I beg to move Amendment No. 45, in page 3, line 4, at end insert

', or

'(f) who attends a specialist school having passed an aptitude test for admission to that school.'.

I welcome you back to the Chair, Mr. O'Brien.

There must be common ground between the Government and the Opposition on amendment No. 45, because we both support the concepts of choice and specialist schools. It would be useful to allow a child who lives on the wrong side of town and who has a particular interest in attending a specialist school, because of the nature of its speciality, to attend that school and it would be useful to provide some support for their transport costs to it.

That raises the question of how one assesses whether the child ought to go to such a school and whether the school is a suitable one for the child. The Government have made some suggestions as to how we might determine what is a suitable school for a child and how we might introduce an objective test to measure it. In their response to the report by the Select Committee on Education and Skills on school admissions, they accepted the need for aptitude tests for certain types of school. The examples of that were special sports schools, and schools that specialise in visual and performing arts, and that specialise in languages. Those schools will be able to continue to set an aptitude test and select up to 10 per cent. of their pupils on the basis of their aptitude in sport, visual and performing arts or languages. If we are to go down the route of trying to encourage more pupils to attend a school that will meet their particular needs, in this case one that will give that specialist support, we ought to provide free school transport to the pupils who pass that aptitude test; it is an objective measure of whether that school is suitable for them.

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.

I, too, welcome you back to the Chair, Mr. O'Brien.

The Amendment is very interesting; it highlights some of the anomalies in existing legislation and the need for the piloting approach set out in the Bill. As the hon. Members for Fareham and for Southport (Dr. Pugh) made clear, existing legislation does not give any particular transport support to someone who goes to a specialist school on the basis of passing an aptitude test. I cannot accept that pupils who pass such a test should simply receive free transport. If they attend their nearest school, they should be treated in the same way as other pupils; if they do not, they should be treated in the same way as other pupils whose parents exercise parental preference.

Every comprehensive school in the country is obliged to provide the full national curriculum, and we expect our plans for greater diversity and freedom for schools to drive up standards. If the amendment were agreed to, we might find parents applying for places in specialist schools some distance from home simply because that would secure free transport, and that could distort the admissions system. A further problem is that school travel schemes are likely to propose charges based on ability to pay rather than on the characteristics of the school attended or on pupil aptitude or ability. Providing free transport to pupils attending specialist schools simply because they had

passed an aptitude test would be unfair to their peers, who might have to pay even if their family circumstances were less favourable.

I hope that the hon. Member for Fareham will agree that the amendment would create Division between pupils in the same school and would not reflect the sentiment of the Bill, which is that the cost of school transport for all pupils should reflect family circumstances first and foremost. In light of that, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the amendment.

First, I shall comment on the admission made by the hon. Member for Southport. In the opening sitting, he described the Minister and me as amateurs. The hon. Gentleman is an experienced and distinguished Member of this House, who has served on many Committees. Perhaps in this case the amateurs have taught him a lesson.

I did not touch on the issue of grammar schools because that might have been divisive. However, the same issues apply to such schools and any form of selection or choice in relation to schools. It is interesting how this issue is developing; the Department would like some areas of Government policy to be supported through free school transport, but the Government are happy to leave other policy areas to scheme authorities.

I shall give an example. I rarely believe what I read in the newspapers, but today's edition of The Times reported that there might be free school transport between schools and places where extended school activities take place. It would seem that the Government are using free school transport to support one of their policy directions, but trying to deny people that right when they exercise a choice to go to a specialist school. Parents will choose whether they want to use those extended school facilities and will be provided free school transport to them, although some parents will not choose to exercise that right.

The Minister talked about some of the anomalies in existing schemes. Clearly, LEAs operate discretionary transport schemes at the moment; some operate such schemes for grammar schools, and provide free transport to those schools. Would the Minister be happy if, in their pilots, LEAs that had developed a good network of specialist schools came up with schemes that supported the choice of parents to send their children to such schools rather than to the nearest school? Although all schools are required to meet the full requirements of the national curriculum, most of us recognise that a specialist language college has greater resources and expertise for teaching languages than a school that does not specialise in languages. It would be helpful if local authorities had some indication from the Minister whether schemes that help to promote choice and enable parents to exercise choice by sending their child to a specialist school would be permissible.

Clearly, we want to support parents in making such choices and to ensure that the full

benefits of the specialist schools programme are enjoyed by those who can benefit from it. However, to repeat what I said just now, I do not want to create a position in which one child would get transport simply on the basis of having passed an aptitude test, while another in the same class would not. Through the Bill, as a consequence of the additional resources in the local system there is the potential for children attending specialist school who do not currently receive any assisted or free transport to gain access to subsidised transport whether or not they are at the school via the aptitude test. That is the route I want us to follow, rather than that of separating out the children who happen to be at the specialist school because of an aptitude test.

I am grateful for that clarification. It appears that LEAs will be able to support specialist schools through the transport schemes. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw that Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

I beg to move Amendment No. 27, in

Clause 1, page 3, line 7, leave out from 'that' to end of line and insert

'there are met in relation to the child such criteria as the scheme authority shall select from the following:

(a) that the child is within section 512ZB(4);

(b) that the child's parent or guardian is in receipt of Working Tax Credit; or

(c) that the child's home is in an area of rurality of a degree specified by the scheme authority.'.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:

No. 34, in

Clause 1, page 3, line 7, leave out

'the child is within section 512 ZB (4)'

and insert

'the parents or carers are in receipt of Child Tax Credit for that child.'.

No. 36, in

clause 1, page 3, line 11, at end insert—

'(4) No charge shall be paid in respect of a child in any family where charges are already paid in respect of three children.'.

It is a pleasure to serve under a Chairman as distinguished as you, Mr. O'Brien.

Amendment No. 27 is intended to invite the Committee to probe the Minister about why the Bill puts on English LEAs the straitjacket of having only free school meals as the marker for free transport. The Bill contains the entitlement for a protected child to have the right to free school transport. However, English authorities have a different criterion for what is a protected child than that which is proposed for Wales. In England, the criterion is simply that the child is entitled to free school meals, whereas in Wales the Assembly is left to choose any set of criteria that it wishes. What is it about the National Assembly for Wales that enables it to decide that for itself, whereas for English LEAs the criterion has to be free school meals, as dictated by my hon. Friend?

It is probably appropriate for me to be very clear at this stage that in England the protected

child is a category in legislation. We are not saying to LEAs that they cannot widen that category.

I thank my hon. Friend, and I look forward to hearing his clarification on that when we get to the appropriate place in our proceedings.

The Amendment relates to the Bill's provisions about who are the protected children; at present, it simply refers to free school meals. Under current legislation, that means a child whose parent or carer is in receipt of income support, income-based jobseeker's allowance or child tax credit, but not working tax credit, with an annual income of less than £13,230. Would it not be better if the legislation offered LEAs a menu, leaving them free to choose one or more of those criteria with the free school meals entitlement being the base level that nobody may fall below?

Local authorities should be allowed to have the additional mark of the working tax credit—not the child tax credit because that seems already to be covered by free school meals, which makes amendment No. 34 otiose. Giving local authorities the opportunity to choose working tax credit as well as free school meals means that, for example, where there are concentrations of parents just above the free school meal entitlement level but below that for the working tax credit, they would be able to tailor their scheme to meet the needs of the people of their area.

