Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 560 - 566)

WEDNESDAY 19 MAY 2004

MR STEPHEN TWIGG AND MR DAVID JAMIESON

  Q560  Valerie Davey: This is to the Education Department: From the reply we have had from the Department, I understand that some of the city technology colleges received money specifically for transport.

  Mr Twigg: Yes.

  Q561  Valerie Davey: Could you ensure, please, that the evaluation of that reaches this Committee.

  Mr Twigg: Yes. You asked Peter Housden about this. When I read the transcript, I sought to get an answer. No research has been conducted into this but I will see what sort of evaluation either has been or could be conducted and come back to the Committee with it.

  Valerie Davey: Thank you very much.

  Q562  Mr Chaytor: If by the deadline for submissions of pilot schemes you do not receive 20, what will you do?

  Mr Twigg: I think, to be honest, it would depend on whether we had received three or 19. If we were close to it, then we would want to go ahead; if we had very few, then I think we would have to reconsider. As I say, we have 27, I think, authorities which have expressed an interest so far, which I find encouraging, so I think we are unlikely to be in a position where the total is in single figures.

  Q563  Mr Chaytor: If 20 of those 27 came in, and 10 you thought were inadequate . . . ?

  Mr Twigg: If 10 were adequate and 10 were inadequate, I think we would want to go ahead with the 10.

  Q564  Mr Chaytor: You are not going to delay.

  Mr Twigg: I think the only circumstance in which I could envisage delaying would be if it were a very small number of adequate pilots coming forward. And we do have the facility to have additional pilots launched in the following year.

  Q565  Chairman: Let us wind up by asking you this question: This is a pre-legislative inquiry. It is new for us, new for you. Have we all been wasting our time here? Are you actually going to take any notice at all of the Select Committee's transport recommendations and evaluation of this piece of legislation? Are you going to take any notice of what we produce? Is it going to make any difference at all?

  Mr Twigg: I believe it certainly will. Simply from being here today, responding to questions and listening to comments from members of the Committee, I think there are a number of contributions from today's Committee that will inform what we do on evaluation, for example. I think a number of the things that people have said are areas that certainly I personally had not fully thought through. I am sure officials will have done, but I will take those issues back from the Committee today. We will obviously await this Committee's report, and, taken together with the Transport Committee's report, we will respond fully to it. I think it is important that we are having this process. I think the work you are doing is of great help. I also think some of the witnesses you have had at the Committee inform the work we will do, both on the Bill and more generally, on the whole area of addressing school transport. I certainly do not think it is a waste of anyone's time.

  Mr Jamieson: I would totally concur with that. I greatly value the work of all select committees. As I say, I had been a member of one for five years and I know the value of the work the select committees do. I have never had the opportunity of this type of pre-legislative scrutiny, I am sad to say, and I think this is actually a very good way of getting better legislation. We have taken very careful note of what the Transport Select Committee has said in the evidence I gave to them and Charles Clarke gave to them and we will be responding to that shortly. I think they have come up with some ideas that certainly we need to take note of and make sure they are woven into the pilot schemes that we are about to embark upon.

  Q566  Chairman: Would you take back to your departments a message from this Committee, that, having put a lot of time and energy into this pre-legislative inquiry which we care about from our side, we would be very disappointed if this Bill was scrapped merely because one party said it was not going to vote for it on second reading. Because it seems to us that the whole point of this pre-legislative inquiry is for you to improve the Bill before second reading, so that the Bill that comes through second reading can be very different in quality and texture from the Bill you originally produced at the time of the Queen's Speech. Would you give that message to your friend from Norwich?

  Mr Twigg: I am very grateful for that and I will take that message back.

  Mr Jamieson: I also undertake to make sure my department understands what you have said, Chairman.

  Chairman: Thank you very much for your attendance. We have got a lot of value out of it.






 
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