School Transport: Northumberland

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Carolyn Harris in the Chair]

16:30

[Carolyn Harris (in the Chair)]

Before I call the hon. Member for Hexham to move the motion, I inform Members that the parliamentary digital communications team will be conducting secondary filming during the debate.

[Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered school transport in Northumberland.

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris.

In Westminster Hall today, I am delighted to see Members who share my concerns about school transport, not just in my constituency but across the county. I place on the record my thanks to organisations such as Contact, Adapt North East and local schools, in particular Queen Elizabeth high school, for their valuable contributions. The future of school transport is a pressing and increasingly concerning issue affecting my constituents —parents, students and teachers—in Hexham and in Northumberland more broadly.

I grew up in Hexham. I was fortunate enough to have been educated at Sele first school, Hexham middle school and Queen Elizabeth high school. I am, and always will be, incredibly grateful to my teachers for the valuable education that I received. In particular, I mention Tony Webster, my former headteacher at QE—he filmed a video supporting me during the general election campaign—for his constant support and mentorship.

Meeting students and teachers across my constituency—from Queen Elizabeth high school to Longhorsley St Helen’s Church of England first school and back to Sele first school, where I went a few weeks ago—has provided valuable insight into the issues affecting our local schools, and school transport in Northumberland is raised again and again.

During my maiden speech, I said:

“a great state education has the ability to change lives and to lift and change entire areas. I want every child in the constituency to have access to the kind of education that I was lucky enough to get.”—[Official Report, 19 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 347.]

That is my motivation to secure this debate. Ensuring that every child in Northumberland gets the best education is a commitment that I share with my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland (David Smith), and with my hon. Friends the Members for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) and for Cramlington and Killingworth (Emma Foody), who cannot join us today.

Home-to-school transport is an integral part of our education system in Britain. It ensures that no child of compulsory school age is prevented from accessing education by a lack of, or the cost of, transport.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. He is right to bring up the issue of school transport, especially in rural areas. We should never deplete services that children rely on to get to school; instead, we should increase their accessibility. I had a meeting with my Translink bus service and the education authority, and we were able to sort out some of the problems with rural transport. Does he agree that more needs to be done for bus services, especially in rural areas where transport is already limited, to ensure that kids’ education does not falter as a result of bus service issues? That is what could happen.

[Joe Morris]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention and for his attendance. I think he has attended every Westminster Hall debate that I have spoken in. I completely share his assessment. The provision of appropriate bus routes is important, and it comes up in my casework. I have spoken to families in villages such as West Woodburn, where they allegedly have a choice of school, but the only available routes go to one single school.

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing this important debate. I recently spoke to a constituent, Sara, who lives just outside Bruton in my constituency. She told me of her frustration that her daughter cannot catch the school bus that literally stops at the end of her farm track and goes to the local school. Instead, the council insists that she must drive her daughter or get a taxi to a different school, which is further away. Does he agree that our existing home-to-school transport legislation is too rigid? It is stifling local authorities’ ability to make common-sense judgments.

[Joe Morris]

As constituency MPs, we all hear the frustrations of parents, teachers and students, who, because of school transport provision, are often hit with lateness marks or are forced to attend schools that they would rather not attend, as the hon. Lady said. It is something that we need to address properly, considering all the solutions in the round to ensure that we can provide great education to every child. I know from looking at my inbox that the 685 bus in Hexham is regularly full and delayed by up to 40 minutes. When people rely on commercial bus routes to get to school, it becomes an additional barrier to attendance. That is damaging to children’s educational attainment and future prospects, simply because buses cannot always be relied on.

I spoke in the rural affairs debate in the main Chamber yesterday. Too often, people in rural communities pay more and get less. The previous Government, and other Governments before them, have allowed that to sail through without challenge. When we talk about rural-proofing our policies, it is essential that we look at things through the prism of how they affect some of our most isolated communities.

Fourteen years of Conservative austerity and neglect broke the very foundations of Britain and our education system, and took hope away from our young people, who have been let down and overlooked. I am extremely proud of our new Labour Government’s commitment to increasing funding for schools, to putting our younger people first and to ensuring that every child receives a world-class education. Parents want the best for their child’s education; they want their children to learn in a safe and secure environment where they feel part of the community and supported in their educational development. No child should be restricted from that because of inaccessibility.

I am proud to have secured this debate, and to be a voice for students and parents as we champion school transport in our local community. As Members— particularly the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron)—do not tire of hearing, I represent England’s largest constituency; I am delighted to see the silver and bronze medallists here today. The rural landscape has a considerable impact on school transport services. The reality of rural roads means that, despite having relatively short journeys, children are regularly late for the start of the school day. Children’s education is suffering, and more transport vehicles and a reassessment of transport routes could make considerable headway in reducing the number of pupils who are late for school.

