Local Bus Services: Travel to School

5. If she will make an assessment of the effectiveness of local bus services in enabling children’s travel to school.

The Government know how important local bus services are in providing access to education. We have set out an ambitious programme of reform to empower local leaders to improve services for passengers, including through the introduction of the buses Bill, to ensure that they better reflect the needs of local communities.

I, too, associate myself with the remarks about Lord Prescott.

In my constituency of Tunbridge Wells, a group of parents have told me about the difficulties that their children have in getting to Skinners’ Kent academy. The children can get either the No. 2 or the No. 297. The first one gets them to school 90 minutes early, so they have to wait by the side of a busy road in the cold and the dark, and the latter gets them there 15 minutes late. Over a school year, that is 50 hours of education. Kent was given £23 million for bus services. Beyond giving the money, what will the Department for Transport be doing to ensure that the money will increase the frequency of services so that children can get to school on time?

I think an Adjournment debate may be needed.

Well, Mr Speaker, I do not know the particular details of the No. 2 or the No. 297—[Interruption.] Forgive me. As the hon. Member has pointed out, Kent county council has been given £23.1 million as part of our £1 billion package for buses. We are righting a lot of wrongs over the underfunding of rural services, in particular, over the years, and we expect to see a much better bus service across our whole country in the future.

May I, too, associate myself with the tributes paid to John Prescott?

Over the past few weeks, a number of parents have contacted me to ask whether school transport can be brought into the scope of the bus fare cap. Will the Minister agree to look at that?

Services from participating operators that serve schools are open to members of the public and run all year round and will be eligible for inclusion in the scheme. The current fare cap does not allow for the inclusion of closed school services at the moment—that is for logistic reasons, I understand.

In the statement on bus services on Monday, I asked the Secretary of State about extending concessionary travel to children and young people. Her response was to suggest that MPs should talk to our individual local authorities about this, but that is not the approach that we take to concessionary travel for pensioners. I have just been contacted by somebody aged over 16 who cannot afford to go to college because it would cost £1,500 a year, and her family just cannot afford that. Is it not the case that concessionary bus travel for children and young people should be extended on a national basis, rather than having this postcode lottery?

As a former schoolteacher, I know how important getting children to education is, and those bus services provide vital lines. That is why we have put £1 billion into our bus services network. I suggest that local services, such as mine in the Bee Network in Greater Manchester, have used their resource to improve access to education for young people.

Rural communities in towns and villages such as Holwell in my constituency, which I visited last week, often depend on buses for their day-to-day life and for getting their children to school, but all too often the reliability of these services makes it increasingly hard for families to depend on them. What new powers and funding will this Government be giving transport authorities, such as Hertfordshire and Central Bedfordshire, to ensure that they can get buses for my community back on track?

Like our rail users, bus users depend on punctuality. Our bus services have not been up to scratch, with vast underfunding over the past few years. We are hoping that the £955 million investment in our buses will give local communities the powers they need to hold operators to account on the punctuality of those buses, so that our young people can get to their colleges and schools on time.