That would be consistent with the way that the Department has been moving, for example with regard to the new formula for distributing central Government grant to LEAs, which came into effect in April 2003. That moved away from free school meals being the marker of deprivation to a wider marker of working tax credit. Therefore, it would be consistent even within Government itself for working tax credit to be a marker for entitlement.

My amendment adds an extra criterion to do with rurality. I did so with hesitation; it is not a financial entitlement, so I wondered whether to add it was inconsistent. However, I added it because I was impressed by contributions on Second Reading about the long distances that some pupils in very rural areas have to travel to get to school, and I wondered whether it would be appropriate for some local authorities to say that if a child travels a particular length of journey or comes from a particularly small settlement, they ought to be entitled to free school transport as a matter of course.

That is not an obvious point. One could say that paying a flat-rate fee for using a school bus might be as consistent for somebody living 15 miles away as for someone three miles away. That is quite a good argument. Perhaps we should be leaving it to financial eligibility to establish whether those who are entitled should receive free school transport because of their family finances. That is one way in which the debate is open and I would be grateful to hear my hon. Friend's response. Overall, should not the proposed legislation allow local authorities in England to choose from a menu of options regarding which protected children are entitled to free school transport?

The purpose of amendments Nos. 34 and 36—and to some extent the purpose of

Amendment No. 27, tabled by the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney)—is to enable a debate about the financial impact of charging on families. I am concerned that we will see a number of already hard-pressed families suffering financially as a consequence of the proposed legislation. Using the free schools meals threshold of £13,400 as the cut-off point for free school transport will make many families far worse off.

In my Constituency the £13,400 threshold is just over half the average wage. During Tuesday's sitting the Minister was using the figure of £1 a day as the cost of school transport. In Hampshire, a child travelling more than three miles would be charged just under £200 as a consequence of the £1-a-day charge. For some families, particularly those with more than one child, that could become an onerous burden.

In a sense, the child tax credit was deliberately chosen because the relevant entitlement goes pretty far up the income scale, to almost twice the average earnings of people in Fareham. That demonstrates that we have various means-tested benefits tapering out at different points, and perhaps we need to be more generous in providing concessionary fares in the schemes.

We talked on Tuesday about charging for denominational schools. Given the social mix in some of those schools—some are heavily weighted towards poorer families—the families of children attending them will be quite hard pressed if there is not a more generous measure regarding available concessionary fares than is currently set out in the Bill. We may end up with a different measure. The hon. Member for Stafford talked about a menu of options. However, limiting the entitlement to free school transport to people earning £13,400 a year may not be sufficiently generous to give that range of options to local authorities, which may want to reflect on the local circumstances in their areas, or apply regionally based cut-off points for means tests.

Local authorities may have some requirements in terms of obtaining data from parents about their financial circumstances if they move away from free school meals. There is a process in place now to enable schools to collect that information, but it will need to be more sophisticated and more widely set than at present, thereby leading possibly to an additional administrative cost for processing means-testing being incurred by LEAs. The implementation of any menu of options would need to be considered by the Department and may need to be addressed in some of its consultations with LEAs.

In the light of the admission by the hon. Member for Southport that he has four children, amendment No. 36 could be called the Pugh amendment. If the hon. Gentleman lived in Hampshire and had four children attending school, he would pay just under £800 a year for free school transport. That is a significant burden, which we have placed on families with incomes of upwards of £13,400 a year, and it will have a severe effect on family income.

Therefore, amendment No. 36 aims to cap the charges that a family could pay: where school

transport for three children is already being paid for, no costs will need to be paid in relation to additional children. I again use the example of my county; the family charge for school transport would be limited to £588, assuming that there is a flat-rate charge and that that is only £1 a day.

The hon. Member for Stafford talked about rurality. There may be situations where LEAs would seek to impose some sort of distance-related charge as a means of recovering some of the transport costs that they incur. Large families in rural areas could face a significant increase in their financial costs if there were such a charge.

As it happens, I think that the sentence in paragraph 30 of the prospectus that the Department has produced contains all three issues that the hon. Gentleman mentioned: families with a low income that is just above free school meal entitlement; large families; and people living a long distance from the school. He and I are raising all the issues that the Government state that they are concerned about. Does he agree that his proposed solution for large families is simply illustrative and that a progressive local authority might want to develop a much more sensitive scheme for large families, and might even start to give discounts at an earlier stage than the one that he suggests?

I think that there is an opportunity for local authorities to exercise discretion. However, at the same time that we are talking about minimum entitlements for low income families as they relate to free school meals and income points at which free school transport should be given, we need to give families some protection. It may be that three children is the minimum point and that some local authorities may want to go further. We ought to think about giving families some protection, rather than relying on guidance. As I indicated on Tuesday afternoon, what is issued by way of guidance is simply guidance; it is not a requirement or an entitlement, and it is not statutory. My concern is that local authorities, in bringing forward these schemes, may ignore that guidance.

I am pleased to see you in your place again, Mr. O'Brien.

I am pleased also to rise in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford. I do so in order to ask the Minister whether he would care to outline further the points that he was intimating—or those that were being discussed—on Second Reading. I had the strong feeling then that the Government were looking very hard at the way in which free school meals are a very blunt instrument in rural areas, and at how we might find another way of allowing accessibility to free school transport.

The reality in rural areas is that free school meals are an ineffective way of determining whether someone is eligible for other passported benefits, for the simple reason that it is one of the most discriminatory approaches that could possibly be imagined. I still have memories of children who were put on separate

dinner tables because they were entitled to free school meals; they were the ones that got the sandwiches brought in every day. That is humiliating for children and completely unacceptable for parents.

We need to look much more delicately at the way in which we allow accessibility. Although we may be talking about a measure rather than a practice, the reality is that it is taken as a practice and many parents choose not to take up the entitlement. If they do not take up their entitlement when it comes to their children's eating habits, there is every chance that it will be difficult to manage entitlements to transport arrangements.

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point about take-up. My experience is that children who take up free school meals at primary schools will not do so at secondary school. Given that there are fewer secondary schools than primary schools, children will be further from their secondary school and may require free transport. However, the take-up rate for free school meals in secondary schools may have an impact on the number of children who exercise the right to have free school transport on their journey to secondary school.

The hon. Gentleman is right. The way in which the system operates becomes more difficult as we go up the age profile. There is no magic answer, and we need to look hard at the matter. Clearly, this is a core issue, given the number of people who are looking for solutions. I never cease to be taken aback by that.

The second point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford was about rurality and about how, in drawing up the prospectus and encouraging flexibility, which is a byword for the Bill, we might encourage a fairer distribution of support if and when people have to send their children long distances to the nearest or most appropriate school. That is an important point. All of us who represent rural or semi-rural constituencies know that schooling is inevitably a key reason for people to locate to an area, and that that is particularly true of rural areas. However, we have lost many village schools, and if we are to keep our rural communities alive we must bolster the remaining facilities to the best of our ability.

I hope that we can look at flexible arrangements and particularly at some form of federation or clustering among schools. I hope also that we can use the Bill to organise transport and give local authorities the wherewithal to find and then keep in place the best arrangements not only for children from lower-income backgrounds, but across the board. In addition, I hope that there will be not only an implicit recognition, but some explicit understanding of the fact that rurality is a key factor in the type of schooling that is available to our children.

