Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480
- 499)
WEDNESDAY 19 MAY 2004
MR STEPHEN
TWIGG AND
MR DAVID
JAMIESON
Q480 Valerie Davey: I find that a
complete anomaly.
Mr Twigg: Do you.
Valerie Davey: I just cannot believe
that an individual school, in the context of a plan which has
to be, I think you have already admitted, a shared look through
several schools, then has to make this separate bid for a cycle
shed. I can remember, sadly, two things from long ago. I can remember
in the 60s when a Bristol Chief Education Officer told its school
that its head teacher could buy a box of matches for the caretaker
to light the boiler. Permission came from the Chief Education
Officer. Looking back, Minister, the idea that your department
is looking at an individual bike shed I think is crazy. I will
just say that and we will move on.
Q481 Chairman: You should be abolishing
bike sheds. We all know the English tradition of what happens
behind bike sheds!
Mr Twigg: Absolutely.
Q482 Valerie Davey: I had not thought
of that, Chairman.
Mr Jamieson: These days they are
see-through ones generally. If I could make a point, I think innovation
happens at all sorts of different levels. Clearly, with something
like these pilots, it just could not happen at the individual
school level because the implication is so big, and in fact the
implication is so large in some areas it may be LEAs working together
on these particular things. I think that is important. It is also
very important that highways authorities work together; some of
the highways authorities' funding will be used to enhance certain
parts of what we intend to do here. But, equally, we should not
be stifling innovation and good ideas that are coming from individual
schools. I visited a school in Nailsea, not too far from your
own constituency, the Golden Valley School, which has a wonderful
cycling scheme. The children, the head teachers, the governors
and parents came up with the idea. That is an exemplar for others
to follow. It is not something you could lay as a blueprint for
all authorities and all schools, but they have found a solution
which works for them and that type of school, working with the
highways authority particularly, in improving the routes into
the school. I think that is a good idea. We should not be stifling
that. We have to intervene, if you like, at levels where it is
appropriate. If it is my Department or the DfES providing some
money to an individual scheme that is of advantage to them, then
so be it.
Q483 Valerie Davey: Thank you. I
appreciate that. I would like to link that in one way with this
incentive idea. We have to give youngsters incentives. This, again,
is going back a bit: I do not quite go back to the penny farthing
day, but my bus fare actually was a penny farthing to school.
I was given that money every day and I knew that if I got off
the bus early I could save some money, and I did. I only spent
a penny on my bus fare and I still have at home those wonderful
wren farthings. You need to give children that incentive, is what
I am saying. Why do we not pay children to walk to school? Let's
turn it on its head. Let's start saying to ourselves: What incentive
do young people need? What do families need for their whole budgeting,
to get them to be doing what is the healthy, obvious thing? I
know circumstances have changed. My mum did not know I was getting
off the bus, and if she had known where I was getting off the
bus in certain circumstances—
Mr Pollard: I am going to tell her!
Valerie Davey: You can. There are aspects
to that, and I realise the world has moved on, but children's
personal incentive and family incentives to do the right thing,
given the money, is still there. I know you cannot take money
from that which parents have paid for a bus fare and put it into
education, but if we are looking at things in the round . . .
We visited a school in Boston, for example, that was given transport
money but its children were local and so that transport money
was used to get those children out of the city into the country,
going on visits and other things. They went to the art galleries
and to concerts on the basis of transport money they did not need
to get to school. We need to blow this apart a bit. I would like
to know what has been coming through.
Q484 Chairman: I think you are blowing
the ministers' minds. I think this is all too much for them.
Mr Twigg: No.
Q485 Mr Pollard: Not these two!
Mr Twigg: I am thinking that is
right, and we need to have grander thoughts about these things.
The legislation is here, it is important, and that is what you
are scrutinising, but actually the legislation is only one part
of this. There is potential to do all sorts of other things, like
the things you describe, some of which schools are doing. Schools
are doing some of those things already. We need to remember that
and praise the schools which are doing that and showcase those
examples of work. In terms of the bill itself and the pilots—I
am thinking slightly laterally about this—I think there
is the possibility that monies could be used to look at the sort
of transport that is available during the day to take children
from the school to get cultural, sporting and other opportunities.
