Examination of Witnesses (Questions 442
- 459)
WEDNESDAY 19 MAY 2004
MR STEPHEN
TWIGG AND
MR DAVID
JAMIESON
Q442 Chairman: Can I welcome Stephen
Twigg and David Jamieson to our proceedings. I have to tell you,
David, you will be competing for air time when Stephen gets going.
He answers questions well but fully!
Mr Jamieson: Thank you, Chairman.
It is a pleasure to be here this morning especially as seven years
ago I used to be a member of the Committee. We had some very interesting
reports, but nothing with the depth and interest that you have
had in recent years.
Q443 Chairman: Do you want to say
anything to begin with or are you happy to go straight to questions?
Mr Twigg: I would like to say
a couple of things. First of all, I would like to welcome the
work that you are doing as part of the pre-legislative scrutiny
on this Bill. Clearly what I would want to emphasise is that the
Bill is part of our broader strategy that we set out last year
in terms of school travel schemes. The system that we have got
at the moment and that we have had for 60 years is one that serves
a small minority of pupils, around one in 10 of the school population
and the focus of the Bill is very much on seeking to address the
needs of all pupils and their families and, in particular, to
address those two and a half million daily school journeys that
are done by car, something like one in three journeys, many of
which are journeys of between one and three miles. What we want
to do is to work as far as possible on a consensual basis, across
parties, working with schools, head teachers, local government
and the churches to try to reach some kind of agreement about
how we can improve the system for the future and I very much see
this as part of that. I know that last week you had the representatives
of the Local Government Association here and I think their evidence
very much reflected the fact that this is a piece of work which
local government has asked us to undertake and which we are very
pleased to be taking forward in partnership with local government.
Q444 Chairman: David, do you want
to say anything?
Mr Jamieson: If I may just make
a few remarks. I am grateful for the opportunity to appear with
my colleague in front of the Committee on this small but very
important Bill. I think this is a good opportunity for my Department
to demonstrate its support for the School Transport Bill. From
the transport perspective, we welcome the opportunity that the
Bill would bring to a local authority to come up with innovative
ways of meeting the need of pupils travelling to school and, in
particular, reducing car dependency which could relieve pressure
on our transport networks and, just as importantly, encourage
healthier and more independent forms of travel for young people
to schools. We will be working very closely with the DfES in taking
forward the pilot schemes and we share the overall aim of ensuring
that they should enable more children to travel to school not
only by bus but we also hope that more will be able to travel
by foot or cycle as well.
Q445 Chairman: Thank you for that.
The first question I wanted to ask is, are we all wasting our
time? I was with the Secretary of State for Education and Skills
in Thurrock on Monday morning. He did not say anything to me at
that time about this Bill being scrapped, but later in the day
I was contacted by the media to suggest that that indeed is what
is happening to this Bill, because it seems that the official
Opposition may not support the Bill then the Government will walk
away from it. Is that true?
Mr Twigg: It would certainly be
a dramatic start to our proceedings this morning if I suggested
that and it might even have resulted in a rather brief session.
What we have sought to do, Chairman, as I said in my opening remarks,
is to work on a cross-party basis and certainly in local government,
as was reflected last week, there is cross-party support for this
from all three main parties and the independent group. What Charles
Clarke and I have sought to do is to see whether we can build
a similar level of consensus here in Parliament, hence the meeting
that we had last week with Tim Yeo and Tim Collins and the media
reports are pretty accurate. Tim Yeo indicated that the Conservatives
will oppose this at Second Reading and Charles and I expressed
our disappointment at that. We are not, on the basis of that,
deciding to withdraw the Bill. We want to proceed with the
process of scrutiny and consultation that we are undertaking.
I have had a number of meetings with relevant stakeholders, many
of whom have been before this Committee and we will then consider
where the Bill goes in the light of your work on this Committee,
the other scrutiny and the consultation.
