§ 2.59 p.m.
§ Mr. John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling)In the few short weeks of the present Parliament, many hon. Members on both sides have expressed their concern about and interest in school transport following publication of the working party's report on the subject at the end of last year. Those hon. Members include the hon. Member for Goole (Dr. Marshall), whom I am glad to see present.
The House presents a somewhat threadbare appearance at this stage of the afternoon, but although the subject may not make quite such compulsive viewing as that of Members' interests I am certain that this debate will be read very widely.
Since 1944 we have worked a system of assisting children going to school on the basis that those outside a distance within which it is possible to walk to their nearest school can travel free by public transport, whereas those within a defined walking limit have to walk and do not receive the benefit of any assistance.
The walking limits have been defined as three miles for those aged eight and over and two miles for those under eight. With the one exception of legislation passed in 1948, when local education authorities were given discretionary power to assist the transport of any child to school if they felt it reasonable to do so, there has been no further change in the law. The working party's report brings out the fact that the discretionary power has been used to a relatively limited extent. Only 10 per cent. of the total cost of subsidies towards school transport has been applied on the discretionary basis. Local education authorities are fulfilling their statutory responsibilities to provide free transport for those outside the mileage limits but are not doing much else.
We all agree that there are major defects in the present system. I wish to highlight three. First there is the grave inflexibility created by the two-mile and 833 three-mile limits. Secondly there is the major burden on some parents who are just within the limits and therefore have to bear the full financial costs of getting their children to school. Thirdly, the safety of children walking to school is not taken into account in the present operation of the system of subsidies for school transport.
Clearly the two-mile and three-mile limits have basic, built-in inflexibilities, in the same way as any limit on income for benefits or for tax purposes will have such inflexibilities in the financial sector. As long as there is a limit, it will be beneficial to those just outside and unsatisfactory, and apparently unfair and anomalous, for those who live just within the limits and therefore have to bear the full cost of getting their children to school.
I should like to give an illustration of that. I do not suggest that it is typical but it is worth citing. A group of parents on the outskirts of Tonbridge, in a village called Hildenborough, came to the conclusion that although they were designated as being within the three-mile limit they were in fact outside it. They were so concerned that they obtained the services of a local solicitor, who pressed their case with the local education authority. Being a man of the most conscientious frame of mind, he obtained a measuring wheel from the district council and walked with it from the children's school to their homes. He decided that all the houses were just outside the limit, at distances of between 60 yards and 200 yards beyond the limit.
The Kent Education Authority was notified. No doubt some consternation was caused when the solicitor's letter was received. The authority then inspected its own measuring device and, aware that its technical reliability might be subject to some doubt, sent it off to be serviced.
I understand that the latest position is that the education authority has notified the parents that its own measuring wheel has been brought up to a new high pitch of technological perfection, and the stage is set for a wheel through the streets of Tonbridge, with the education authority's wheel wheeling against the solicitor's wheel. I very much hope that the Minister will be at the finishing line, 834 because there is a serious possibility that one wheel will give a figure of more than three miles and the other will give a figure of less than three miles. I hope that the Under-Secretary will be there to advise us which wheel is producing the correct answer. That illustration—I do not suggest that it is typical—indicates the extreme anomalies and absurdities that arise out of the present strict two- and three-mile limits, and that is something to be pondered.
Then there is the burden of the cost to parents. The great bulk of assistance with school transport is provided through helping children who go to school by bus, for very few go to school by rail. As we are all aware, over the past 10 or 15 years the economics of the bus industry have come under increasing pressure. From about 1960 there has been a 25 per cent. reduction in the total number of bus journeys, but that reduction has been accompanied by the peak demand remaining more or less static This has put bus companies in a highly uneconomic situation, because they have had to maintain a peak service while overall demand has been declining.
This has directly affected the ways in which bus companies are able to provide the assistance which up to now has often been given to children travelling to and from school. Most bus companies have had a system of concessionary fares for children but increasingly, because of the economic pressure, the bus companies have had to water down those concessions to children during the peak hours, and in some areas, such as my constituency, they have found it necessary to abolish all forms of concession to children during peak hours.
The children are facing the prospect of having to pay the full adult fare if they go by bus. Taken over the whole year, this represents a considerable expenditure. In my constituency—I imagine that the example is mirrored throughout the country—a child travelling almost three miles to school will be spending about £1 a week on bus fares. Taken over the school year, that is about £38. Assuming that that is provided out of taxed income, it represents about £50 a year of gross untaxed income. For a parent with two children, the gross cost is therefore about £100 a year.