I have had one constituent raise the fact that delays to school transport mean that her daughter regularly receives late marks at school. Despite the fact that her daughter is a 14-minute journey from school and is collected at 7.45 am, she does not get to school until after 9 am. That is a case of a student’s education suffering from a lack of adequate school transport services. As the early grid for learning report outlined, missing 15 minutes of school per day equates to 2 weeks’ absence a year, and that is equivalent to missing 55 lessons a year. Being late negatively impacts a child’s education and contributes to a loss of learning.

Home-to-school transport is often available only through the local authority, along with the additional support offered by parents and carers. Across the Hexham constituency and the Northumberland county council area in general, the provision of local bus and train services is unreliable—I have already mentioned the 685 bus—and not regular enough for young people to access when travelling to or from school.

I am pleased to see that North East Mayor Kim McGuiness has launched a consultation on the north-east local transport plan. That plan will cover five areas that are necessary for my constituents to be able to access a public transport system that is fit for all our communities, not just those in centralised areas. Those five areas are: journey planning and customer support; ticketing and fares; expanding infrastructure and making it more resilient; enhancing safety, especially for women and girls; and improving links between different modes of transport. There is a clear delivery plan that has outlined and established targets for 2040, setting the path for overcoming the current challenges and creating a more efficient and resilient transport network for the future of the north-east. That will make considerable headway in helping my constituents access education and training opportunities, as well as work and social opportunities more broadly.

The system on offer in Northumberland provides inconsistent results for families when they are allocated school transport places. One of my constituents, who is a resident in the far north of the constituency, contacted me to say that his daughter has obtained a free transport place but his son has not. As a result, he has to drive his son 170 miles a week, alongside the bus that takes his daughter to the same school. That is not just illogical, but vaguely Kafkaesque. It has environmental implications, in addition to educational ones, and it places a financial and administrative burden on a family who already qualify for free transport provision. I am sure the Minister will agree that we need to support the families in my Hexham constituency and families across Northumberland, ensuring that the provision of school transport is consistent for siblings within the same family. We cannot allow administration to provide inconsistent results for families.

In my constituency, I am often asked questions about school catchment areas. I was on a call with Northumberland county council on the train down here, and I was informed that one of the school catchment areas in my constituency is larger than the area contained by the M25. Unsurprisingly, I get quite a lot of incoming casework on this. Many students who are outside catchment areas and ineligible for school transport services require commercial public transport to get to school. That is particularly common in constituencies such as mine, and those of my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland or the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale. Villages and towns such as Haydon Bridge, Bardon Mill and Haltwhistle, as well as settlements such as Falstone, Greenhaugh and Kielder, have considerable numbers of students who travel to Hexham middle school and Queen Elizabeth high school, which sits in the Tyne valley at the centre of my constituency. Such places are deemed to be outside the catchment area for those schools, but the safety of students travelling to and from school in Northumberland should be a priority. Those children should feel safe travelling to school, and parents should be reassured about their safety.

A constituent has shared a deeply concerning story about the 685 bus breaking down on the side of the A69, with children being required to stand on the side of the A69—one of the busy roads running through the constituency—without any police presence or safety measures in place. I am sure that the Minister is aware of the growing concerns over that road. Since 2019, there have been 191 crashes on it between Hexham and Carlisle, with 44 of them being deemed serious by the police and six people losing their lives. When I heard about children standing on the side of the A69, I was deeply concerned. They should not be in that position.

Constituents frequently mention the delays to the 685 bus service, which affect children getting to and from school. Despite petitions by parents to change the service from a single-decker to a double-decker bus—that was raised with the previous Conservative MP—no action was taken to resolve the issue. Constituents have said that their children have had to wait for more than an hour for the next bus service to collect them, because of a lack of space in addition to delays to the service. We need to work collaboratively with local bus companies and local councils to ensure that the safety of our students is protected as they journey to and from school.

I will briefly mention transport for children with special educational needs and disabilities. I know that the Minister and the Government agree that SEND needs urgent attention, as has been demonstrated by the devastating consequences of the previous Government’s actions. In Northumberland at present, there are 407 routes transporting 1,738 pupils and their escorts. In six years, the number of children in Northumberland requiring an education, care and health plan has doubled, from 1,679 in 2017 to 3,369 in 2023. The figure is still rising, and the failure of the last Government to adequately provide for children with SEND is a damning indictment of that Government and indeed the Conservative party.

Children with educational needs and disabilities often have to travel further to schools, not through choice but just to get the education that meets their needs. My constituency surgeries are often attended by families who have to travel from the far west of my constituency to the coast of Northumberland—a journey that does not take a small amount of time. In large rural areas such as mine, the need for children to travel such extremely long distances isolates them from their local communities and friendships, and it ultimately undermines their potential to have a local support network.

I was contacted by a parent who travels from Prudhoe to Berwick every day, which is a three-hour round trip, to ensure that their child receives the support they need. We must ensure that parents feel supported as we look to reform the SEND framework. One of the things I am most proud of in the autumn Budget is the £1 billion uplift in SEND education and the prioritisation of improving SEND education nationally. I am hopeful for the future of SEND education and will always support the Minister and the Government in their commitment to it.