Q446 Chairman: We have worked out
that we have about £50,000 in consultancy fees so far in
looking at this Bill, so you can probably split that between the
two of you if this Bill does not go through. We have had a lot
of evidence already and, of course, both Charles Clarke and you,
Stephen, gave evidence to the Transport Select Committee and you
have seen their report. The thing that comes through consistently
here in terms of the evidence that we have taken—and I have
to say that the LGA session was the most positive towards the
Bill and there have been a lot of negatives as well—is why
have the Bill. There are lots of innovative schemes up and down
the country. Local authorities are introducing all sorts of interesting
schemes to see if they can tackle this problem and they do not
do not seem to need legislation to do it. Why introduce a simple
but quite complex piece of legislation in the sense that it is
an innovative piece of legislation and have the trials and pilots
if you can do it without legislation?
Mr Twigg: I think it is fair to
say that there is a lot of good work going on in schools and local
education authorities already and we certainly want the Bill and
the pilots around the Bill to go with the grain in that respect
and there is a lot that we can learn from them. What local government
has said to us, and we agree, and again it is reflected in the
evidence that they gave last week, is that the ability to have
a careful charging policy that goes beyond existing charging policies
is important if local government is going to be able to try out
some innovative schemes. So I think it is fair to say, and the
point has been made by a number of Committee members in previous
sessions of this inquiry, that the key element from the Education
Department point of view that requires the primary legislation
is to enable the charging outside of the statutory distances and
that is why we need legislation. If we were not legislating I
have no doubt there is a great deal more we could do and a lot
of that is happening already. I think the combination of the good
work that is happening out there already with this legislation
will enable us to maximise the impact and learn some lessons.
We are criticised from two different perspectives: one is to say
why do it at all, you can do a lot already within existing legislation;
the other criticism is we are not going far enough fast enough,
why are we simply piloting it, why do we not come up with something
ourselves and have that as a national system. In a sense we have
struck a quite happy medium where we are not seeking to impose
something because, frankly, we do not know what we would impose,
there is not a consensus in that respect about what a new national
system would be, but we do allow the innovations of local government
to be tested out through the pilots and I think that combination
does make sense.
Q447 Chairman: If there are too many
people taking their children to school. If it is urgent in terms
of the environment, it is urgent in terms of children's health
and it is urgent in terms of congestion. 2011 is a hell of a long
way off to wait to get some substantial change. Many people think
it is not fast enough. If you have got a real sense of urgency
then why not introduce this legislation and say to every local
authority "Go ahead, guys, pilot away"?
Mr Twigg: I think we are moving
pretty quickly. This is a system that we have had for 60 years.
Through this draft Bill we are setting up the opportunity for
pilots over a period of five years. If we had set a timescale
that was much tighter than that people may well have criticised
us for a rush job and seeking to get things changed overnight.
Q448 Chairman: We are supposed to
be a radical government, are we not?
Mr Twigg: We are also a government
that wants to do things that work. We want to make sure that we
have pilots that, first of all, have local buy in, we want local
authorities to be fully consulting at the local level to ensure
that there is that local support and that there is sufficient
time for us to be able to test the effectiveness of the pilots,
both locally evaluating but also for us to be doing that nationally
as well and I think the length of time that is provided in this
makes a lot of sense.
Q449 Chairman: Minister, you used
the term "buy in". We have had a lot of evidence here
of local education authorities saying they are not interested
in a buy in, there is nothing in it, in fact there are a lot of
negatives because there is no money in it. Why would they buy
in to a pilot to do something that is going to cost all of them
a substantial amount of money? Even the LGA says none of these
pilots is cost-neutral. Why would they buy in if you do not give
them the stimulus and attraction of some money with it?
Mr Twigg: Because they have said
through their Association that they want to be able to pilot changes,
that they regard the present system as unsatisfactory because
the cost of home to school transport has spiralled so much over
recent years and because, like us, they recognise that a doubling
of the number of school car journeys over a 20-year period is
not something that we want to support or sustain. I have had
meetings with the Local Government Association where they have
said to me privately exactly what they have said to you publicly
and if I were them I would be pressing for money for pump-priming
of these schemes, but we are talking about an area of work that
already involves a very substantial amount of money, £500-£600
million a year being spent on home to school transport and I think
the potential benefits that will come to local government from
these schemes actually means that they will come up with the very
small amounts of money that they have identified for pump-priming
from their own budgets. I have to consider this more broadly in
terms of the schools' budget in the DfES.