835 Figures of that sort pose two serious questions. First, the burden of the expenditure bears no relation to ability to pay. It is a straight charge and there is no means by which the poorest families can avoid it, other than by sending their children to school on their own two feet. Secondly it is questionable whether burdens of this sort, certainly when they are of this magnitude, should be a feature of an education system which we are proud to regard as essentially free.
I appreciate that the cost of providing assistance to schoolchildren is already about £40 million a year and that it is probably not possible to think in terms of totally free transport to school. But we must get away from a position in which the poorest families facing this sort of financial burden are left with no alternative but to allow their children to walk to school and back, which represents a walk for children over eight of about six miles a day, a pretty fair stretch, particular in city areas, where there is a major problem of safety, and I come to that next.
Walking distance between a child's nearest school and home for the purpose of assistance with school transport was defined in the case of Shaxted v. Ward in 1954 as
the shortest available walking route ".That provides the criterion against which a family is decided to be within or outside the three-mile limit.It will be apparent, however, that the shortest route is not necessarily on safety grounds the most desirable route for a child to take on his own two feet. The shortest route may involve walking along roads on which there are no pavements. It may involve taking a route where there are particularly dangerous traffic junctions. It may involve a route along which there is open land or woodland where parents may feel that there is the risk of children being assaulted. So the shortest route is not necessarily the most desirable one.
It may be the case that children are told by their parents to take a longer route simply on safety grounds and, therefore, it is possible in the present system that a child is walking to school, taking a longer route and walking further than a child who is carried by bus, and 836 carried free, because his home is situated just beyond the three-mile limit. Clearly there are great difficulties and some inequities in the fact that the issue of safety is not taken into account in the present system.
As for solutions, about which I hope the Minister will make some comments today, it seems that there are two main avenues of approach to improve the present position. First, we can simply reduce the mileage limits, bringing them down by one mile so that the three-mile limit is reduced to two miles and the two-mile limit to one mile. The working party's report considers this possibility and costs it. It would mean something like £7 million a year on top of the £40 million bill already paid to subsidise school transport. The working party dismisses this option on the grounds that it would not produce the thorough-going solution which is necessary to evolve a more rational and fairer basis of providing assistance with school transport.
The solution advocated by the working party which I believe should receive serious consideration is the introduction of a flat-rate charge for taking children to school which would be paid by parents regardless of the distance travelled. I believe that this has some merits. First of all it has the merit that, by being on a flat-rate basis, it provides some guarantee that those within easy walking distance from their homes to their schools have no financial incentive to use public transport which is already under considerable pressure at peak hours.
With a flat-rate charge it is also possible to mitigate or even to abolish it altogether where parents cannot afford the charge because of their financial circumstances. The working party proposes that initially this should be done on the basis that those families which qualify for free school meals should also qualify for exemption from the flat-rate charge for school transport.
The third merit is that, with a flat-rate charge, the onus is put on the parents to choose between paying the flat-rate charge, requiring their children to walk to school, or making arrangements for them to be carried to school by car.
The one matter about which I sound a note of caution is that the working party says that although the Secretary 837 of State should determine the flat-rate charge, the State should pick up the difference between that charge and the commercial rate charged by the bus companies, on a completely open-ended basis. I think that the Treasury will have objections to going down that road and will want to provide a buffer for the subsidy which is implied. But the principle of the Secretary of State providing a flat-rate charge throughout the country has a great deal to commend it.
The working party has done a very thorough and constructive job in examining the problem of school transport. I hope that it will not be long before the Government are able to consider their reactions to the report and come forward with comprehensive proposals for improving radically on the present system, which has some very unfortunate side effects and considerable inequities.
§ 3.15 p.m.
§ Mr. Tony Newton (Braintree)I am grateful for this opportunity, if only briefly, to support my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Mailing (Mr. Stanley), who has performed a valuable function today in enabling the House to probe the Minister on the subject of this important report.
I am sure that all hon. Members get cases of the kind referred to in the report brought to their surgeries from time to time. I have had two in the last fortnight. It would not be appropriate for me, in the few minutes at my disposal, to go into great detail about them. Indeed, I am still making inquiries about them with the authority. However, they illustrate the difficulties that can arise from the present situation, which, as the working party's report brings out, is antiquated and has not kept pace with changing social feelings about what is or is not proper for children to do in terms of walking to school. It gives rise to an increasing number of anomalies.