I want to acknowledge the work of Kim McGuinness on her Kids Go Free initiative, and her commitment to improving public transport services for young people across our region. That initiative offers free transport to children during school holidays, reducing travel costs for families, promoting sustainable public transport and encouraging families to explore the wonderful region that is the north-east—I draw attention to my Westminster Hall debate next week on improving tourism in Northumberland, at which I look forward to seeing the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). It is a positive step in the right direction in terms of improving transport services in the region. Through that collaboration and co-operation we will increase prosperity and make a real difference to the lives of young people.

I am sure Members present can agree that every child in Britain deserves an accessible and safe education. Moreover, every parent should feel safe and secure in the knowledge that their children are receiving support. Children deserve to have a safe and sustainable passage to school, to arrive on time and to access an education that is appropriate for their learning requirements. For my constituents in Hexham and for people across Northumberland, school transport is jeopardising that promise. With rural geography, inconsistency in allocating school transport places, problems with catchment areas, and journey delays, the very premise of that principle is being jeopardised.

I am proud that this Government are putting students and young people at the heart of the agenda, following the neglect of the previous Conservative Government. I am sure Members can agree that more can always be done to ensure that our young people access the educational support they need and deserve. Providing clearer guidance on transport provision for children will minimise confusion for local families. Giving more attention to the eligibility of SEND children will make a considerable difference to many of my constituents across Hexham.

I know that the Minister and the Secretary of State are committed to finding long-term solutions for education, school transport and SEND education. I hope the Minister will consider how, in the vast rural communities that make up my constituency, having greater provision for SEND students closer to their homes would minimise journeys and go a long way to dealing with the central issues we are debating. Everyone deserves the opportunity to access education, and we cannot allow a lack of access to appropriate school transport to jeopardise that.

16:47

[David Smith (North Northumberland) (Lab)]

I am absolutely delighted to speak in this debate alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Joe Morris), and I am delighted that he secured it. The lack of accessible transport options to Northumberland secondary schools, in particular, may not attract national attention, but it affects children, young people and parents in my constituency much more directly than almost anything else we discuss in Parliament. In North Northumberland, it is now common in villages such as Pegswood for an 11-year-old to spend up to two hours a day on four different buses making the round trip to school and back. When we factor that in for SEND students, as my hon. Friend said, parents face a collective nightmare.

One constituent recently wrote to me—I have changed the name of their daughter—to say:

“We are currently having issues with school transport for our daughter who is autistic. Northumberland County Council have rejected our appeal for alternative provision. Sarah is no longer attending school, due to a number of issues, the first being transport. We are now homeschooling Sarah.”

That issue is repeated over and over again in my mailbox.

There are two reasons why it matters so much. The first, which I have just highlighted, is the most obvious: the cost and strain on parents is totally antithetical to the ideal of the state school. Families are spending hundreds of pounds a year making sure that their child gets to school, worrying the whole time about their safety, as we heard. Our state school system should not rely on significant private expenditure to meet basic educational needs. In fact, it was designed to do the very opposite.

Secondly, school transport is a pinch point in terms of a wider range of northern rural inequalities in education and transport, and deservedly reinforces the idea that places such as Northumberland have been left behind and ignored over the years by the powers that be. There have been repeated failures across the county in the way that our schools, roads and rail are run, and school transport exposes them all, pointing to a much wider range of issues.

How did we get here? North Northumberland has too few schools, and in some areas that is leading to huge pressures. The nearest secondary school to Pegswood, the village I mentioned, is in Ashington—Ashington Academy—which is a 20-minute bus journey away. However, Ashington is oversubscribed, so students are often sent to Cramlington instead. If parents cannot drop them off, there is a range of ways to get there, of which the quickest takes 41 minutes and involves a train. The season ticket for that train costs £1,120 a year, so most take the cheaper option—a bus journey. Actually, it is two bus journeys, which take up to an hour and a quarter and will cost at least £960 a year, according to the very confusing and unhelpful Arriva website. This very afternoon, teenagers from Pegswood who finished school in Cramlington at 3 o’clock will only just be getting home, having taken four buses on a £1,000 ticket. Commutes like that are happening in towns all over North Northumberland, from towns and villages such as Belford, Wooler, Rothbury and Amble. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham about the state of some rural roads and about how that often makes journeys more challenging.

Nowhere is this issue more visible than with SEND schooling. Like my hon. Friend the Member, I welcome the Government’s commitment to spend £1 billion pounds more on SEND next year. North Northumberland has three SEND schools and they do a remarkable job supporting the flourishing of young people with more complex needs. However, the nearest school might not necessarily be the best option, which can require pupils to spend over an hour in a taxi or bus to get there—we heard about the hour-and-a-half journey in each direction that some have to make in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Parents are increasingly resigned to the notion that having a child with more complex needs will require spending large amounts of money and time travelling to school.

The Education Act 1944—I am sure hon. Members did not expect me to bring that up in this debate—established modern secondary schools and came into being because,

“when poorer children were offered free places”

—at grammar schools, as they then were—

“parents often had to turn them down owing to the extra costs involved.”