Perhaps the Minister will say something about that issue, although it is an open question whether it is possible to include a provision in the Bill. However, when the Government sell the pilot to local authorities, they should be radical and seek ways to make education better. There is no better place to start

than where children have to travel long distances because there are no longer any local schools. A fair and accessible transport system needs to be made available to them.

In moving the Amendment, the hon. Member for Stafford seems to have made life very difficult for the Minister. He raised legitimate concerns about how a protected child is to be defined. Other hon. Members have said that some children who ought to get free transport do not take up free school meals and that the uptake for meals is not as good as it might be. The uptake for free transport, however, is almost 100 per cent.—it is a well taken-up benefit.

The Minister tried to make a pre-emptive strike against the amendment by suggesting that, even though the legislation says that a protected child should be entitled to free school meals, there is nothing to stop authorities varying that provision. The hon. Member for Stafford countered that ingeniously by saying that there is nothing to stop the Minister including a menu in the Bill rather than defining a protected child in a particular way. I have a great deal of sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman said, and I would be intrigued to know how the Minister intends countering his argument.

The hon. Gentleman also raised the issue of rurality, which will haunt our debate from beginning to end. We do not have an obvious solution, because the legislation will have greater consequences for rural areas, particularly the hardship provisions, and costs are already higher in rural areas. The way in which we deal with the rurality question goes to the heart of the debate, and the Minister does not have an effective handle on it.

As the hon. Member for Fareham said, I am a member of the trade union of large families. In bringing up four children, I have always felt that people like me are substantially disadvantaged, as no system makes sufficient allowance for them. Be that as it may, large families are most likely to have a motive to use a car, as the cost of paying for transport would be considerably more. Indeed, if the costs are totalled, those who do not have a car would probably find it worth buying one, or even hiring one.

I shall use two arguments that the Minister has used against our amendments to persuade him to concede the argument on amendment No. 36. He says that one reason for removing an entitlement is that only a few people can take advantage of it. I assure the Minister that there is only a small number of families with four or more children. Another argument that the Minister often uses is to say that an amendment would give people an incentive to do something that they otherwise would not do. I can assure him that the prospect of reduced costs of school transport will not encourage people to go out and breed more. It does not work like that—the other incidental costs are far higher.

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.

Is the Minister suggesting that entitlement might apply

at different income levels in different parts of a local authority's area?

I was not suggesting that; I will have to reflect on whether we would consider it. I was suggesting that cut-off levels might differ between LEAs, not within them.

At this stage, I do not want to widen the category of protected children as is suggested in either of the amendments. However, I believe that a persuasive case has been put, especially by my hon. Friends, the members for Stafford and for Stroud. Therefore, I undertake to examine the merits of extending the protected child category to cover some of the poorest working families. I will report back to the House on our deliberations in due course.

Amendment No. 36 would exempt the fourth sibling and any subsequent siblings from charges where the first three siblings already pay charges for school transport. I acknowledge that the impact of charges for home-to-school transport is an important consideration, particularly for larger families. The families of at least of half of those travelling to school by bus or taxi do not receive free home-to-school transport, so the fares that larger families have to pay are likely to be particularly burdensome.

I am, however, confident that local education authorities, which are accountable to local communities, will reflect carefully on local circumstances, and it is unlikely that we will receive applications from authorities that do not reflect the important point about larger families. If we do receive such applications, the Bill contains mechanisms for the national authority—the Department for Education and Skills, or the National Assembly for Wales—to respond appropriately.

I fully agree with hon. Members on both sides that charging is a sensitive issue that needs to take account of family and local circumstances. The prospectus is sufficiently reassuring on those points. It asks scheme applicants to set out in detail their proposals for charging, which must have been consulted on locally, as we said on Tuesday. It emphasises that charges must be affordable and not pitched at a level that would increase car use. It also requires local schemes to take full account of the effects of family size and the pressures on low-income families. It requires scheme applicants to provide transparent information about local imbalances between areas generating and absorbing charges.

I am convinced that that is the right approach, and in the light of my assurances, I ask my hon. Friends and the hon. Gentleman not to press their amendments.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud said that the key requirement was for LEAs to have maximum flexibility. I understand the Minister's position to be that setting the base entitlement at free school meals gives LEAs the maximum flexibility to make their own suggestions. These schemes are, in a sense, pilot schemes—the greater the flexibility, the greater the opportunity to see different models in play and to decide which one works best. I understand that argument, but one

question still nags at me: why is the base entitlement in England free school meals, but in Wales it is whatever the National Assembly sets? Is the Minister not being fairer to Wales than to England?

I agree with the hon. Member for Fareham that our concern is about the base entitlement. Should we simply leave it at free school meals and leave everything else to the guidance and the prospectus, over which we have no control, or should we, as legislators, say that the base entitlement should consist of other factors that we want to ensure are in every scheme?

The point of tabling an Amendment was to ask for a debate on the matter. We have now had that debate, which was very useful. The hon. Member for Fareham argued against my proposal and made a point about bureaucracy: namely, the more conditions we impose as legislators, the more forms there are to fill in and the more questions there are to ask of people who take part in these schemes. I do not want that to happen, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud pointed out, even now the take-up for free school meals—a fairly straightforward scheme—is still not brilliant. The more schemes we devise, the less the take-up will be.

Is that not, in a sense, an argument against charging and against ending up with a complex system of concessionary fares, discounts and means-testing, all of which lead to lower take-up rates? Such complexities would not arise if we had free school transport.

In a way, that is a naughty question in that it opens up the larger issues behind the Bill, rather than the Amendment. The Bill has the potential to bring enormous benefits to many more people than the 10 per cent. of pupils who currently gain from free school meals. We need to develop through the pilots robust and simple schemes with a minimum of red tape. Again, I am in favour of experimenting.

I was interested to hear that my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud strongly supported what my amendment would do about rurality, which clearly the Minister should consider. However, I bear in mind the Minister's warning about the possible unintended consequence of the wording of my amendment. I obviously do not want to derail pilots that I support in principle. I also bear in mind his commitment to come back to us with the Department's thinking on working tax credit before we get to the end of our consideration of the Bill, I am happy to beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

I beg to move Amendment No. 50, in

Clause 1, page 3, line 11, at end insert—

(7A) Expenditure under the scheme may include—

(a) payment for transport arrangements,

(b) improving the safety of walking routes,

(c) purchase of assets that will be employed to further the objectives of the scheme, and

(d) infrastructure improvements that would meet the objectives of the scheme.'.

This is a relatively straightforward amendment. It would set out, with due clarity, what expenditure on the schemes can be used for. Sub-paragraph (a) is fairly straightforward; ''payment for transport arrangements'' should be covered under the Bill anyway.

As for sub-paragraphs (b), (c) and (d), under existing regulations, where a walking route to school is not safe, pupils are entitled to free transport. It would be a worthy use of some of the expenditure on the scheme, and perhaps of any revenue derived from charging, to improve the safety of walking routes to schools. That could be done by improving street lighting, for example. There is a road in my Constituency that might benefit from street lighting, which would enable more children to use that road to walk to school. New pedestrian crossings could be installed to enable children to cross the road safely.