One of the cases to which I have referred concerns the transport of a handicapped child for whom an escort is required. So far, I have been told the authority has been unable to provide an escort. I understand that as a result the child is not now going to school. That is a considerable problem for the family and the child. I do not think that it arises from ill will on the part of the 838 authority; it arises no doubt from the difficulty of knowing what is the best course to take, what it is supposed to do, and whether it can afford the expense.
The second case is of a more classical kind. It arises from the anomalies to which my hon. Friend referred about the mileage rules for children, in this instance compounded by the fact that sometimes a taxi and at others a minibus arrives. Therefore, many children are never certain whether they will have to walk or will get a ride. No doubt the authority is doing its best to sort out the problem. However, it illustrates the irritations caused and the difficulties experienced by the present system and the need for action to be taken on the report.
I want to add only two points to what my hon. Friend said. These relate to my own experience of recent cases in this sphere. First, I hope that the Minister will keep in close touch with his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment about policy on this matter. The report brings out the links between some of the problems of school transport and of rural transport generally. Some of the problems that are brought to my attention arise from the inadequacy of rural transport services. It seems important that those two matters should go together, not least because the inadequacy of rural transport services causes great difficulties not only for the parents of schoolchildren but for many other people. I believe that by improving the school transport services it may be possible— for example, by making use of school contract buses to carry other people as well where this would be appropriate— to assist in the improvement of rural transport services as a whole.
Secondly, I should like to mention the cost. My hon. Friend quite rightly touched on this matter. It will no doubt be one of the objections to implementing the report. However, it is unlikely that a significant reform in this area can be carried out without spending more money. I agree with my hon. Friend that the considerable hardship and expense caused to some families could be relieved on the basis of the report.
I do not intend to make a purely party political point about different forms of expenditure. But I hope that the Minister will consider that compared with some 839 of the expenditure on food subsidies which goes fairly indiscriminately across the board, a certain amount of extra expenditure on school transport, which by definition would go to families with children, who are among those facing the most difficult problems at this time, would be money well spent.
I am grateful for this opportunity of expressing my views on the subject. I look forward to hearing the Minister's reply. I hope that we may also look forward to some action along the lines of the report.
§ 3.15 p.m.
§ The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Ernest Armstrong)I begin by thanking the hon. Members for Tonbridge and Mailing (Mr. Stanley) and Braintree (Mr. Newton) for the reasoned way in which they have raised a complicated and serious problem.
When one thinks of all the improvements that have been made in communications, when one realises that the population generally is much more mobile than ever before, it is astonishing to find that in many areas those who are dependent on public transport are worse served today than people were when I was a boy. I represent a constituency which is about 60 miles across. Many villages in that area are no longer served by public transport, and boys and girls have increasing difficulty in getting to school. The authority is faced with the great and growing problem of rising expenditure which it has to meet to make sure that children are able to travel to school, and I therefore repeat my thanks to the hon. Gentlemen for raising this matter today.
The previous administration was wise to appoint a working party, which has since done a tremendous job. I am sorry that we are still not able to give our conclusions on the report. I do not want to pass the buck in any way, but the House will understand that local authorities have had a difficult time recently with reorganisation, and so on, and I am sorry to say that we are still awaiting comments on the report from some of the local authority associations. I assure the House that, as my right hon. Friend said in answer to a Question, as soon as we have received the views of the interested parties we shall come to our 840 conclusions and announce them. I hope that the House will not have to wait too long.
We have to bear in mind that down the years it has been recognised that pupils cannot be expected to attend school if their journey to and from school makes impossible demands on them. The provisions of the Education Act 1944, which carry forward broadly the same approach as the 1870 Act, assume that it is reasonable to expect pupils under the age of 8 to walk up to two miles to school, and older pupils three miles. If they live further away than that from their school and no transport is available or no boarding arrangements are made for them by the local education authority, they cannot be expected to attend and their parents cannot be successfully prosecuted for their non-attendance. I emphasise the link between the provision of school transport and the law about school attendance because it is an important link, and without due appreciation of it we cannot understand the rationale for the present provision of school transport or, indeed, some of the reasons why it has been suggested that the basis for such provision should be changed.
It is true, as both hon. Gentlemen said, that the concept of the "statutory walking distance" needs to be modified in the light of present circumstances. It gives rise to great dissatisfaction and frustration on the part of parents who live on one side of the street and are denied transport for their children while those on the other side of the street do not have that problem. They feel that bureaucracy has taken over, and the working party faced that problem. Many pupils living within these distances can and do travel to school on public transport or by car, usually at some cost to their parents, and this has given rise to many anomalies which we are anxious to get rid of.
