Clause 1 - School travel schemes
School Transport Bill
9:25 am
Mr Stephen Twigg (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Schools), Department for Education and Skills; Enfield, Southgate, Labour)
This group of amendments poses three of the greatest challenges. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford said, that is already reflected in the draft prospectus that we have published.
Amendment No. 27 would create two new categories of children to be protected from charges. Our initial assessment is that the amendment could result in about 40 per cent. of pupils being exempt from charges if all three criteria were to be applied. That would vary from place to place, but many local education authorities would probably not find it viable to put a local travel scheme in place. As a result, some of the anomalies that exist for poorer children who do not benefit from free transport at the moment—anomalies that we discussed in earlier debates—would remain in place in those areas. That would be an unintended consequence of a well-intentioned amendment. I shall come in a moment to the arguments that surround the amendment.
Amendment No. 34 would have a different effect. As drafted, it would remove protection from charges for pupils eligible for free school meals but extend it to pupils whose families are eligible for the working families tax credit. I am sure it that is not the intention, but it would switch the benefit from non-working families to those who are working but who are on moderate to low incomes.
It might be helpful to review the different categories of pupils covered by amendments Nos. 27 and 34. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford set out the eligibility for free school meals. Pupils are eligible if their parents are in receipt of income support, income-based job seekers allowance, support under part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, and child tax credit provided that they do not receive working tax credit and have an annual income not exceeding £13,480.
In a powerful contribution to the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) reminded us of some of the limitations of free school meals. The entitlement is relevant in three ways. First, it ensures that poor children get free meals, despite the problems of stigma that he described. I utterly decry the practice of separating those children eligible for free meals, and I am pleased to say that many schools do not follow that sort of practice. Secondly, free school meals can be used as a trigger for other benefits, which in a sense is what we are talking about today. Thirdly, free school meals can act as an indicator of deprivation, which then triggers other forms of funding. My hon. Friend will be interested to know that the rural schools group, which I chair, met last week and discussed those issues in a context broader than school transport.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford has also raised some legitimate questions. It is true that some 4 per cent. of parents do not take up their free school meal entitlement. The hon. Member for Fareham is right to say that the figure is higher in secondary than in primary schools. There is no reason for someone who has not taken up the meal entitlement not to take up the transport entitlement—one might be taken without the other—and we would encourage people to take up both. We are doing our best to address the stigma referred to explicitly by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and implicitly by the hon. Member for Fareham, and and we are considering
making proposals, as soon as parliamentary time allows, for ways of making it easier and more private to check free school meal entitlement.
Let me say a word or two about rurality, then I shall return to the key contentious area in the amendment—the definition of poverty. The effect of the proposed amendment is impossible to judge as the rurality criterion is not firmly defined—to be fair, I must add that my hon. Friend acknowledged that. I understand the concern of parents and children living in rural areas, where the school bus is essential because of the long journeys that the children have to make. The Bill requires local authorities to provide school transport, as they do at the moment.
There are clearly large differences in character between rural areas. That came out in our discussion on Tuesday about local authorities' powers to come up with schemes for parts of their areas. One of the factors is different degrees of rurality. Some rural settlements contain a high proportion of people who commute to large cities and who might be affluent. In others, the economy is heavily reliant on farming and other primary industries, which can be vulnerable to shocks and changes to EU subsidies.
We want LEAs to develop schemes that reflect local circumstances, and we need to be sensitive to the needs of different communities covered by those authorities. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford made an important point about recognising their flexibility. I make a commitment to him to look again at the prospectus to ensure that it explicitly recognises the differences within LEAs, and even within rural communities. Both he and the hon. Member for Fareham mentioned the nature of fares. The Local Government Association's shire authority group not only supports the Bill but recommends that LEAs adopt flat-rate fares. The legislation does not require that, but it is a clear LGA recommendation.
Returning to the other issue, we have some estimates of the number of children who would fall into the different groups identified in the amendment. We know that about 1.4 million children are eligible for free school meals. Of relevance to amendments Nos. 27 and 34 is our assessment that a further 600,000 could claim if we set the limit at the maximum level for working tax credit. If we included all children in families eligible for WTC the number protected would rise to some 3 million—almost 40 per cent. of the pupil population.
It is sensible to limit the category of protected children to those in the poorest families, in order to give schemes greater capacity to help those who at present have to meet commercial bus fares from their own resources. The hon. Member for Fareham made the point about regionally based cut-offs. The proposal enables LEAs to have the flexibility, at regional and local level, to determine such issues for themselves.