There are examples from overseas. When the Transport Committee considered the Bill it commented that in Denmark, legislation requires there to be a safe route to school for every child, and it gives a definition of a safe route. The legislation says that if there is no such route, free bus transport must be provided. There is a real imperative for the relevant authorities in Denmark to invest in safe routes in order to reduce the cost of free school transport. That sounds a sensible way of proceeding.

So often, the measures governing school transport arrangements that we talk about concern the hard assets that we can acquire, such as buses, equipment that will facilitate children getting to school, or minibuses. However, there are also softer areas that we could consider. On Second Reading, mention was made of the reduction in resources available for teaching children how to cycle safely to school. More resources to enable children—particularly those in urban areas—to cycle safely to school, such as cycling proficiency tests, might help to reduce congestion in urban areas where children do not have free school transport, and where many journeys are undertaken by car. Cycling to school might be a way of reducing congestion. Of course, in the context of the concern about childhood obesity, it would also improve the health of our children.

It is interesting to see what happens when some of those measures, including improving the quality of cycle training and road awareness, are introduced. According to the Select Committee's report, in York there has been a reduction of one quarter in child cycling casualties since training was introduced in 1993. That demonstrates some of the uses to which money available under the scheme could be put.

I want to make some observations, and probe for more clarity on the Amendment. When I first saw it, sub-paragraph (d) caught my eye. It mentions

''infrastructure improvements that would meet the objectives of the scheme.''

At first, I took that to mean that there was an intention to use money raised from parents to provide some kind of subsidy for general safety improvements on the roads. That struck me as being not the most appropriate road to go down, because I feared that

parents paying for school transport would, in the end, replace elements of the general highways budget. Then I reread the amendment, and saw that the very beginning mentions ''Expenditure under the scheme''. Presumably, that includes not just money raised through charging, but any money that the local authority wants to put in.

My problem is that local authorities do many things to make the environment generally safe for children, which overlap with school travel schemes. When auditing a scheme, we need to include elements that properly belong to it and exclude those elements that local authorities should be responsible for anyway, irrespective of whether school travel pilot schemes exist. I should hate a pilot run to raise money from parents and simply be a substitute for hard-pressed highways budgets elsewhere. Although the spirit of the amendment is fine, I am not entirely clear what it seeks to achieve.

I have sympathy with the Amendment, although I have similar worries to the hon. Member for Southport. Some good safer routes to school schemes have been developed in my area and have provided infrastructure on the ground with extra crossings, footpaths and, in some cases, walking buses. We could argue that such developments could be expanded under the Bill to encourage more walking to school as well as more transport for children who have to travel longer distances. However, I am worried that it could be seen as though the money is coming from parents, even though there is general local taxation for school transport. I welcome the fact that local authorities might want to deal with matters on the ground within the school transport plans, but I do not want the effect of that to be that parents are charged to implement such developments.

My hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Mrs. Dean) and the hon. Member for Southport have raised an important issue, which related to one of our discussions on Tuesday. We want the proceeds of any new charges to support the improvement and expansion of measures to encourage safer and environmentally friendly routes to school and to reduce the car run, not used in the way that has been feared, which is to replace other forms of expenditure on local transport.

In ''Travelling to School: an action plan'', which we published jointly with the Department for Transport, we referred to several sources of funding that can be and are deployed to further the aim of more sustainable travel to school, including safer routes to school and capital investment being made available through local transport planning. In Wales, funding is available to local authorities through the transport grant, which also includes the ''Safer routes to school'' scheme.

Since September 2003, all local authorities in England have produced strategies showing how they will draw on the full range of local resources to

support sustainable travel to school. We want scheme areas to use the Bill to support arrangements that offer a range of good quality, cost-effective alternatives to the family car on the home-to-school journey. Schemes do not only have to enhance bus travel; they could focus in whole or in part on increased cycling, car sharing or walking. The fundamental principle behind the Bill is that we want local education authorities to develop schemes that will meet local priorities.

The schemes will run for several years and might reveal innovative new ways in which to achieve a shift to more sustainable transport modes. Some categories are set out in the Amendment, but it is not an exhaustive list. One category could be the purchase of car-sharing software or the training of staff to use it. Another might be funding for cycle training to support the installation of new cycle routes. The example of York was powerful. I welcome the proposal as a probing amendment to enable me to put those points on the record, but I hope that the hon. Member for Fareham agrees that such matters are best handled through the prospectus. I therefore ask him to withdraw the amendment.

Both the hon. Members for Southport and for Burton referred to the use to which generating charges could be put, but let us not forget that there is already a significant amount of local authority expenditure on school transport schemes. It is not just the charge revenue that could be used: there could be ways of using the existing costs to achieve some of the Bill's objectives.

I did mention that a lot of the money that funds school transport comes from the council tax payer. However, we do not want it to seem as though charges are funding highway schemes, which should be paid for through general taxation.

The hon. Lady identifies a real risk. As the hon. Member for Southport said: how does one audit the use to which money is put under school transport schemes? For example, should a safe cycle route to a school be paid for through the scheme or through other aspects of the highways budget? In many areas, cycle routes put down to encourage cycling to school have been paid for out of pots other than that for school transport. People are concerned that the money could be used to meet shortfalls in other aspects of the budget. Even if the Amendment is withdrawn, the same charge will be levelled at any other scheme that is proposed.

I hope that local authorities will recognise the opportunity to implement a wide range of measures to improve safety. Many secondary schools with catchment areas of 3 miles that do not have free transport will be considering local authority ideas to reduce traffic congestion. A school in my Constituency has considered buying minibuses to reduce congestion on busy suburban roads by getting pupils out of their parents' cars and into school minibuses. People in suburban areas might look to similar schemes as a way of using both the proceeds from charging and school transport money.

This is a slightly technical point, but if one puts money from charging into an account and

calls it a school travel scheme expenditure account, and allows it to be spent on infrastructure improvement, which is simply general safety improvement, one cannot preclude the possibility that a local authority will use money that parents have paid to get their children to school to pay for pavement improvements.

The hon. Gentleman is right: the schemes will allow that. Nothing that the Minister has said contradicts that.

I sought to address that issue at the beginning of my remarks. We will not look kindly on schemes that seek to use money raised directly from charging to pay for general local transport expenditure. We want to see a direct relationship between moneys raised and improvements to the home-to-school run to reduce car use in the way that I set out. There are already charges for those who do not benefit from the current arrangements, so, what the hon. Gentleman describes could happen already.

The Minister's clarification is useful, but unless he and his Department intend to vet every use to which the money is put, some will inevitably leak out into general transport improvements. That is the reality of the situation; if local authorities are so inclined, they will find ways to use the money for general transport improvements. Unless the Minister recruits more civil servants to check every item of expenditure, the good intentions set forth in the scheme rules might well be ignored.