Free state schools were instead set up to cater to all needs and incomes, but my constituents seem to have ended up trapped in a new system that promises equal and free schooling, but includes submerged and unexpected costs that put family finances under strain.

On the wider issues, the school transport issue has not emerged in isolation but is evidence of a wider series of pressures on public services across the county. First, the education system is struggling in various guises in some parts of Northumberland. The town of Berwick, in my constituency, is extremely reliant on its one state secondary school to nurture the necessary skills and qualifications for the town’s economy, so when the school struggles, the town struggles. A 2017 report said:

“Berwick is one of Northumberland’s most deprived towns. It has a vulnerable economy characterised by poor quality job opportunities, part time working, low wages and very limited education facilities.”

North Northumberland’s further education is in a poor way too, and 16 to 18-year-olds who want to take up a vocational course have to travel miles out of the constituency and at great expense. Another constituent recently got in touch about this very issue, saying:

“I have been made aware of a colleague’s 16 year-old daughter who undertook an apprenticeship across the border in Scotland in July. She lives in Berwick and was catching a bus to and from work. However, after just a few weeks, Border Buses removed the morning bus. Emma”—

whose name I have changed—

“is now relying on taxis to get her to her apprenticeship in the morning. This is costing her family, who are not in a position to afford this, £150 a week. Emma is a vulnerable young woman who has endured a difficult time at school and yet is thriving in her apprenticeship, but this is now at risk.”

North Northumberland’s GCSE and apprenticeship levels keep pace with the rest of the country, but A-Levels and higher education qualifications are behind the England and Wales average, and that will be in part because of the inaccessibility of further and higher education. However, those pressures are also evidence of a public transport system that is not up to the job.

North Northumberland residents are right to be sceptical about local bus services, considering that Arriva, the largest provider, is owned by an American equity investment fund based in Miami, which is hardly ideal for a public service. In fact, from 2017 to 2022, the distance travelled by bus services in Northumberland fell by over a third—one of the highest reductions for any authority in the north-east.

It is for that reason that, like my hon. Friend, I am delighted that the Mayor of the North East, Kim McGuinness, has started the process of bringing buses back under public control so that we know that they go where they are needed and not just on the routes that make the most money. Having spoken to the Mayor of the North East about that, I know that one reason she is keen to do that is the positive impact it would have on rural services.

Meanwhile, local train services are increasingly sidelined in favour of London to Edinburgh links on the east coast main line that squeeze stopping services from the timetable. Cost-benefit calculations designed to extract value do not favour rural areas, which need targeted public investment and intentional support. Poor transport is a contributing factor to low rural productivity.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham said, all of this is the natural end point of 14 years of a real-terms education spending freeze, with reduced school capital spending; of 14 years of neglect of public transport that let franchising diminish the value of rail travel and bus companies be driven by international investors; and of 14 years of letting economic liberalism expose rural communities to economies of scale that make post offices, banks and other essential services non-viable. It is not by accident that hundreds of schoolchildren cannot go to schools in their own communities—it is the consequence of the policies of the last Government.

However, the work of change has begun locally and nationally. I am working with Berwick stakeholders to rethink our vision of what an outstanding education system could look like, with a campus model and associated further education facilities having the potential to transform education in the town and even the town itself. I am fully supportive of the campaign by the South East Northumberland Rail User Group to introduce a regular stopping service up the east coast main line that serves local residents and opens up the region to inward investment. I welcome the £1 billion committed by the Government to local transport, with another £650 million towards transport and buses in towns, villages and rural areas.

The difference between a Labour and a Conservative Government is that when we see communities facing economic disadvantage and inequality, we have no issue putting our money where our mouth is and making sure that where someone starts in life or where they live does not determine the opportunities they can pursue.

16:57

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is an absolute joy to serve under your guidance, Mrs Harris. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Hexham (Joe Morris), who is becoming almost as much of a regular in this place as our recently departed friend the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). As he rightly set out, he, I and the hon. Member for North Northumberland (David Smith) are the big three—we represent the three largest constituencies in England. The hon. Members for Hexham and for North Northumberland made really great points, not just on behalf of their constituents in Northumberland, but on an issue that is of huge significance across the country, particularly in rural communities such as mine.

The hon. Member for Hexham talked about rural communities paying more and getting less. Sadly, that is absolutely how things are. About a year ago, the Rural Services Network calculated that if a single region was created from rural England and compared to the geographical regions of England, it would be comfortably the poorest. Although the depiction of rural life is often full of a bucolic, ideal, wonderful and high quality of life—of course rural places are beautiful, and we are proud to live in them—poverty is undoubtedly real, and the cost of transport and the distance people have to travel to get to the services they need are a major driver of that.

As the hon. Members for Hexham and for North Northumberland set out, one issue we face in rural communities is that, with huge catchment areas, the divide between two school catchments can be incredibly blurred. Someone may well be sending their child to the nearest school, but it may technically not be the one in catchment, so they are left having to pay a significant amount for their child to go to that school. As the hon. Member for Hexham rightly pointed out, people often find that one of their children can get a bus to school but that the other cannot. That is definitely the case in parts of my constituency.

