Clause 2 - Piloting of new provisions
School Transport Bill
2:30 pm
Ms Charlotte Atkins (Assistant Whip (funded by HM Treasury); Staffordshire Moorlands, Labour)
Before we adjourned for lunch, I was congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Edwards) on his powerful campaign against the three-for-two allowance. As this is the first time that I have spoken in this Committee under your chairmanship, Mr. Conway, it would be remiss of me not to say what a pleasure and privilege it is to serve under your expert stewardship.
My hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth has been so persuasive that we agree that local education authorities will have to undertake not to use the three-for-two provision in the buses that they contract to carry out the school transport pilots. I hope that we shall learn something from the schemes. Although parents are understandably concerned about the three-for-two allowance, there is little data to support the argument that the use of the three-for-two allowance poses severe risks to child safety.