The debate has been useful in flushing out this issue. I hope that the Minister will think carefully about how scheme applications can be vetted to ensure that money is ring-fenced and used only for school transport plans rather than being filtered off for other transport improvements. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

I beg to move Amendment No. 28, in page 3, line 14, at end insert—

'(1A) In deciding whether or not to approve a school travel scheme the appropriate national authority shall have regard to its compliance with the terms of the prospectus published by the Secretary of State.'.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 55, in page 3, line 19, at end insert—

'(1A) In their application to the national authority, the scheme authority shall publish the measures that it will use to determine whether or not it should seek to exercise the powers set out in 9(1) during the pilot, including—

(a) the impact on traffic congestion,

(b) the proportion of children using different ways of travelling,

(c) the effect of charging on car usage,

(d) the impact on families on low incomes,

(e) the impact on children with special educational needs,

(f) the impact on after-school activities and extended schools, and

(g) the impact on school choice, including the education of children in accordance with the religious, philosophical or linguistic preferences of their parents.'.

Amendment No. 61, in page 3, line 20, leave out sub-paragraph (2).

Many times in the debate so far we have heard reference to the prospectus, but I do not think that the Bill itself contains any references to it. The Amendment seeks to include a mention and would require Ministers or the Assembly to check that a travel scheme up for approval complies with the prospectus.

The issue reminds me of my legal training. When a legal document mentions another document to which people are going to refer, that other document must, for certainty, be properly identified. We ought at least to be sure what the Bill will refer local authorities to in their deliberations and what, therefore, the Minister will be looking at when local authorities propose schemes for approval.

Under the Bill as drafted, a local authority may produce a scheme that continues the present transport arrangements for pupils who are more than two or three miles away from school, and so on, and the Minister or Assembly must approve it. That is it. However, there are some vital things in the prospectus that we as legislators would want the Minister to take into account when deciding whether to approve a scheme.

For example, on the objective of modal shift, the prospectus is clear that the intention of such schemes is to try to persuade people to take fewer cars on the road at school start and finish times. We would like people to come forward with schemes that say so. We have also debated fair charging, which we are all anxious about. We would like the scheme produced for approval to comply with the prospectus as drafted, to ensure that there is a fair charging scheme.

Again, the prospectus requires quite extensive local consultation, although during the Committee's first sitting the Minister said that it could go a little further. The answer to the pertinent question of what the Minister would do where a scheme for approval had not had adequate local consultation was that perhaps—only perhaps—the scheme would not be approved. If the amendment were accepted, however, perhaps a Minister would say, ''I will not approve a scheme that does not comply with the prospectus''.

To give some examples, what if a scheme came to the Minister that was hotly contested locally, but had not been consulted on well? What would the Minister do in those circumstances? What if the local education authority completely ignored the prospectus, but put forward a creditable scheme and the Minister proposed to approve it? What could local people who objected do about that? What if a local authority scrupulously followed everything in the prospectus, but the Minister said that the scheme would not be approved?

Those examples are extremes, but, because the Bill does not mention the prospectus, dissatisfied people in such cases would take to the law courts to have their day. Since we are legislators who would like our legislation to be certain and unnecessary legal challenges to be avoided, we should take the precaution of inserting a reference to the prospectus. With my legal hat on, I think that that is sensible,

although I would be interested to hear what the Minister says with his political hat on.

I shall speak to Amendment No. 61, in my name, and say, at the risk of breaking the consensual atmosphere, that it is not a probing amendment.

Local authorities are free to decide whether to involve themselves in a pilot scheme, and throughout our deliberations we have heard what I call the ''Twigg defence''—if they do not like it, they do not have to do it. That is a legitimate response. Indeed, on Tuesday the Minister said:

''There is no compulsion in the Bill; neither is compulsion implied by it.''—[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 9 November 2004; c. 67.]

If the Bill was to be consistent, however, local authorities would be able to withdraw from the pilot as easily as they could enter it; but under paragraph 9(1) and (2) of proposed new schedule 35B to the Education Act 1996, a local authority that enters into the scheme cannot withdraw from it without

''the consent of the appropriate national authority.''

The libertarian streak that inspired most of the Bill has been temporarily put to one side, and the authoritarian streak has re-entered those provisions. My amendment would withdraw it.

That is fine for a local authority that seeks to withdraw because it has found that it does not like what it has signed up to. The Amendment would enable it to amend the scheme without the Secretary of State's approval. Surely, if my amendment were passed, the authority was totally compliant with the prospectus and the Minister approved it on day one, on day two it could amend the scheme to take out all the things that we thought we were safeguarding.

I think that it could amend it within the terms of the original application that had been approved. Perhaps the Minister will shed some light on that. I am more concerned about revocation.

At the moment, this bit of the Bill is a disincentive to local authorities to engage in the pilot scheme. I wrote to my local authority, Hampshire county council, to ask for its views. It specifically referred to this paragraph, stating:

''The current proposal is a disincentive to participation and an unnecessary level of central control.''

Local authorities are concerned about that, and in the case of my local authority it may influence its decision about whether to become involved.

I want to explain why the Amendment is important. Let us take the case of a local authority that, in good faith, introduces a scheme, which is improved, but after six months, two things happen. First, the authority does not achieve its objectives and does not get the modal shift that was hoped for. More importantly, let us say for the sake of argument that the Office of the Deputy prime minister decides to rate-cap the authority and it has to reduce its expenditure in a relatively short time. It would

consider all the options available—such as libraries, road maintenance and social services—and it might consider the option of withdrawing from the pilot, partly because it was not reaching the objectives, but partly to get expenditure down.

The Minister conceded on Tuesday that an authority was likely to have to increase its expenditure if it were involved in the pilot scheme. He said:

''The sum that we are talking about in pump-priming is too small for that.''—[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 9 November 2004; c. 68.]

In other words, the pump-priming money available from the Government is too small to fund a scheme. In a short space of time, the authority might want to withdraw from the pilot scheme in order to meet the requirement from the ODPM to reduce its expenditure. At the moment, it cannot do that without a decision from the Department.

The Minister may say that the application would be quickly turned round, but every single member of the Committee knows that Departments are not always quick at making decisions. The ODPM has just sent out a letter that says that people will have to wait 12 months before their planning appeal is even heard. From our correspondence with Departments, we know that Ministers are not always quick to make decisions. There is an inbuilt delay that may fetter the discretion of a local authority when deciding how best to respond to a demand from another Department to reduce its expenditure.

If the local authority is grown up enough to decide whether to enter a scheme, it is grown up enough to decide whether to leave it. It should not need the approval of the appropriate national authority to withdraw and go back to the default position, where it was before it embarked on the pilot. It would have to comply with all the other legislation, but it would just want to go back to square one.

We heard a little earlier about unnecessary bureaucracy. That provision is an unnecessary piece of bureaucracy. The authority has to write to the Department, the Minister has to get advice, and consultation has to take place through the Government office for the south-east, or the Government office for the north-east, or whichever Government Department is appropriate. The decision, I assume, is then subject to judicial review, as Ministers have to act reasonably. It can slow the whole process. I genuinely do not see why the provision that one cannot go back to where one was without the consent of the appropriate national authority is in the Bill.

The hon. Member for Stafford may have a point about amendments, and I am open to persuasion on that. I look forward with mounting anticipation to hearing why the Minister thinks that the provision is consistent with the tone of the Bill, and with the degree of responsibility that he expects local authorities to exercise, and whether he can give some indication that he will revisit the issue and whether, if he will not accept my amendment, he will undertake to introduce one of his own that gives the flexibility and speed of response that I am after. I am encouraged to see that

my speech has generated some activity from the civil servants on the Bench, and that the Minister is getting some in-flight refuelling while the debate continues. At the appropriate time, I might wish to push the amendment to a Division.

