Clause 3 - Power to repeal new provisions
School Transport Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Mark Hoban (Shadow Minister, Education; Fareham, Conservative)
I welcome you to this afternoon's proceedings—the final sitting on the Bill—Mr. Conway.
Clause 3 represents one of the most important procedural issues facing the Committee. As the explanatory notes indicate, it in effect gives the power for the school transport pilots to roll on beyond 2013. There will be no other opportunity through primary legislation to debate further changes to the schemes. The schemes beyond 1 August 2014 can be rolled out not only to the 20 or so pilot authorities, but to any local authority that chooses to apply to the Secretary of State to operate a school transport scheme.
In a sense, this is the one and only chance that we have through primary legislation to shape the future of school transport. I want to address that particular issue with the amendments that I have tabled—particularly amendments Nos. 38 and 39.
The Select Committee on Transport, in its scrutiny of the Bill, stated:
''While the provisions relating to the pilot schemes themselves are timid, the draft Bill as a whole is audacious. It gives the Secretary of State power to roll out pilot schemes without any further legislation.''
It expressed concern about that, and also stated:
''In effect, the Secretary of State for Education in England and the National Assembly in Wales would have power to determine the way in which school transport should be provided, without any
further report on the success of schemes, or sanction by Parliament. This is not acceptable. There are serious practical questions to be asked.''
The report of the Select Committee on Education and Skills on the Bill expressed the same concern: this matter will change the shape of the schemes.
Through amendment No. 38, pilot schemes will be brought to an end and will not roll on ad infinitum without any further consideration. If they are to be resuscitated, legislation needs to be brought forward to enable that to be done. Rather than give an unspecified date in the clause, we need to give a firm end date—1 August 2011.
The other issue, which is addressed in amendments Nos. 40 and 41, is the concern that the Select Committee on Education and Skills report expressed. It said:
''2011 seems a very long time to wait for a solution to be found to school transport that can be implemented nationwide. We therefore recommend that the Department looks into the possibility of running shorter pilot schemes or of evaluating currently existing initiatives to determine what works best.''
Amendments Nos. 40 and 41 will bring forward the period over which the pilots can be run—from effectively ending in 2013 to ending in 2011.
I am not sure that we need pilot schemes that last from their date of inception—which could be in 2005 or 2006—until 2013. That would give us six or seven years to pilot the schemes and find out their effects. We should be capable of evaluating those schemes in a much shorter period, so that we do not prolong a pilot that happens to have detrimental effects on any of a range of issues—such as school transport, school choice, congestion, charging families on low incomes—beyond the time needed for evaluation.
Allowing the schemes to last until 2013 makes the pilots too long; we should shorten the evaluation period so that it ends in 2011, and should enable some schemes to terminate as early as 2009. That will give the Department and scheme authorities ample time to put the schemes into practice, see what is happening and assess the evaluation.
In earlier debates, we referred to some of the criteria that could be used to assess the evaluation of schemes. Under an earlier amendment on scheme authorities, I suggested a series of measures, which are set out in amendment No. 52. The Government need to give local authorities guidance on the success criteria for the schemes.
Clearly, there will not be a straight yes or no answer on whether the schemes are effective; one cannot say that a scheme has worked just because it has reduced traffic congestion—if that is one's sole focus—when it has had a negative effect on other aspects of school provision in the area. That is why, in amendment No. 52, I set out a series of nine measures. That series is non-exhaustive, but it includes important issues on which we need to reflect when determining whether schemes have been successful, whether the pilot should continue and whether the scheme should be rolled out across the country, as is permissible under the Bill.
We have spoken a great deal about the impact on traffic congestion. One of the main purposes of the measures before us is to reduce such congestion, and clearly that is a factor that the Government should take into account when assessing pilot schemes and whether they should continue. There is also the issue of the proportion of children using different modes of travel. There was a great deal of debate on Second Reading about how many children cycled, walked, or used cars or buses to get to school. If we do not achieve a modal shift away from cars to other forms of transport, and if there is not a shift towards walking, the Bill will not have succeeded, because it provides an opportunity to tackle the issue of childhood obesity.
Our suggested subsection (2A)(c) refers to
''the effect of charging on car usage''.
There has already been debate in Committee on the tension between charging and its effect on car usage. We have cited the examples of rural constituencies; hon. Members have said that if people were charged too much they would use their cars. That is a valid concern. If charging drives up car usage, the Bill will have failed. The issue of the pilots' impact on low-income families was addressed this morning, so I shall not talk more about that, but clearly any decision to roll out the pilots to the rest of the country needs to reflect their impact on such families.
There are also complex issues in respect of children with special educational needs, which we debated on Tuesday. The Committee would agree, in one of its moments of consensus, that some of the most complex issues surrounding implementation have to do with the impact on children with special educational needs, who could attend a wide variety of institutions, including mainstream schools, special units attached to schools and special schools. Two thirds of the cost of school transport is incurred by children with special educational needs—who are, in a way, perhaps the most obvious and difficult target in terms of achieving cost reductions—so we need to consider the impact that any measures undertaken in pilots has had on meeting the needs of children with mobility issues, autism, sensory impairment and a range of needs that are currently covered.
The next issues to deal with are school activities and extended schools. Earlier this week I heard an example of the problems that parents face: a child who lived 20 minutes away from a school in Surrey was fine if he went there at the normal times—starting at 9 o'clock and leaving at 3.30—because the taxi ensured that he got there and back. However, if he stayed behind for after school activities, there was no LEA-provided transport available and his parents had to collect him, so his participation in after-school activities was rationed. Given the Government's focus on extended schools, if the take-up of after school activities or the use of extended schools is impaired because of the charging regime, or the nature of the transport arrangements, we should not continue pilot projects.
Both parties have agreed that parents should be able to exercise wider school choice. We need to see what impact the measure has had on patterns of choice being exercised and on existing choices about attendance at faith schools. I refer to the parents'
philosophical preferences, although those do not relate simply to choosing a school that reflects the parents' values in terms of adherence, or otherwise, to a religion. Some parents choose to educate their children at single-sex schools, for philosophical and perhaps religious reasons. We want to consider the impact of the travel schemes on such educational choices, as well as finding out about the impact on children whose parents wish them to be educated in a Welsh language school.
These are probing amendments to flesh out some of the Government's thinking behind clause 3, particularly because it gives the Secretary of State some significant powers—which the Transport Committee said were ''audacious''—to change the architecture of school transport, beyond the limited number of pilots envisaged by the Government, to affect all LEAs and all parts of the country.