There is some potential for that to be done and I think that would
be a perfectly proper use of the money, because that is to do
with providing better transport opportunities that, sadly, the
current system does not provide.
Mr Jamieson: Part of the incentive
to walk is not having to pay for the journey into school, either
by car or by bus. At the moment, a lot of parents perceive the
journey to school as dangerous, either on a personal security
level or from a road safety point of view. That is why we have
to look at these innovative ways of making the journey to school
safer. Kerry seems to have his own walking-bus, with seven children,
but where walking buses are working, where there is a skilled
and trained adult who is in charge of the children, picks them
up and walks with them, parents feel very confident about those
arrangements because they know someone is in charge, and very
often the authority will have looked at making sure the crossings,
the puffin crossings and so on, are in place so that they can
cross safely. This is a matter of balancing some of those issues
and looking at innovative ways in each area as to how we can improve
the journey by walking. My ambition would be that children, where
possible, should walk—and that is where we should start.
If we could make it possible for them to cycle, that is the next
area. If then we can provide buses for those who obviously have
longer or more difficult journeys, that is fine. I think the last
option then is using the private car.
Q486 Chairman: This is a very innovative
Committee and we have obviously shown that you can think outside
the bus!
Mr Jamieson: Absolutely.
Q487 Chairman: You heard that first
here. In term of the resources, it does come back all the time
to this problem that if you want really innovative pilots, some
of them would be quite expensive. We have heard evidence that
you really want a very complex transport logistics system, with
global positioning and very fancy IT—which in taxi fleets
is normal. Companies like Tesco and the big mail order people
have very, very sophisticated transport logistics systems now
that could be applied to school transport, linked to social services
transport, to health transport. If someone is going to come up
with a really innovative partnership like that, that is going
to cost money. You are not going to get a pilot like that unless
that is allowable. Do you think that is true?
Mr Jamieson: A lot of authorities
are using good logistical systems for their buses, and proper
signing for buses at bus-stops using sometimes satellite or sometimes
other technology at the side of the road. There is no reason why
authorities cannot in their local transport plan funding be looking
for funding for those sorts of things, which could complement
some of the work they are doing in the pilots.
Q488 Chairman: So there would be
other sources of funding coming from that possibly.
Mr Jamieson: It is up to the authority
to decide how they want to spend their local transport plan money.
As long as it fits the broad remit of what money is available
for, there is nothing to stop them coming up with innovative ideas
such as that.
Mr Twigg: The Yellow Bus Scheme
in Yorkshire was funded in that way.
Mr Jamieson: Indeed. We provided
£18.7 million for the Yellow Bus Scheme, which is a classic
example of an innovation in the local authority area, where they
applied for it through the Local Transport Plan funding system.
Q489 Mr Chaytor: The bill says that
the main objective of the pilot schemes is to reduce car use.
Are there other criteria by which you are going to evaluate the
success of the pilots?
Mr Twigg: I think reducing car
use is the key objective. I think it is important that we have
a key objective. There are clearly a number of other benefits
that could come from successful schemes. I think they have been
explored in previous sessions. David, you asked earlier on about
extended schools and I think the opportunity for better, affordable
access to after-school activities is another potential benefit
at which we would want to look. During the discussion today, we
have talked about safety, congestion, pollution around schools—all
of those issues as well—but I would say the key thing is
about reducing car use.
Q490 Mr Chaytor: Do you now know
the rate of car use in each local authority?
Mr Twigg: We do not, but we should
be in a position to know this far more fully, for a number of
reasons. David can talk about the transport surveys that the Transport
Department does. We do have surveys that are currently done in
schools. I think Peter Housden made a brief reference to this
when he gave evidence. We are looking at the pupil-level annual
school census as a possible source of what would be very, very
detailed and accurate information school by school about the level
of car use, so we would know, not only for each authority but
for each school. We have a broad picture at the moment but I think
we need that very detailed picture so we can assess whether the
pilots are working.