My right hon. Friend's objection is valid. There is a danger that, if a scheme were disastrous for a local community, the unfortunate and detrimental effects would be allowed to persist until the Secretary of State had made up his mind. He might not agree to the scheme's revocation or Amendment, and such effects might continue until the termination of the pilot at the end of its natural life.

I shall not talk at length about amendment No. 55; I shall come to it when we debate amendment No. 52. However, it is important that when an authority draws together a scheme it should set out the criteria for its amendment or revocation. When the pilots are taking place, we need to be careful not to allow schemes to go on from year to year without understanding the impacts on the local community. It is important to be clear about schemes' measures of success when applications are developed. If a scheme is not succeeding in achieving its objectives, it should be amended or revoked. Local people would feel far more comfortable with the consultation process and the scheme if they felt that scheme authorities had a clear idea of the objectives and that, if such objectives were not met, scheme authorities would amend or revoke them.

The hon. Member for Stafford is a good friend of the Minister because he points continually to work that still needs to be done. The Minister has had a fairly easy ride during this debate; he has said, ''It's all in the prospectus; do not worry about it. You can trust us—honest.'' As we have not seen the prospectus, we have no real comeback on that. The hon. Member for Stafford appears to suggest that the prospectus should be used as a kind of benchmarking exercise.

I feel some disbelief at the hon. Gentleman's claim that we have not seen a prospectus. There have been two publications of the prospectus so far, and the Minister has promised a third. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that he has not seen them?

I am not saying that I have not seen them, but that we are waiting for the third prospectus, which has been promised in time for our debates on Report. Presumably, only that prospectus will take on board the deliberations of the Standing Committee. Nevertheless, as the hon. Gentleman proved in his Intervention, the prospectus is something of a movable feast. I firmly anticipate that once we have seen a prospectus on Third Reading, there will be a subsequent one and another after that, which will be introduced under the label of flexibility. Some of the hard and firm criteria that we thought were there in the first place will gradually be eroded or vanish.

There is merit in the amendments tabled by the hon. Members for Stafford and for Fareham. The hon. Member for Fareham's Amendment No. 55 would require a set of clear objectives for the legislation; a

mechanics by which the working of the Bill could be evaluated. I back off from demanding targets, but the Bill should be fairly explicit on how schemes will be evaluated. The hon. Member for Fareham has considered, and lists, many ways in which the Bill could be evaluated. The problem would be in deciding how to wait for such objectives. The last objective is on how school choice and people's ability to attend a variety of schools would be encouraged. Earlier objectives are about the need to reduce the amount of congestion on the road and the number of routes that pupils follow to school.

I would be intrigued to find out how a mature and considered judgment would be arrived at when the evaluation along the lines suggested by the hon. Gentleman had taken place. Although all the objectives are worthy, one scheme would score highly on one, but dismally on another—and vice versa.

I do not wish to prolong this debate unnecessarily. However, the schemes are complex; different criteria of success will be used. Is the hon. Gentleman advocating that there should be one measure of success for the schemes?

I am not advocating this legislation at all, so I do not need to apologise for it. I simply point out the obvious and true point that under Amendment No. 55 one of the criteria for evaluation is the effect of charging on car usage, and another criterion is

''the impact on school choice, including the education of children in accordance with the religious, philosophical or linguistic preferences of their parents.''

Both of those objectives are entirely worthy. However, a scheme that scores highly on one of them may not score highly on the other, in which case a judgment will need to be made—I do not know on what criteria—about whether the scheme is a success. That is an intrinsic difficulty in the legislation, which I make no effort to defend.

Amendment No. 61 appears to increase discretion for local authorities, and I would be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about it. As the hon. Member for Stafford pointed out, one of its effects would be not that local authorities could simply back out of a scheme when financial circumstances arise that make it impossible for it comfortably to continue with it, but that they could amend a scheme without any further reference to anybody else.

Parents are a group of people who should be referred to at that point. They are intimately a part of the scheme, and the local authority has made a commitment to them. Local authorities might adjust to the kinds of financial pressure sketched by the hon. Gentleman not by backing out of a scheme but by substantially bumping up the prices for the parents who are in it; they might modify the terms and conditions, or reduce the numbers of those who are covered in the scheme as a protected child, or alter the provision for special educational needs.

That all seems to follow consequentially from allowing authorities entire discretion to modify schemes when the need arises. I am not bothered in the slightest about them backtracking on

commitments made to central Government in this regard, but I am concerned about them backtracking on commitments made to parents who will be expecting schemes to be delivered over a number of years.

My Amendment would enable local authorities to amend or revoke a travel scheme without the consent of the appropriate national authority. As I understand it, a local authority can amend or revoke a travel scheme if it wants to do so. All I am saying is that if they want to do that they should not have to refer it to the appropriate national authority. They should of course refer it to everybody else. My amendment would delete sub-paragraph (2).

I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about the effect of the Amendment. I simply put on record my concern that the scenario that the right hon. Gentleman describes whereby a local authority extracts itself from an arrangement might not at the end of the day be particularly displeasing to the Government because they can simply accuse the local authority of bad faith, but it might be fundamentally problematic to a range of families that are expecting the scheme to continue to run for a period of time.

The legislation is not simply about pilots, although we are largely talking about them; it allows schemes to be implemented for an indefinite period.

Amendment No. 28 was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford. We have always made the prospectus available alongside the Bill because it sets out what we want scheme authorities to do. We have always said that we will use the process and criteria set out in the prospectus in deciding on which local schemes to approve. There is a great amount of goodwill in LEAs about that, and we do not foresee that any LEA would enter into a scheme agreement and then do something completely different.

However, if something does go wrong, remedies are available. The Secretary of State could require a scheme LEA to meet its obligations through either section 496 or section 497 of the Education Act 1996. Section 496 would apply if the scheme authority were acting, or proposed to act, unreasonably. Section 497 would apply where an LEA failed to discharge a duty.

Nevertheless, my hon. Friend—along with other Committee members—has reminded me that I have relied on the prospectus in a number of these discussions, and he has raised some legitimate questions about including a reference to the prospectus in the Bill.

Having just now seen the prospectus for the first time, I wonder whether a few copies could be made available for the Committee's afternoon sitting.

I have no problem with making paper copies available; the prospectus is also available on the

Department's website, but we will ensure that paper copies are available for the afternoon sitting.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford has raised perfectly legitimate questions, and I want to reflect on the points that he made and return to the matter. I have no problem in principle with the idea that the prospectus should be mentioned in the Bill. However, I am not in a position to accept the Amendment, and I ask him, in the light of my assurance to him, to withdraw it.

Talking about amendment No. 61, tabled by the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), I want to make it clear that paragraph 9 of the new schedule is intended to allow LEAs that have established school travel schemes, whether as pilots or longer-term schemes, to amend or revoke them in the light of their experience of operating them. Sub-paragraphs (2), (3) and (4) provide that a scheme authority wanting to make such changes must apply to the Secretary of State or the National Assembly for Wales and obtain consent before revocation or amendment.

The amendment would remove sub-paragraph (2). The right hon. Gentleman's intention is clearly to remove the requirement to obtain consent, as he has explained. I think that the other sub-paragraphs, too, would need to be removed to achieve the result that he wants.