This problem is exacerbated by the reduction in the number of small village schools over the last few decades. In my constituency I have at least three schools with fewer than 20 children and three schools that have closed in the last few years as well—in Ravenstonedale, Satterthwaite and Heversham. The communities around those schools are now, and have been for a generation in some cases, forced to make alternative arrangements. That has largely come about because of the growth in second home ownership, unchecked, in many communities in the lakes and dales, which has gobbled up the homes available for a full-time permanent population. Without that, where are the children coming from? Where are affordable houses being built to replace those second homes? There are some, but nowhere near enough. It is all part of the fabric of rural life, which comes under enormous pressure. The community’s school is at risk and may go, and bus services are lost, along with the post office, as mentioned by the hon. Member for North Northumberland.

The patchwork of rural life under such strain is often maintained by decent public transport links, if they exist, but they are often lacking in rural communities. I will come back to the debate about £2 and £3 bus fares. It is hugely regrettable that the Government have increased that cap on bus fares. As I often say, any bus fare cap is of no use if there is no bus to use it on.

It is important to look at this issue seriously, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Hexham for bringing it forward. One reason a child might not be sent to the nearest school is that that child has special educational needs. That may be formalised, and I have some figures on that. We have seen a 24% increase in the number of children travelling to special schools in the past five years. We have seen the number of EHCPs increase from 105,000 in 2015 to 230,000 across the country in 2023.

The County Councils Network estimates that by 2027 spending on special needs transport will have trebled over a decade to a vast total of £1.1 billion. Many children do not have an EHCP because there is an incredible backlog, and there are people who have special needs who are not formally assessed. Nevertheless, parents will send those children to the schools more able to cope with them and provide the best quality of education. If that is not in catchment and the child does not have an EHCP, parents pay for that themselves. Many parents in my communities are struggling as a result. They cannot afford it but, for the sake of their children, they do it.

The use of taxis over the past five years to get children with special educational needs to school has gone up by 36%. The school and the local authority between them bear the cost of that. It is encouraging to hear the new Government talk about special educational needs and try to focus on this as a crisis to be fixed. The Liberal Democrats believe strongly that there should be a national body for special educational needs, with additional support for local authorities and schools to fund provision. We should not be in the situation where those schools that do the right thing by children with special educational needs are penalised for doing so, and end up losing staff as a consequence of paying the costs of those children they have rightly taken on and supported.

I will talk about the communities across the Pennines in Westmorland and Furness. We have historic spend factors that account for 28% of our high-needs allocation and which do not reflect the changes in demand and the costs incurred in the past six years. Historical spend factors mean that Westmorland and Furness is funded 45% less than other high-cost authorities, and the impact is felt by children across our communities.

It is worth bearing in mind that Northumberland and Cumbria have very high visitor numbers. Although we do not pay for the education of visitors, we do pay for lots of other services that visitors use when visiting Northumberland national park, the lakes and the Yorkshire dales. There are 20 million visitors to Cumbria in the average year. That costs the local authority, and there is nothing in the funding formula to recognise that, to ensure that we do not dip into money that might otherwise be spent on education, in order to prop up other services, because we have all those visitors and do not have the money to pay for and support them.

When talking about school transport, we should pay attention to the plight of young people over 16. I am deeply concerned, along with others who represent rural constituencies, that although we rightly have young people continuing their education beyond 16, as is mandatory, we do not support or fund them to get to those places of education. It is probably quite straightforward in an urban area, where people could just walk to their nearest sixth form, but students at Kendal college are coming from right across Westmorland and north Lancashire, travelling maybe 40 or 50 miles in one direction to get there each day.

The sixth forms at the Queen Katherine school and Kirkbie Kendal school also take young people from far outside Kendal. At the Lakes school in Troutbeck Bridge, people travel from Grasmere, Ambleside, Windermere and the likes to get there. Dallam school takes children from the rest of south Cumbria and north Lancashire. There is also Ullswater community college. Kirkby Stephen and Appleby sixth forms are really small and in wonderful schools, and young people travel there at great cost to themselves and their parents. A student might find their brother in year 9 has his place at school funded, but they may have to pay £700 or £800 a year for the privilege. As a result, young people are choosing not to go into further education and take A-levels; they are choosing other routes instead, because they simply cannot afford to do so. That is why this issue is so important. I am delighted that the hon. Member for Hexham has managed to secure this debate, because it is of great significance to all of us who represent rural communities.

17:05

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you chairing, Mrs Harris. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hexham (Joe Morris) on securing this hugely important debate. This is an important subject to talk about, and there have been really good contributions from multiple Members. I declare an interest in Northumberland, as it is where I got married, in Wooler near Rothbury, which has already been mentioned. I have a great appreciation for Northumberland as a county. If I am not in the constituencies of the hon. Members for Hexham or for North Northumberland (David Smith) in the summer, I am normally in the constituency of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), so they are all places for which I have a lot of love.