Q450 Chairman: Yes, but they are
doing this and taking money away from other things that they should
be using the money on.
Mr Twigg: The alternative is that
we take money away from other things that we should be spending
money on centrally.
Q451 Chairman: You should be asking
the Department for Transport and the Chancellor for extra money.
Mr Twigg: I think the amounts
of money we are talking about for pump-priming are really quite
small.
Q452 Chairman: That is not what the
LGAs said. They said they were in favour of this but they wanted
money.
Mr Twigg: I know they said that,
I read the evidence and they came and said that to me, but I think
they also talked about £100,000 or £200,000. We are
not talking about masses of money. We have had expressions of
interest from two dozen authorities. We have a good range of authorities
across the country already expressing an interest in taking this
forward. I am sceptical of the suggestion that us not coming up
with pump-priming will mean that we do not get authorities volunteering,
I think we will and we are already seeing signs that they are.
Q453 Chairman: What is emerging is
presumably what Tim Yeo and his team were asking you in that private
session, ie is this about saving money or is it about cutting
down on congestion?
Mr Twigg: It is about cutting
down on congestion and, in particular, it is about reducing the
car run to school which has doubled over the last 20 years. This
is most explicitly not a cost cutting exercise.
Q454 Chairman: The LGA were licking
their lips about saving money.
Mr Twigg: What they have to do
with the money, if they raise some money through charging, is
they have to then use that money for their school transport schemes.
They cannot use the money to cut the council tax or put in another
programme within education or in another part of the council's
spend. We are not saying we want to reduce the amount that is
spent in this area, we are saying that we do not think we are
getting the real impact that we should be getting for such a substantial
amount of public spending and that is why we want those authorities
that choose to try out a new charging system to use the money
they raise from that to improve, in particular, the bus transport
that they provide for pupils and the wider local community.
Q455 Chairman: What people have said
to us, experts in transport policy, is that the central flaw of
the whole idea of the Bill is that here you are trying to cut
down the school run, especially the longer journeys and you are
going to do that by introducing charging. It does seem as though
the very thing you want to do is going to have the reverse effect
in many ways because more people, especially on the longer runs,
will switch to private transport, they will switch to the gas
guzzling 4x4s or whatever. Although the LGA scoffed at the academics,
the serious transport academics of the highest level, the professors
of transport, have said to us the central flaw is you could well
have the opposite effect to the one you intend.
Mr Twigg: I am not going to scoff
at that because I think it is critical that we get this right
and it is part of the reason why we are piloting this rather than
introducing a new scheme straightaway, because clearly there is
a level of charge at which that effect would happen and we want
to ensure that those authorities that go down the route of charging
those who currently are not charged do so at a level that does
not have that effect because our main purpose in doing this is
to reduce the school car run. Most of those car journeys are actually
within the statutory limits, so there is a potential effect with
respect to those that currently get free travel because of the
statutory limits, but actually most of the home-to-school journeys
by car are conducted within those limits. The potential positive
side is that we actually get better bus services available at
the local level for the kids who live within the statutory distances
and, therefore, they are not using the car and that is what we
do not know, that is the balancing act and that is what we are
piloting.
Mr Jamieson: It is about reducing
the car run which potentially will reduce the congestion, but
I see much more to flow out of this than that. What we do know
is the most dangerous time for children on the road is between
eight and nine in the morning and three and five in the afternoon
and, of course, those are the times when they are coming to school
or going home from school and the number of vehicles that there
are on the roads then increases the risk to children, if they
are pedestrians or cyclists or even if they are actually in the
car, so it is a road safety issue as well. There is also the other
issue of pollution around schools particularly in the afternoon
and in the winter. If mums or dads are waiting outside the school
with the engine running sometimes for up to half an hour this
is causing a considerable amount of pollution in the immediate
vicinity of the schools, so we have a concern about that. The
other one I mentioned earlier is that if we can encourage more
children to walk or cycle rather than use the car or even for
short journeys use the bus then that would be better for their
health. I feel the frustration in that this may take a long time
to roll out. It has to be seen in the context of the school travel
plans which we have about 3,500 of in place now. They are looking
at better ways that they can travel to school, better ways of
using resources. It seems to me that what we are dealing with
here is not necessarily more money but actually making much better
use of the money that we are ploughing into the system at the
moment. I do worry that there are billions of children perhaps
who in some ways do not have access to the bus because it is there
for the children over three miles or over two miles in the case
of primary children. What we need to be doing is looking at innovative
ways of attracting some of those children who are currently living
just that bit too far to walk, particularly in rural areas where
there is no lighting and footpaths, being able to use the school
bus. That would reduce the number of children using the car and
increase the bus patronage as well.