There is a key distinction to be made in this context, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford pointed out—indeed, the right hon. Gentleman conceded the point—between the powers to amend and the powers to revoke. We are putting in place arrangements for all proposed travel schemes to be examined and approved in the first place by the appropriate national authority before schemes can start. That, of course, is the effect of paragraph 8 of new schedule 35B.

It strikes me that after taking the trouble to assess LEAs' planned travel scheme arrangements and checking that each scheme accorded with the underlying principles set out in the prospectus, it would be perverse to allow schemes then to be altered without further reference to the relevant national authority. Without the safeguard of a requirement for such consent, scheme authorities could alter their charging regime, remove transport provision without adequate warning or alter their arrangements in such a way that the aims of the scheme would not be achieved; the hon. Member for Southport gave examples of that possibility.

I will give the Committee an undertaking—another Twigg undertaking, perhaps. We shall study the prospectus with regard to this issue, to ensure that similar consultation will be required at local level—to deal with the point made by the hon. Member for Southport. If amendments were proposed by a local authority, that would require a consultation similar to the one required in the first place to establish such a scheme.

I suspect that there is consensus in the Committee on that aspect of the amendment—that the power to amend a scheme should still entail a requirement to

refer to the national authority. I do not believe that LEAs will behave unreasonably in such matters, but we think that some sort of check is needed. We would not want schemes to be revoked suddenly, or without good reason. The requirement to obtain consent before revoking a scheme signals clearly to LEAs that their travel schemes are medium to long-term commitments that should not be lightly entered into or abandoned.

Mr. Hoban rose—

Mrs. Dean rose—

I shall give way first to the hon. Gentleman and then to my hon. Friend.

May I put a possibility to the Minister? If a scheme were introduced across the whole of an LEA, and it proved so unpopular that after an election control of the LEA changed to another party—the crucial issue being the scheme's impact on parents, children and schools—it would need to be revoked quickly, without reference to the Secretary of State. The will of the people would have been expressed clearly at the ballot box.

The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point, and I shall respond to it in a moment, but first I shall take my hon. Friend's Intervention.

Will my hon. Friend assure us that on revocation there would be consultation with parents and the general public similar to the consultation about Amendment of the scheme? People who gained from a scheme would be affected by its being revoked.

My hon. Friend raises an interesting and important point.

The concern raised by the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire has not been raised with us directly by any local education authority during consultation, and a significant number of authorities have responded. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that the right hon. Gentleman has set out the concerns of Hampshire county council—which clearly decided to write to its excellent MP rather than to the Minister or the Department.

There is a great need to be careful about the potential effects of revocation on parents and children, as my hon. Friend has suggested. In general the Department advises that changes in school transport policy should, for example, not commence until the start of the school year, for obvious practical reasons concerned with parents and pupils' planning.

Nevertheless, the right hon. Gentleman has raised a legitimate issue about revocation, although not Amendment. I undertake to the Committee that I shall consider that aspect of the amendment further, in the light of what he and other hon. Members have said, as well as the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Mrs. Dean) about ensuring that there is a mechanism for local consultation on revocation. In the light of that assurance, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will not press his amendment.

Amendment No. 55 would insert an additional sub-paragraph into paragraph 9 of new schedule 35B—a

non-exhaustive list of criteria that would in effect be used by individual scheme authorities to set their own performance measures. I agree that we need to set out clearly what we expect school travel schemes to achieve, and the list in the amendment closely reflects the success criteria in paragraphs 8 to 10 of the draft prospectus.

The amendment suggests that the authorities should be obliged to adhere to set detailed success criteria in primary legislation, rather than using the more flexible approach that we have set out. We do not think that that approach is in keeping with our desire that authorities should make a thorough assessment of the needs of their area and, from that, develop appropriate objectives and targets for local schemes. We think that the more devolved approach is more in keeping with the spirit of the Bill and the desire for local innovation and autonomy. In the light of that, I ask the hon. Member for Fareham not to press the amendment.

My concern is of course for my Amendment, but in responding to the debate I congratulate the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire on raising an important issue, which has given rise to an important debate.

I urge the right hon. Gentleman to accept the distinction drawn by the Minister between amendment and revocation, and I appeal to both to have regard to the idea of a de minimis provision. Surely we do not want widespread consultation and applications to Ministers for approval for very trivial changes to schemes.

As for my amendment, I have won, so it would be gracious of me to withdraw it, and I will ask the Committee for leave to do so.

During the debate we seem to have stumbled across an omission in the Bill. As I understand it, the Bill would enable an authority to amend or revoke a school travel scheme with the approval of the appropriate national authority. However, it is not made clear that it should first consult with what are called the stakeholders. Do I understand from the Minister that under the Bill a scheme authority could obtain the approval of the Department to amend or revoke the scheme without having gone round the course with all those involved? Is that the present position, and will the Minister put it right?

I am happy to look into that and give the right hon. Gentleman the assurance that he seeks. As the national authority, we will clearly not be in the business of giving approval to changes at local level that do not have that support. However, if that is not sufficiently clear, I shall consider whether an Amendment is required to the Bill or the prospectus.

I think that the Minister is saying that if the local authority had not consulted on amending the scheme, the national authority would not give approval. I am happy with that, and I can see the distinction drawn by the hon. Member for Stafford between Amendment and revocation. I was rather hoping for a Division, but as the Minister has given an undertaking to consider the point that I raised, it

would be churlish to press the matter, and when the time comes, I shall not move my amendment.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

I beg to move Amendment No. 37, in

Clause 1, page 3, line 41, at end insert—

'Annual report by scheme authority

11A (1) The scheme authority will present an annual report to the appropriate national authority setting out an assessment of the effectiveness of the scheme in the relevant school year to include—

(a) the revenue and costs of the scheme,

(b) the number of pupils affected,

(c) the number of pupils being charged,

(d) an assessment of the impact on children with special educational needs,

(e) an assessment of the impact of the scheme on school choice, including denominational schools and Welsh language schools, and

(f) an assessment of the impact of the scheme on traffic volumes.

(2) The annual report under subparagraph (1) shall be presented to the appropriate national authority by 31 December following the end of the school year to which the report relates.

Power of national authority to revoke scheme

11B Following the receipt of the annual report, the appropriate national authority may amend or revoke the scheme if it is failing to meet its objectives.

Annual report by appropriate national authority

11C The appropriate national authority shall lay before Parliament an annual report compiled from the reports received from scheme authorities as required under paragraph 11A(1).'.

The amendment has three purposes. The first is to require scheme authorities to submit an annual report, and I have suggested in a non-exhaustive fashion some of the topics that it might cover. To refer back to comments made by the hon. Member for Southport, although we oppose the provision, it is important to try to improve its effectiveness. We need to give more guidance to local authorities about their obligations under the scheme and about how they can best communicate what they have achieved to the national authority—the Department for Education and Skills—and to Members of Parliament, so that we are made aware of progress.

My proposed new paragraph 11A sets out some of the topics that an annual report to the national authority should cover and the deadline for submitting it to the Department. Proposed new paragraph 11B is an authoritarian measure, in the sense that it gives greater powers to the Secretary of State. The current situation, which bears slightly on the previous debate, is that scheme authorities can seek changes or the revocation of a scheme during the pilot phase. The Secretary of State does not have the power to bring the scheme to a halt or to force it to be amended.