I will recap the story a little. Last year, we announced an extra £500 million of funding for local government for adult and children’s social care, particularly to reduce the pressure on other areas of children’s services, such as home-to-school transport. It was part of our wider strategy for children’s social care reform and allocated to things such as expanding family help, targeted early intervention and all those things. It was part of a wider settlement for local government last year, which was another above-inflation settlement. Local government absolutely was squeezed in the coalition years, when we were clearing up the large deficit after the financial crisis, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out, but funding per person in 2024-25 is set to be 10% higher in real terms per person than in 2019-20, with bigger increases for the most deprived councils. It is worth recognising that what happened over the last Parliament is not the same as what happened in the period 2010-2015, when there were real-terms increases per person for local government.

I mention that because the local government financial settlement for next year is now looming; I guess that we should expect it some time in the next month. Perhaps the Minister will tell us when it is coming. I have a couple of specific questions that I hope she will be able to answer, as they are relevant to this debate. What will the total cost to local government be of the national insurance increase announced in the Budget? What will the cost of the national insurance increase be specifically to home school transport? Will local authorities be compensated for those costs?

We know that one of the recurring issues with the national insurance increase is who will be compensated. Public services that are not part of the public sector are not included in the protection. For example, GPs are up in arms about the enormous bills that they all face, and there are similar issues for nurseries, which are extremely concerned. The university sector has already learned that the entirety of the increase paid for by the breaking of the tuition fees promise will pay for the breaking of the promise on national insurance, so one broken promise will pay for another. All the gains that it thought it was going to get from the tuition fees increase are being entirely wiped out and eaten up by the cost of the national insurance increase, so real-terms funding for universities will go down. Those issues very much apply to home-to-school transport, a public service provided by people outside the public sector. Will the Minister tell us whether they will be fully compensated for that? I hope she will be able to give us that assurance.

We have touched on some of the wider issues in which this issue is situated. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale has mentioned this, but I was really sad to see the end of the “get around for £2” scheme, which we introduced and extended to the end of 2024. I know from my own community that it has particularly benefited people in rural areas, so I am sad to see that it has gone and there is effectively a 50% increase in the cost of a lot of journeys on buses. That is a real shame, because I felt we were making progress on buses. I was involved in the Bus Services Act 2017, which gave mayoral combined authorities the power to introduce into other areas of the country the kind of franchising that London has enjoyed for a long time.

It was sad to see the scrapping of the dualling of the A1 through Northumberland. Land and houses had been bought up to allow for the work, which makes it even worse. I was astonished to see that in the Budget, although there was lots of capital for other things, including the different things that the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Ed Miliband) wants to do on net zero, there was an overall reduction in capital transport spending. I was really surprised by that. I do not really understand what the logic was.

[David Smith]

I have a simple question: would the hon. Gentleman agree that the last Government had 14 years to dual the A1 and did not manage to do so?

[Neil O'Brien]

We had finally got there. We had bought the land and the houses, and the thing was about to happen. Somehow, the new Government snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, which is desperately sad. We will have to agree to disagree on that.

We have talked a bit about SEND funding in the round. The high needs block spending grew 70% between 2018-19 and 2024-25, so we put a lot more money into it. Hon. Members might say that is still not enough, and I would totally understand where they are coming from, but the demand is exploding upwards. I know that the Minister will be thinking equally about the causes of that and what she can do about it—not just meeting the need, but trying to understand the root causes and reduce the need for these services. There was a very large increase in that high needs block SEND spending.

A couple of hon. Members mentioned that one of the ways to solve the issue is not to look at the transport but to look at the schools. This is a long-term obsession of mine. I had a Westminster Hall debate not so long ago about this very issue. Since 1980, the number of small schools with fewer than 200 pupils had roughly halved, from 11,464 to 5,406, by 2018. That is a long-term trend. Since 2000, rural schools—those in villages and hamlets—have been twice as likely to shut. When they have shut, the typical walk time to the nearest school has been about 52 minutes. That long-term trend, which has occurred under Governments of all three of the main parties, has posed all sorts of challenges for rural areas.

To try to arrest that trend, we brought in the lump sum within the national funding formula, which is about 60% of the total funding. It is a hugely important part of the funding and I look forward to hon. Members championing it. We must think about how we keep village and rural schools, which are such an important part of rural communities, going. That is not just because they make life simpler and the whole transport issue simpler, but because they are at the heart of rural communities. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale talked about a 36% increase in taxis. We need to think about how we can attack the underlying causes of the need. I am sure that the Minister will be thinking about this.

I will end where I started by congratulating, in an honest way, the hon. Member for Hexham on securing this debate. It is hugely important. He made a super-important point about siblings being treated differently, which seems like absolute craziness. I am sure that we all agree that we ought to tackle that, but there are opportunities to address these issues, particularly through the local government funding formula. Government Ministers will stand up in a few weeks’ time and give us the numbers for how much local government is getting, but those in local government will want to know what is happening to their costs and for which of the services they provide, such as home-to-school transport, they will get compensation on the national insurance increase, because otherwise they will not know whether they are really ahead or behind.

