
the pilots and the work that has gone on. It is not something
that has to be rushed, it has not to be rushed.
Q312 Valerie Davey: Could I come
back to you, Ramon, because you are the one who is potentially
picking up a pilot. Can you tell us a little more about what might
happen in Cambridgeshire.
Cllr Wilkinson: We have only just
set to with a small working group to see what sort of pilot it
is that we would want to run. We have some guidance but it is
very limited. I think that the Government is between a rock and
a hard place. On the one hand, if they tell you the pilots that
you ought to be running, then you have the nanny state telling
you exactly what it is that you should be piloting. On the other
hand, they are saying, "It is flexible, it is free. You have
a look. You be creative, innovative and come forward with some
ideas for us." What we are trying to do is put together something
in Cambridgeshire which is going to be creative and innovative
but key to it is also addressing the inclusion agenda and also
addressing the financial difficulties in which we find ourselves
in trying to keep meeting the increasing costs of home to school
transport. There are several areas at which we are looking. One
is, for instance, cross border with Norfolk and Suffolk, having
a look to see how we exchange the children across there and we
have just received some information about the independent schools
in Cambridge City and looking at the possibility of an innovative
scheme that would allow us to use our park and ride schemes going
across the City where you get a kiss goodbye at the park and ride
and the children then take the school buses. Those are the sort
of areas at which we are looking but these are early days and
we have only just drawn the working group together and we have
12 months to put it together. I do have some concern about the
speed at which this is going, the pace at which we are moving
on this and I think I would be one of those who would say that
it needs to be more robust because, once you start moving into
pilots and they begin to work, some of those begin to work, then
I think we have to make some early decisions about those we are
going to stop and those we are going to move and drive forward.
This is a very, very important early piece of work and I think
that the LEAs are up for it, but they do need some help and guidance
coming through from it.
Q313 Valerie Davey: Is this crucial
to your plan or crucial to this new catalyst which I think the
Bill is providing the fact that you may well be able to charge?
Cllr Wilkinson: Absolutely. Looking
at our current practice, there are some areas where I think it
is grossly wrong not to be able to charge in certain circumstances.
We also find of course that we are getting opportunities to sell
seats on buses and of course we cannot because they are not licensed
or registered with the Commission, but we cannot do that, so we
have empty spaces going through on buses quite unnecessarily,
when we have new towns developing now in the north of Cambridge
and, at Cambourne, there is a 5,000 to 10,000 housing development.
We can integrate with that our transport plans which will be very
helpful indeed but at the moment we cannot because of the constraints
that are put on us.
Cllr Page: I think the key point
to emphasise is the point that was made earlier that this money
that is currently being spent goes on a very small proportion
of school children. In Hampshire it is less than 10% and, in Cambridgeshire,
it is one third of secondary school pupils and that, I think,
reflects the sort of range but it is still a relatively small
minority of children. It is making better value, making better
use of that money, and the issue of pump priming is one that is
fundamental to this. Many local authorities are holding back to
see whether or not the Government will concede that there is a
case for some pump priming because there may be savings to be
achieved but they will not come in year one, they will come in
years two and three and possibly longer. To pretend that somehow
you can have a self-financing scheme, self-financing from year
one, is really deluding yourself and the impression that the Secretary
of State gave to the Transport Select Committee and the officials
who gave evidence to you on 31 March about this so-called £2
billion figure that is available to deliver deficiencies is simply
a nonsense because this includes subsidies for concessionary travel
for senior citizens, £600 million alone. Are we really pretending
that there is money to be delivered from there towards home to
school transport? There may be if you cut the value of it. Is
that what is being suggested? So, the actual kitty available for
delivering potential savings and efficiencies is perhaps £300
or £400 million because, even within the existing home to
school transport, there is the special needs budget as well which
needs to be treated sensitively. So, we would reject entirely
the view that there is a £2 billion kitty which could somehow
deliver up efficiency savings to pay for this.
Q314 Chairman: The Committee has
been given the £2 billion figure and the £0.75 billion
figure.
