Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Annette Brooke and Baroness Morgan of Cotes

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his most charming remarks, but no, I completely disagree about the landscape that he finds. I find excellent schools up and down the country; brilliant, highly qualified teachers working incredibly hard; rigorous academic standards; and a tough but worthy new curriculum that is introducing subjects such as coding and computing, as we have heard. Now our task is to make sure that excellence is spread right the way across the country.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

School sport partnerships were scrapped very early on in 2010 and have been replaced with various measures, which I am very pleased to welcome. May I have an assurance that something has now been set, that it will continue and that we can build back to where we were with the excellent partnerships?

[Nicky Morgan]

The introduction of the sport premium means that we have given substantial funds directly to heads and teachers to spend in their school. The number of sports and the amount of time that pupils are spending on physical activity are going up each week. The Prime Minister has made a commitment to keep that funding until 2020. On a school visit last week, I saw that a fantastic co-ordinator was being employed to get all the young people moving.

School Transport

Debate between Annette Brooke and Baroness Morgan of Cotes

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Nicky Morgan]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Common sense has been lost as part of the debate and in reviewing the routes. I have exactly the same situation in Mountsorrel, where apparently older children already at the Humphrey Perkins school will continue to receive free bus passes and younger children starting at the school will not.

In undertaking the review, the scrutiny review panel was asked to have regard to the financial, environmental and health implications of any proposed changes to existing policies in the context of the legal obligations placed on the county council. The overall review was conducted as part of the council’s medium-term financial strategy. The panel did not consider the Sileby to Barrow route and nobody with an interest in the route, such as the headmaster, the families or local councillors, was asked to give evidence to the panel. In reaching its conclusions, the panel decided that the width of a footpath and the lighting of a route did not need to be considered when a route is assessed, which is where common sense has gone out of the window.

In May 2011, parents of pupils in Sileby and Mountsorrel due to start at Humphrey Perkins school in September 2011 were written to and told that free school transport would be available for their child. Imagine their surprise, and the surprise of the head teacher, who also knew nothing about this, when in late June last year they and the families of children already receiving free transport, because the route was deemed to be unavailable, received a letter saying that that would no longer be the case and that because they lived less than three miles from the school and there would now be an available walking route, they would not be eligible for free transport and instead would have to pay for a school bus service. It was at that point that a campaign group was formed and I was made aware of the problems that the 53 parents in Sileby face.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. We have many problems in Dorset, and I want briefly to share some similar stories. I consider age to be a vital factor, in so far as a 13-year-old would not wish to be accompanied, so it is not a matter of the availability of somebody to accompany them. A rural lane with fast traffic is incredibly unsafe. I hope that she will expand on the point that notifying parents at the last possible moment or halfway through a sixth-form course, given that a choice will have been based on previous information, is unacceptable.

[Nicky Morgan]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and congratulate her on the early-day motion on the topic, which has been signed by hon. Members from across the House. She is right that the safety of routes has not been considered and another frustrating point is the manner in which notifications have been sent out.

As I have said, a campaign group was formed in Sileby. To cut a long story short, the council admitted shortly afterwards that insufficient notice of the change had been given. The decision to withdraw transport was postponed for a term, and I was promised that a new assessment of the route would be conducted once the clocks had gone back in the autumn.

Why do we all consider the route to be dangerous? My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) has mentioned some of the dangers of such routes, but much of the Sileby to Barrow route has a footpath on only one side of the road, so that children—and adults—returning from school have their back to oncoming traffic. The footpath is narrow and there are several pinch points where everyone has to walk in single file—we are talking about 11-year-old children not messing about on the way to and from school. The speed limit along the road is 40 mph, and it is regularly exceeded. There are industrial estates, a deep ditch and a conveyor belt for a nearby quarry. The road is also so narrow at points that if two large vehicles pass each other the wing mirrors overhang into the footpath at head height.

Alas, the promise to wait for the next assessment to be conducted after British summer time ended and before any further decisions were taken was not fulfilled, and parents received further letters in October to say that as the necessary cutting back of vegetation had now happened along the walking route the free bus service would no longer be offered to them from this month. Meanwhile, despite my urging the county council to work with the school to examine alternative services, no contact was made with the headmaster between July and late October 2011. The council has since then had contact with the school about an alternative service, but that would be at almost double the cost of the service now procured by the headmaster. The council has also indicated that, when the school becomes an academy, home-to-school transport will no longer be its concern. I hope that the Minister can address that point. On a practical level, today, on the second day of term, the service for children living less than three miles from the school has been withdrawn, and some will now be using the train to get from Sileby to Barrow. I expect that others will be driven to school, which will increase congestion, and some will walk that route.

The walking route that some children will have to use remains, in my opinion, highly dangerous and therefore not “available” as the legislation requires, because even an accompanied child cannot walk along it with reasonable safety. The real question for us, as a national legislature, is whether the national legislation and guidance reflects the realities of modern Britain, or whether the safety of our children is at risk, when a route can be deemed to be available when it is clearly unsafe.

Park Homes

Debate between Annette Brooke and Baroness Morgan of Cotes

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Annette Brooke]

I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend’s points. I endorse the point that residents’ associations can in principle be formed, but that they are in practice often obstructed. That relates to my point about people being frightened to be seen talking to others on the park home site.

There are good site owners. However, a minority of site owners make legislation difficult and I hope that the outcome of this debate will be a stiffened resolve to tackle the issues, rather than just saying that they are too difficult. I am extremely pleased that the Government have committed to bringing in secondary legislation to transfer jurisdiction for park homes to the Residential Property Tribunal Service. That will undoubtedly help solve some of the problems that park home owners have been faced with and will remove the need for an expensive court process in many cases.

A recent case I am trying to deal with could potentially be solved through that route. Let me mention it briefly. A park home was purchased in May this year. The new owner wanted to make improvements and applied for an insulation grant for her mobile home from the local authority, and the local authority granted it. There is a clause in the site agreement with the site owner of this particular site that any works to the exterior of a mobile home require the express permission of the site owner. Somewhere along the line, the site owner has requested that the park home owner agrees to her home being re-sited. She has refused to do that and the site owner will not give permission for the insulation to take place. The local authority has confirmed to me that there is no technical reason why the work on the home cannot be carried out in its current position. The tribunal offers the opportunity for both sides to put their case and for all aspects to be considered. Unfortunately for my constituency, this route is not yet open, which is yet another reason why we cannot delay.

Last winter, the electricity supply on a site was faulty on the coldest night of the year. It was not restored in a reasonable time, and an 84-year-old was taken to hospital with hypothermia the next day. Purbeck district council, bravely for a small council, took the site owner to court. The site owner was found guilty and fined £1,000 with £6,000 costs. We could say that we won the battle, but not the war. My worry is that more bullying may follow.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. The fact that so many Members are here on a day when Christmas is not far away shows the strength of feeling about this issue among constituents and their MPs. I entirely understand what she says about bullying following comments made by residents of Palma park, a park home site in my constituency. The hon. Lady talked about cold nights; in my constituency, the local site owner allowed the gas to run out, which meant that on one of the coldest nights of the year the residents did not have any fuel. The hon. Lady also mentioned the spirit of community in adversity. At the moment, the residents are having to get together to clear the cesspit because the owner will not do so. I entirely agree that this situation cannot be allowed to continue for the many thousands of park home owners across the country.

[Annette Brooke]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am sure that we will be continually reinforcing the same points.

I sincerely believe that we need a fit-and-proper-person law, which local authorities will welcome.