17:13

[The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)]

It is an honour to serve under you as Chair today, Mrs Harris. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Joe Morris) on securing the debate today on this very important subject. I know how hard he works to represent the constituents of Hexham and how passionate he is about access to the best education possible for the children in his rural constituency. I am very familiar with my hon. Friend’s constituency, having lived there, spent most of my holidays there, and represented parts of it for 14 years leading up to the last general election. It is a truly beautiful and blessed part of Britain, but I totally understand that it is not without its challenges. He is rightly here today raising them and ensuring that he can deliver change for his constituents.

The Department’s home-to-school travel policy aims to make sure that no child is prevented from accessing education by a lack of transport. As my hon. Friend will know, local authorities are required to arrange free travel for children of compulsory school age who attend their nearest school but cannot walk there because of the distance, because they have special educational needs, a disability or a mobility problem, or because the route is not safe.

There are additional rights to free travel for low-income households, so that they can exercise school choice, but local authorities are struggling to fulfil those duties for all eligible children and the costs of doing so have risen sharply in recent years. All local authorities are looking for ways to deliver that service efficiently and cost-effectively. In 2023, Northumberland county council conducted a comprehensive review of home-to-school travel, which made wide-ranging recommendations that are being implemented.

There are several reasons for the steep increase in the cost of home-to-school travel in recent years, such as fuel price inflation and a shortage of drivers, passenger assistants and transport operators. Those things have pushed up costs, but most of the increase can be attributed to challenges in the school system itself that have built up over many years, specifically the way the school system currently educates children with additional needs. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham raised that in his speech. More children have education, health and care plans and more of those children travel long distances to a school that can meet their needs. As well as their journeys being longer, which is more expensive in itself, that also reduces the opportunity for economies of scale. Fewer children are likely to take each route, so more vehicles are required.

We want more children and young people to receive the support they need to thrive in their local mainstream setting, which will reduce the need for them to travel a long way to access specialist placements. Many mainstream settings already deliver specialist provision locally, including through resource provision and special educational needs units, but there will always be a place in the system for special schools, which are required by children with the most complex needs.

The Department supports local authorities to provide suitable school places for children and young people with SEND through annual high needs capital funding. It can be used to deliver new places in mainstream and special schools as well as in specialist settings and to improve the accessibility and suitability of existing buildings. We will set out plans for future high needs capital funding in due course.

Making sure that more children can be educated in their local community will reduce pressure on home-to-school travel over time. We want to work with the sector to ensure our approach to SEND reform is planned and delivered with parents, schools, councils and expert staff, who we know go above and beyond to support children. There are no quick fixes. Fixing the SEND system is a key priority for this Department and a vital part of our opportunity mission, but it will take time. We will work with the sector as essential and valued partners to ensure our approach to SEND is fully planned and delivered with parents, schools and councils.

For many children with SEND, learning to travel independently is an important part of preparing to lead an independent and fulfilling adult life. Independent travel training is a tailored programme to help children with SEND to learn to travel independently, for example by public transport or walking. My hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland (David Smith) highlighted the length of the journeys that some children in Northumberland face. Local authorities should offer independent travel training to children with SEND who are eligible for free travel to school and who think they could successfully complete the programme. Many parents are anxious about their child’s ability to travel independently, and the child may also be worried about it, so it is important that local authorities support families to help them to understand the benefits of being able to travel independently, which will build their confidence.

We are also aware of significant concerns around home-to-school travel for children in temporary accommodation. We understand that when a child has to move to temporary accommodation—for example, as a result of homelessness or fleeing a difficult situation—they will benefit from the continuity of remaining at their current school, with familiar teachers and friends. However, they might not be eligible for free travel to school—for example, if there are other school places that are nearer, between their school and their temporary accommodation.

Local authorities have a discretionary power to arrange free home-to-school travel for children, even if they are not eligible. We know there is incredible pressure on local authority home-to-school travel budgets, but we encourage local authorities to exercise that discretion whenever they can for children who are vulnerable.

In the Budget, we announced an additional £233 million for tackling all forms of homelessness, taking the total spending on reducing homelessness to nearly £1 billion in 2025-26. That will be directed at supporting people into secure and stable housing, and at supporting children. We recognise that there are similar pressures on local authorities providing transport support to post-16 students, and the cost and availability of public transport can be a real issue, as my hon. Friend also pointed out.

Nevertheless, it is a responsibility of local authorities to put in place transport arrangements to help young people aged 16 to 19 to access education or training, as well as for people aged 19 to 24 who have special educational needs, using funds that they have available locally. Most local authorities do offer some form of subsidised transport, and it is combined with the 16 to 19 bursary. It is intended to provide financial support to students from the lowest-income households. For example, in the constituency of Hexham, Northumberland county council offers free transport to young people from low-income backgrounds and those on EHCPs. However, I appreciate the concerns that my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham has outlined today.