Cllr Page: Yes, indeed, and the
officials who gave evidence to you, I regret to say, seem to have
confused capital with revenue funding, which worries me because,
when civil servants cannot distinguish between the two, Heaven
help ministers when they have to take decisions. The fact is that
there are substantial capital resources going to transport but
not revenue, yet the officials seem to confuse the two and think
that you can just move capital to revenue. Would that we had that
flexibility at local level. We do not.
Q315 Jeff Ennis: I think we can all
agree that one of the omissions from the Bill is the issue of
pump priming and hopefully that will be addressed in the future.
Are there any other omissions as far as the LGA is concerned in
terms of what is not in the draft Bill?
Cllr Page: In terms of the reserved
powers to LEAs that are in the Bill, we would wish to see powers
given to LEAs to address the issue of school opening hours because,
at the moment, the absence of such a reserve power in the Bill
we feel might weaken the effective bargaining position. It is
not a power that we would wish to see invoked but having the reserved
power often acts as an incentive and we would not wish to see
a scheme involving a number of schools vetoed by one single school
and I think that is a view that we hold across party. We are not
looking for a big stick to knock the schools into line, far from
it, but the presence of such a reserved power in the Bill we think
would facilitate discussions.
Cllr Coleman: We have gone into
a bit of detail in the written answers and techie transport stuff,
as I call it, '85 and 2000 Act—
Cllr Page: The Transport Act amendments
I referred to earlier have been picked up by the Transport Select
Committee. I do not know to what extent you want to do go into
that today but that is an area that we have pressed and the Department
for Transport has responded and would be looking at that further.
There is one other area that we identified for an amendment to
the Bill. We, as an association, would wish to see the roll-out
power in the Bill to enable the Secretary of State to roll out—
Q316 Chairman: Is this in meeting
Ramon's point, there is a faster roll-out?
Cllr Page: No. There is provision
in the Bill for the schemes to be rolled out further by the Secretary
of State without further evaluation and without recourse to that
sort of analysis and we believe that those powers should not be
in the Bill and that there should be proper evaluation before
any further schemes are taken forward.
Q317 Chairman: How does that square
with Ramon's point where he seemed to suggest that we would not
have to wait that long for the process of evaluation and then
implementation and the spreading of the roll-out to other local
education authorities?
Cllr Page: The two are not consistent.
Cllr Wilkinson: What the Government
has been saying in their guidance on this is that their expectation
is that they would go from 2010-2011 and I think that, if they
take that long to deliver through on the home to school transport
before they start looking at going nationwide with some of these,
then, for me, that is far too long, but there is what Cllr Page
was telling you about, that little quirk in there which says that,
once this Bill goes through, the Secretary of State no longer
has to go back to any parliamentary committees to say, "I
am going to do this" and "I am going to do that",
he just does it by regulation. There are some concerns about that,
that he may suddenly in the middle of a pilot stop something or
put it into a completely different direction off his own bat.
That would be any Secretary of State and I think that is a power
going one too far, frankly.
Q318 Jeff Ennis: Should pilots aim
to provide parents and pupils with efficient and affordable transport
to the school of their choice or simply to their nearest school?
Cllr Coleman: Should school transport
attempt to satisfy parental choice? No, it should not. That is
one of the easiest questions I have ever had to answer in local
government! There is a pretty sound rule which is "designated
or nearest school" and most people understand that and that
is the one we will stick to, thank you very much, unless you want
to give us several billion more pounds to throw away. There is
a huge bottomless pit of expenditure if we start to subsidise
parental choice with transport, particularly in areas where it
can be 10 and 15 miles between one secondary school and the next.
Every school is going to be the best school in our county and
in the other counties in the rural areas; it has to be. The local
school is a specialist school in everything when you get to secondary
school and, if people do not like it, rather like if they do not
like the state system, they pay their way out of it.
Q319 Jeff Ennis: Are we all in agreement
with that?
Cllr Wilkinson: No.
Cllr Coleman: We did give a very
firm "no" to subsidy before but there may have been
a bit of . . .
Cllr Page: I think it is the rhetoric
you embellished it with!
| 
