Clause 1 - School travel schemes
School Transport Bill
9:25 am
Mr John Pugh (Education Spokesperson, Education & Skills; Southport, Liberal Democrat)
I shall begin with a personal observation. Prior to this sitting, I had not realised the mysteries of starred amendments. I tabled a number of amendments yesterday and discovered that they would not be debated. Such are the penalties of being a novice. I am sure that the Committee is as disappointed as I am that I have not been able to prolong the sitting with amendments of the utmost ingenuity that would severely challenge the Government's proposals.
However, that is all history and I will address this particular amendment. It is a logical corollary of having specialist schools—well, the Government say that it is—that some pupils will be accepted on the basis of aptitude; I think that about 6 per cent. of them currently are. If that is the case, the nearest appropriate school to a pupil might not be the nearest community school, but the nearest specialist school. That may be 3, 4, 5 or many miles away.
As the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban) said, the amendment is in line and in keeping with the Government's thinking: provision should be made for transport to the nearest appropriate school. It is the same logic that applies to special educational needs and to denominational schools. He has missed a trick, because the same logic could equally apply to local authorities that have secondary modern and grammar schools. If it regards the secondary modern school as the nearest appropriate school for an individual and that is more than 3 or 4 miles away, transport provision ought to be laid on by those authorities as well.
That illustrates quite nicely the kind of muddle that we are getting in over this legislation. It also indicates one of the motives behind it: challenges with regard to the provision of specialist education and transport thereto will lead to an increasing transport cost for local authorities. The Government can see that coming and they have calculated how horrific that cost might be. Therefore, they are very comfortable with a piece of legislation that reneges on existing entitlements as given under the Education Act 1944. I can see reasons why some people might not wish to support the amendment, but I cannot see any reason why the Government should not.