Another aspect of this question which has given rise to concern is the rising cost of transport provision not only to local authorities but to parents, and sometimes to parents who are least able to bear this extra expenditure. It has almost doubled for local authorities in the last three years in terms of actual prices, and in constant price terms it has gone up by a third. This, of course, parallels the rise in bus fares which the parents of those 841 children who do not receive free transport have to pay, and at the same time the standard of provision in many areas is declining. It is becoming more and more difficult to provide a reliable bus service in some of our rural areas. Many buses are operating with as much extra loading as the law allows, but with factors such as the increase in the price of oil it may be that these problems will get worse.
There are arguments for leaving the system basically as it is. Local authorities have wide powers to assist with the transport of those pupils who are not statutorily entitled to free transport. The wider use of these discretionary powers, although it is expensive, perhaps very expensive, could go some way towards mitigating the complaints of parents that school transport is not available for many pupils who need it, particularly on grounds of safety. But there would still be some inequity between one parent and another, and costs to the public purse would continue to rise.
The report of the working party is readable and workmanlike, and contains some interesting proposals, to which we are not committed but to which we are giving serious consideration and on which we are awaiting the comments of interested parties. It proposes that the link between school transport provision and the law about attendance should be broken. It considers this link outdated, notably because of the enormous increase in motor transport since 1944. It suggests that questions of distance and the provision of transport should no longer condition the parent's obligation to secure his child's regular attendance at school.
The working party also proposed that the concept of the statutory walking distance should be abolished. It considered it entirely arbitrary to say that a pupil aged 8 or over living 2.99 miles from school did not require free transport but that one who lived just a yard or so further, just over three miles away, was entitled to it. If we altered the distance, there would still be the same frustration and dissatisfaction.
The working party then asked what should be the criteria for assessing eligibility for transport. It looked at various factors, including the safety of the journey and the personal circum- 842 stances of the pupil and his family, and concluded that no objective criteria could be laid down. It felt that the decision should be left to the local authority and the parent, that the local authority should be obliged to provide transport for any child if the parent requested it and the request was judged reasonable in the light of local circumstances, but that the parent should be charged a flat fare irrespective of distance.
This ingenious solution would, I suppose, solve several problems. That is what the working party alleges, at any rate. The cost to the public purse of school transport would be reduced, there would be greater equity between one parent and another because all would pay the same, and requests for transport over very short distances might be deterred by a flat fare. If the parent felt that special circumstances warranted transport, that would be up to him, as he would have to pay for it himself.
Some of the working party's proposals related to the place of school transport in the provision of public transport as a whole. I agree that we must seriously consider the use of postal buses, school buses on which adults can travel and the like. The working party felt obliged to draw the attention of local authorities to this problem, advocating greater coordination of transport policies in each area, so that the vehicles available, public and private, would be used to maximum efficiency to meet the needs not only of scholars but of the general public.
The problems are essentially problems of safety, equity and cost. Safety plays an increasing part in our consideration of getting children to school and home again. It would be wrong for me to express any view today of the working party's proposals without having seen the comments of the local authority associations. I must emphasise that there is no commitment whatever by central Government or local authorities to any of its proposals.
However, three points seem crystal clear. First, there are no easy or cheap solutions to this problem. If there had been, we should have found them long ago. Second, no solution will please everybody. Whatever we do, some people will feel that we have made the wrong decision. A decision to leave the 843 present system unchanged would give rise to at least as much dissatisfaction as any decision to change it.
The third point is related to the second: any solution to this problem is bound to involve more expenditure, either by central Government or local government, or by parents, or by some combination of these three. Nevertheless, because of the growing concern and acute hardship felt in various parts of the country, we are considering the problem urgently. The Government will study the working party's report very carefully in the light of the comments of the associations and will take particular note of what has been said this afternoon. We shall announce our conclusions as soon as is reasonably possible.
§ Mr. StanleyWill the Minister give an indication whether he will be able to make his statement before the Summer Recess? If he were able to do that, it would be widely welcomed in the House and the country.
§ Mr. Armstrong:I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but I cannot give that absolute assurance. However, if it is at all possible, as soon as we get all the comments we shall want to make a decision. The previous administration set up the working party. The report has been around for some considerable time, and I agree that it is time that the House should know exactly what the Government's conclusions are.