Clause 1 - School travel schemes
School Transport Bill
10:45 am
Mr Stephen Twigg (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Schools), Department for Education and Skills; Enfield, Southgate, Labour)
I shall deal with the amendments in three sections, and I shall keep my remarks brief. I shall speak first to amendments Nos. 29 and 47. The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire pointed out that the Bill provides an opportunity to improve quality and safety, and then asked, perfectly properly, whether the Government are entirely neutral on that. I reassure him and the Committee that we are not entirely neutral; I see this Bill, and the school travel schemes that go with it, as an opportunity for us to enhance a series of different arrangements, such as the quality and safety of the transport options available, including buses.
At the moment, as the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, provisions vary enormously in different parts of the country. We know that seat belts have to be provided on all school trips, and that when LEAs contract for buses, they can specify that belts should be provided. Increasingly LEAs do so, as is shown by the positive example of the Staffordshire yellow buses. However, that does not happen everywhere, and we have an opportunity. The prospectus asks local education authorities to set out safety and quality arrangements, but in the light of this important debate, I give the Committee an undertaking that we will consider further the message that the prospectus sends out on safety, which is so fundamental and central to school transport, and to school buses in particular.
Amendment No. 29 would add a specific reference to ensure safe means of embarking and disembarking from school transport. Amendment No. 47 seeks to provide more generally that a school travel scheme may include arrangements to ensure the safety of transport under a scheme. As the relevant part of the Bill stands, those are:
''arrangements for the provision of transport . . . payment of the whole or any part of . . . reasonable travelling expenses, and . . . arrangements to facilitate or promote . . . different ways of travelling.''
I do not think it necessary to include specific reference to safety when alighting from or boarding a bus. Such arrangements are integral to the arrangements for the provision of transport under sub-paragraph (2)(a).
There is no need to mention them separately, especially as the sub-paragraph contains a non-exhaustive list of things that a scheme may contain, not a fully comprehensive list. Furthermore, the amendment would not guarantee that the arrangements were included in every scheme.
I believe that amendment No. 47, too, is unnecessary because, as was suggested by the hon. Member for Southport, safety is already an implicit requirement. Paragraph 3 of the new schedule refers to
''suitable arrangements . . . for . . . transport to and from school.''
Arrangements could not be suitable if they were not safe. Indeed, the meaning of ''suitable'' in such a context has been considered in the courts, and it was held that it is implicit that LEAs have a duty to provide safe transport. The courts held that the LEA's duty is to make such arrangements for transport as it considers necessary for the child
''to reach school without undue stress, strain or difficulty such as would prevent him from benefiting from the education the school has to offer, just as it must be to make such arrangements as it considers necessary for him to travel in safety and in reasonable comfort''.