Q491 Mr Chaytor: As things stand
in the Bill, there are no targets for reduced car use, so how
are you going to evaluate the success? Even accepting that by
the time the pilots come in there may be reasonably accurate data
school by school, how can you evaluate the success if there are
no targets?
Mr Twigg: We have not set a specific
target, though we have set the target of reducing car use. We
can evaluate by looking at whether it has gone down, up or stayed
the same.
Q492 Mr Chaytor: If it was minus
0.1%, would that be a success?
Mr Twigg: I do not think that
would be a success, no. I think you asked Peter Housden if 2.5%
would be a success, which I think would clearly be more successful
than 0.1%. To be honest with you, this is an area at which we
need to look in more detail. Part of the usefulness of having
this process is that we can take things like that away from the
Committee and have a look at them. We will have probably about
20 pilots in England and we want to work out in each of those
a clear set of objectives, and I think we can consider as part
of that whether to have a target for each of them.
Q493 Mr Chaytor: Are you saying you
are confident now the local authorities have the mechanisms to
produce reliable information about car use?
Mr Twigg: Yes.
Q494 Mr Chaytor: Are you confident
the Department has the structures in place properly to evaluate
the pilot schemes when they come in?
Mr Twigg: Yes, I think we have
the structures in place. We need to do further work as to exactly
what the nature of that evaluation will be. We need to sit down
pilot authority by pilot authority to get some shared objectives.
We would also very much want to encourage the authorities to be
consulting widely, for example, with the local community, young
people themselves. We want school pupils to be involved in this
too.
Q495 Mr Chaytor: Will the evaluation
criteria be established before the authorities submit their pilot
schemes or only after they submit their pilot schemes?
Mr Twigg: The way that it is working
is that informally expressions of interest are coming in already
and we are having those sorts of discussions with the authorities
on an informal basis. Once we get to the formal point of agreeing
schemes, we would expect the evaluation to be in place for each
of those individual schemes.
Q496 Mr Chaytor: Would you accept
that from an authority's point of view it is difficult to know
how to construct a pilot scheme unless they know what the evaluation
criteria are?
Mr Twigg: I see what you are getting
at. I think my view on that is we do not want to come in with
a really strict set of criteria that is exactly the same nationally
for every single scheme. We do want it to be much more of a conversation
between us and the authorities.
Q497 Mr Gibb: How will you go about
this in practice? Will you be sending questionnaires to parents,
asking them how do they send their children to school now, and
then, after the pilot, how do they send their children to school
then? Will that be the basis of evaluation? Or will you just look
at the roads system and see what is happening there?
Mr Twigg: I think it will be a
mixture of things and we will use a number of different tools.
Surveys of parents, pupils, schools are certainly a good idea;
looking at the figures the Department for Transport will have
about the roads and congestion is also useful. But, to reiterate
what I just said about the school census, this will enable us
to ask pupils as part of that census: How do you usually come
to school? and to have what will be a very accurate figure one
year that we can compare with the figure the next year and the
year after. If we can get that up and running in all of the pilot
authorities, or at least some of them, we will have a very, very
clear basis for making an evaluation. Somerset has said to us
that they would like to try this out from next year for their
own purposes, and I think there is potentially something there
that could become universal, through the pupil-level annual school
census.
Mr Jamieson: My Department will
be able to provide free of charge to authorities an assessment
of the movement of vehicles in their areas. I will not go into
all that now, but there is technology that exists that shows the
movement of vehicles and we will be able to provide some of that
information to authorities. Of course, it will not necessarily
be an indicator that the pilot has created whatever has happened,
but it will add to the sort of information that authorities have
about the movement of vehicles.
Q498 Mr Gibb: This causal link is
important. There are so many other variables that can impact on
transport any day or week or month.
Mr Jamieson: Indeed. It is quite
a slippery area to grasp; nonetheless, it would add to the quality
of information.
Q499 Chairman: Is it as slippery
as the costing of the West Coast Line?
Mr Jamieson: If you would like
me to answer the detailed question, I certainly will, but I am
not sure it is within the remit of the hearing we are having today.
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