There may be circumstances in which such action ought to take place: where the effects on the local community are so significant that it would be inappropriate for a scheme to continue, based on the information supplied by the local authority to the relevant national authority. The proposed new

paragraph 11B gives the Secretary of State a power where the scheme does not meet its objectives. It is not a blanket power; it asks what the scheme seeks to achieve. The prospectus sets out some of the things that it could achieve, and the application will set out what it seeks to achieve, but if it does not achieve those objectives, the Secretary of State should have the opportunity to revoke or to amend it.

Proposed new paragraph 11C aims to ensure that Members of Parliament have the opportunity to look at the consequences of the scheme on the local level. In many respects, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to legislate on school transport. When the pilots come to an end there will be a chance to examine the effects and, possibly, for the pilots to be revoked and terminated at that point. It is important that throughout the life of the pilots we have the opportunity to understand what the impacts are. That would allow us to understand whether school choice is affected, what the impact will be on rural communities and whether the scheme has achieved its objectives in terms of reducing traffic congestion.

I agree that we need an annual report from each school travel scheme area, so that central and local government can watch schemes develop and ensure that lessons learned from the pilot authorities are also available to others. However, I do not agree that the requirement for annual reporting has to be set out in primary legislation.

In the prospectus, we explain that LEAs with approved schemes will be required to produce an annual report for the DFES or the National Assembly, which must contain an account of what has gone well and what has gone badly, and the views of key partners. It already covers most of the areas listed in the Amendment, and we are content to add additional text relating to denominational and Welsh-medium schools.

In drafting the Bill we decided that we did not want to give the Secretary of State or the National Assembly powers to revoke or vary school travel schemes, as we see those as local initiatives, and authorities are accountable in their localities. The proposed amendment would give a power the need for which was not raised during the public consultation or pre-legislative scrutiny, and it goes very much against the spirit of the amendment proposed by the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire in the previous group. We think that we have probably got the balance right, and in the light of that I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn

Sitting suspended for two minutes' silence.

On resuming—

I beg to move Amendment No. 51, in page 3, line 41, at end insert—

(11A) The Secretary of State shall publish his opinion on the way in which schemes should be structured so as to ensure compliance

with the Human Rights Act 1998 (c.42) including but not limited to compliance with Article 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights.'.

I tabled the amendment because of an important issue, which we have already touched on from time to time, that underpins the Bill: how to ensure that school transport schemes provide for parental choice to be expressed but in a way that complies with the European convention on human rights.

Paragraph 99 of the report on the Bill produced by the Selection Committee on Education and Skills says:

''The human rights implications of school travel schemes are complex and we have found evidence of existing confusion over legal obligations. In this context, the guidance given to LEAs in the draft Prospectus is woefully inadequate.''

That refers to the original prospectus, not to the revised prospectus published in the past couple of weeks. Paragraph 99 continues:

''It is unacceptable simply to state that local authorities should take legal advice before submitting their applications. The Government should provide clearer guidance to LEAs on those school transport practices which it considers would be discriminatory, particularly as the Secretary of State could be subject to legal action for approving any discriminatory scheme. The Government should pay heed to the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Human Rights on the draft Bill when drawing up this guidance.''

It is very important that guidance is available, because this is a complex area. The Joint Committee on Human Rights scrutinised the Bill in its 17th report, which says:

''In our letters to Ministers we pointed out that in the prospectus there is a suggestion that the Department itself is not clear about the Article 14 obligation''.{**W4**}

The Government's lack of clarity needs to be addressed. The Committee continued:

''we are disappointed that it is not anticipated that the guidance given in the revised prospectus will be comprehensive, and that there is no equivalent undertaking from the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools to issue new general guidance to schools expressly addressing the discrimination problem. The Government appears to be maintaining the position taken in the prospectus accompanying the draft Bill that it is for LEAs to decide for themselves whether their schemes are discriminatory . . . The Draft Explanatory Notes are to the same effect''.

The Committee also highlighted the confusion of some LEAs about the obligation to subsidise transport to denominational schools, although the Government do not agree that there is any misapprehension. As we heard on Tuesday, free transport to denominational schools is a matter of guidance rather than being a statutory entitlement.

Given that the Secretary of State and the National Assembly for Wales, as the relevant national bodies, will have to approve LEA schemes, and given that they themselves will have to be clear about the compatibility of those schemes with the convention, the Committee suggested that it was appropriate that the relevant national authorities should ensure that the LEAs are properly guided on the compatibility of their schemes before submitting them for approval. The Committee went on to advocate that, as the National Assembly for Wales will issue new general guidance, the Government, too, should undertake that task. I do not mean that they should give legal advice, but that they should issue guidance on how the obligation

should be implemented when it comes to school transport plans.

The amendment seeks to ensure that the Government produce general guidance to local education authorities, in order to ensure that school transport schemes are not in breach of the European convention on human rights and that they are not discriminatory.

I agree that it is important that local education authorities should consider human rights questions when structuring their schemes. Whether or not individual schemes comply will of course depend on their precise features. The legal duty to ensure that they comply falls on individual local education authorities; but in a sense it is a shared responsibility, as the Secretary of State or National Assembly for Wales should not approve schemes that do not comply. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we in the Department for Education and Skills should give as much help as we can to local education authorities, accepting that we cannot foresee all the issues that might be raised.

The draft prospectus was produced when the Bill underwent pre-legislative scrutiny, and public consultation included a section on human rights. We did not receive any responses on human rights issues during that consultation. However, the Education and Skills Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights both recommended that the Department should produce more detailed guidance for local education authorities on human rights. For example, they wanted us to include material explaining that LEAs must afford equal treatment to parents with strong philosophical and religious views, and give a careful steer on those areas likely to pose particular practical problems.

I am pleased to say that longer and more detailed guidance is contained in the latest version of the prospectus. The sections were forwarded to the Joint Committee in September, and they now include some helpful suggestions from the Clerk of that Committee. We have not yet received any advice from the Committee, but we will make further changes if they are needed.

The guidance explains that three principles underpin human rights obligations in that area. First, every child has the right to an education. Secondly, parents have the right for their child to be educated in accordance with their philosophical and religious convictions. However, there is no absolute right to attend a school of a particular religion and therefore no right to free or subsidised transport to those schools. Thirdly, discrimination is illegal, unless objectively and reasonably justified.

The guidance goes on to explain that the Secretary of State and the National Assembly for Wales will not approve school travel schemes that are incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. It then deals with specific situations that we envisage, such as local schools that do not cater for parents' religious or philosophical beliefs or linguistic preferences. That was already set out in the guidance.

I hope that the hon. Member for Fareham will agree that we have made considerable progress. We are in discussions with the Joint Committee, and we await its guidance in that respect. I repeat the commitment that we will make whatever changes are necessary in light of their comments. I therefore ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the Amendment.

I am grateful for the Minister's response. I ask him to endeavour to ensure that the Joint Committee comments on the guidance before Report. Given the reservations expressed in its report, it is important that they are properly dealt with and that the Committee is satisfied with the guidance. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Motion made, and Question put, That the Clause stand part of the Bill:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 9, Noes 4.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.