Clause 1 - School travel schemes
School Transport Bill
2:30 pm
Mr David Drew (Stroud, Labour/Co-operative)
I could respond by referring to my local area; I get on well with the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson), but we do not see eye to eye on this issue. I agree with that intervention. In my first intervention, I said that I considered reorganisation to be crucial and that there ought to be proper consultation on transport availability, and I have not changed my mind. It is crucial that no implication of disadvantage—that is, having to pay—should be linked to an arrangement agreed to by the parent if they thought that such an arrangement was the only sensible thing to come out of the reorganisation. One of the problems is that we tend to consider transport after reorganisation has happened, rather than considering it, and whether there are different ways of providing it, as one of the issues. I have always believed—I am careful not to go off the
point, Mr. O'Brien—that, whenever possible, any form of education and support for people with disabilities is better provided locally. That way, the family structure can be kept in place. However, that is not always possible and on occasions people's special needs will mean that they have to travel or be domiciled elsewhere.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will get the drift of what we say. We do not want to derail anything; the Government are listening, and I have been impressed by the consensual nature of the debate on what we are trying to do, which is to allow an experiment to take place, but with certain red lines so that parents do not feel that they will be made more vulnerable in what they face on behalf of their children because of a charging mechanism that is used in a punitive way.
I hope that the Minister will accept the spirit in which the amendments were tabled. In the wider community, there is concern among the disability organisations with which my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Roger Casale) and I have been in contact. We want an assurance so that we can know that the right decisions will be taken for the right reasons, and that money will not be used as a stick.