The vast majority of central Government funding for home-to-school transport and post-16 transport goes through the local government finance settlement, administered by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. We recognise the challenges local authorities face as the demand for their critical services continues to rise. We have listened to voices across the sector, and we prioritise local government funding. In the Budget, we announced £1.3 billion of new grant funding in 2025-26 for local government to deliver core services, which, together with the local income from council tax and business rates, will provide a real-terms increase in core spending power of around 3.2%. I appreciate the concerns the shadow Minister raised, but the amounts and the way they will be administered will be announced in due course—the announcement is due this month.

[Neil O’Brien]

I am grateful for the Minister’s answer. I am keen to understand whether local authorities will be compensated, not just for the direct costs to their own staff of the increased national insurance payments, but for the costs of services that they buy in, such as home-to-school transport. Will that also be fully compensated?

[Catherine McKinnell]

All those details are being worked through and will be announced in due course. I appreciate the hon. Member’s keenness to have advance sight of the statement—it is coming, and it will set out all of the detail.

In addition, local government in England is expected to receive about £1.1 billion of new funding in 2025-26 through the implementation of the extended producer responsibility for packaging scheme. Hon. Members might wonder what that has to do with transport, but it will shift the burden for managing household packaging waste from local authorities to the producers who supply and import the packaging. That will create additional revenue for local authorities to channel towards vital services such as public transport.

The Government are committed to reforming public services and the local government funding system, while providing as much certainty as possible. It is important that we deliver that reform in partnership with local government, and my ministerial colleagues will be setting out more detail shortly.

The Department routinely collects data on local authorities’ expenditure on home-to-school travel, and we understand the increasing financial pressures that they face. However, as things stand, the Government have not collected data on the actual travel being arranged, even fundamental information such as the number of pupils receiving free home-to-school travel, the transporting of siblings—as my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham highlighted—and information on catchment areas. I am determined, given the concerns that he and other hon. Members have raised, that we improve our data on the subject so that local authorities can benchmark themselves against similar authorities and learn from one another, and so that central and local government have the robust evidence to inform decision making on those issues. We will be writing to local authorities in the coming days, setting out our plans to ask them to provide data on travel that they arrange for children and young people to get to school and post-16 providers. It will be voluntary at first, but I hope local authorities will see the benefit of the data collection and share the requested data that they hold.

Another big issue that we know we must tackle is school absence. If children are not in school, they cannot benefit from their education. Thanks to the efforts of the sector, more children are in school in 2023-24 compared with the previous year, but 1.6 million children are still persistently absent, and that is a major challenge. We know that some children, particularly those with additional needs, face additional barriers to attendance, so we have to work to tackle those issues. We know that schools need to take a support-first approach and ensure that they have an attendance champion and policy and that they work with local authorities. Clearly, transport to school is a big part of that jigsaw.

Public transport clearly has an important role to play. Good local bus services are an essential part of thriving communities, providing access to education and other services. Outside of London, buses were deregulated in 1985. They now largely run on a commercial basis, and my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland pointed out some of the challenges that that can present. The Government have pledged to fix that, and the Bus Services Bill announced in the King’s Speech will put the power of local buses into the hands of local leaders. I know the North East Mayor Kim McGuinness is working to improve bus routes and has committed to repairing our broken bus system in the north-east.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham again for bringing the matter forward and all those who have made contributions to the debate. It is an issue that many people rightly feel passionately about. I acknowledge the challenges that far too many families face when seeking to get the right support for their children. By fixing our broken SEND system, by transforming our education system so that more children can access an inclusive, high-quality education locally and by fixing our broken transport system, we can truly make this change.

17:27

[Joe Morris]

I thank the Minister for her response and thank her ministerial team, the other Ministers in her Department and the Secretary of State for their continued proactive engagement with me and other rural MPs. For the first time we have a Government that truly get the challenges of rural Britain, aided in no small part by the new Labour intake.

I do not want to finish the debate with a political point; I want to finish with the words of some of my constituents. One of my constituents wrote to me saying that she has a daughter who travels from Stocksfield to Prudhoe community high school, which is a wonderful school that I look forward to visiting. The only way to get there is to walk 2.9 miles along a busy road, and that would be unsafe. That was one of the many emails that led to me requesting this debate. The son of a constituent had to move school due to bullying and sadly does not qualify for school transport. That is the reason why I brought the debate: those stories that make up portions of my constituency surgeries that bring me here every day to fight the corner of my constituents.

I hope people across my constituency feel that we have given voice to their concerns. I hope those at County Hall who have the power to intervene or look again at certain cases are watching and take notice. It is a privilege to represent the people of the Hexham constituency, whether that is Throckley and Callerton, ably represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for many years, or the Northumberland part.

I thank all Members from across the House for their contributions, particularly the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who sent me a wonderful note, and the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), who paid me a wonderful compliment by comparing me to the hon. Member for Strangford.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered school transport in Northumberland.

17:29

Sitting adjourned.