Q456 Chairman: You and I share a
concern for transport safety, David, and we know that a child
on a bus is much safer than a child in an individual private car,
but making more kids pedestrians on roads that have no paving
or cycling paths is a dangerous mode of transport in the modern
age, is it not?
Mr Jamieson: It is partly because
there is a lot of congestion around schools. What I have seen
in some areas where there have been positive efforts made to reduce
the car run is the number of cars around the school at those sensitive
times being reduced very substantially. Our role here is through
local transport plan funding. These are not just issues necessarily
to do with buses. It may be that authorities, and many of them
do, look particularly in the vicinity of schools where they can
create 20-mile an hour zones, where they can improve footpaths,
where they can improve the cycle tracks, but all of these things
are possible now, authorities do not have to wait for this Bill
or wait for the pilots and they are doing it and improving the
circumstances around schools to make the journey safer and better
for children.
Chairman: Let us go back to the purpose
of the legislation.
Q457 Mr Chaytor: Minister, this week
the DfES announced the grants to the first batch of extended schools
and in the press notice that went with it the intention was clear,
that all schools should ultimately be able to apply for extended
school status. If all schools are going to take on this role and,
therefore, their opening hours are going to be longer and the
variety of functions taking place on the school site is going
to be enhanced, does that make it easier or more difficult to
implement the kind of school travel plans you want to see?
Mr Twigg: I think in some respects
it makes it more difficult for obvious reasons. Clearly if children
are all arriving at the same time and leaving at the same time
it is easier to plan the transport. The growth of extended schools
actually makes it more important that we do what we are doing.
We have a rural schools group in the Department that consists
primarily of people working in rural schools and we discussed
the School Transport Bill and some of the concerns that have been
reflected in evidence, for example from SHA, were reflected in
that discussion. One of the heads there made the point that the
current system is very limited because it provides that free journey
in and out in the morning but it does not necessarily have the
flexibility for children and young people who are particularly
leaving school at different times because of after-school activities.
If we can achieve what we are aiming to achieve, which is to free
the system up and to have more money in the local system partly
through charging, then I think there is an opportunity for those
children who stay behind after school to be able to get subsidised
transport which at the moment they would not have access to.
Q458 Mr Chaytor: On the question
of the Bill itself, would it not be simpler, quicker, cheaper
and easier to legislate for no parking zones around schools, say
within 100 metres or 200 metres? Would that not kill a large part
of the morning school run at a stroke?
Mr Jamieson: No, I do not think
it would because what would happen then is people would park,
as they do in many parts of London, some way away from the school
and clog up the roads there and walk their children down the road
into the school. That would just create another problem. Some
of the funding that we provide is for local authorities to look
at making safer zones around schools and many of them have. There
is not one solution to this because all schools will be different
and the circumstances outside a school will be very different
one to another. If an authority sees a particular problem outside
the school that perhaps the head or the governors have identified
or the parents, for example speeding, it may be possible to put
a 20 mile an hour zone in or in some cases it may be appropriate
to close certain of the roads around a school. Those are things
that would have to be decided locally. What you suggested is perfectly
possible now but I certainly would not recommend it as a blueprint
for 24,000 schools.
Q459 Mr Chaytor: Apart from the charging
issue, is there anything else in current legislation, either the
1944 Education Act or the Transport Act, which needs repealing?
Mr Jamieson: The one thing that
section 4 of this Bill does is it removes the need for an authority
to register a bus service with the traffic commissioner if they
are making a charge. If they do not make a charge they do not
have to register it currently. This is a small but important part
of the Bill and it means that they do not have to go through the
registration process with the traffic commissioner. That is another
small legislative change that is needed.
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