Holiday Pricing

Debate between John Hemming and Daniel Kawczynski

Monday 24th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[John Hemming]

My hon. Friend may be right, but that has been changed anyway.

There is also the issue of the new regulations, which we discussed with the Backbench Business Committee. A group called Parents Want a Say was established following the introduction of the new regulations, and it has a website. A number of e-petitions relate to the issue of school holidays. E-petition 49640 is entitled “Reverse the changes to school term time family holiday rules”.

E-petition 53002 states that it is

“calling on the government to help British families manage the ‘Parent Trap’ of inflated holiday prices in summer by suspending or reducing the rate of Air Passenger Duty (APD) for the annual school summer-holiday period of July and August.”

E-petition 45247 states:

“Relax the strict rules on term time holidays for school children.

Give parents the right to take their child on holiday in term time if the holiday would benefit the child.

Respect the rights of the child and bring term time holiday regulations in line with UNCRC (specifically article 3,4,5 and 31).

Standardise the criteria for term time holiday approval to prevent inconsistencies.”

E-petition 46455 states:

“Family time is so much more essential in the current working world, but so many people cannot afford holidays in school holidays. A break at home is not the same as getting away from it all where there isn't any house work or DIY to get done, instead focus is on family. Its time to stop the holiday companies cashing in on school holidays and let parents have some guilt free family time! Enforce action that caps the percentage increase on holiday prices in school holidays.”

There are also e-petitions 55426, 51533, 42884 and 23709, which I am not going to read out. This debate is a very good example of how effective an e-petition can be in getting an issue of considerable concern to many constituents across the country raised and debated in Parliament. It looks to me like an example of the success of the e-petition system.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

I apologise for not being able to stay for the entire debate, but I wanted to support my hon. Friend. I have received a lot of letters on this issue from my constituents in Shrewsbury. They feel strongly that the Government must show innovative thinking to resolve the situation for hard-working families who, on rare occasions, need to pull their children out of school for a holiday.

[John Hemming]

I thank my hon. Friend for that comment. As I talk about specific examples, we will see that different families have different circumstances, and a one-size-fits-all approach is not necessarily the best solution.

It is interesting that the tensions that have arisen beyond the initial problem of high prices during the holidays are the result of the new regulations, passed in statutory instrument 2013 No. 756. For those interested in procedural issues, as I am, I should say that the regulations went through Parliament under a negative resolution—that is, they would pass as long as Parliament did not vote against them. Parliament would have had an opportunity to discuss the regulations had anyone tabled an early-day motion praying against them, but no one did. There was no discussion.

The regulations were laid before Parliament on 4 April 2013. There was no request to debate them on the Floor of the House of Lords either. That House differs from the House of Commons in that it has a Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which looked at the regulations and decided not to comment on them. However, we have heard from our constituents that there are considerable problems across the country. That shows the strength of the e-petitioning process. Something went through Parliament on the nod, but constituents had a mechanism to express concerns. The issue has been raised and now everyone present is here to debate it.

I must disagree with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey). The Department for Education website states that the regulations were changed from allowing up to 10 school days—not 10 school sessions—per year for holidays to allowing children to leave school only in exceptional circumstances. As I said, I will come to specific examples. Although there was some form of consultation on changes to the regulations, that did not get across to people and Parliament was not aware of constituents’ concerns when the changes were made. However, that has now changed.

How do we deal with the issue? Obviously, many of our constituents face a serious problem; that is evidenced by the number of people in the Chamber. Concerns have been expressed about the extent to which companies can be forced to charge the same price throughout the year. I do not think that that is a practical solution, particularly given that the market includes people visiting this country—we could end up with holiday touts and all sorts of things.

There are two solutions for dealing with demand. First, we could have flexibility in holiday periods: we could stagger holidays. Secondly, we could have more flexibility—moving back towards how things were previously, although not necessarily all the way—and allow people to take their children out of school in term time, in the right circumstances. I think that would be reasonable in some circumstances.

Looking further at how the issue is regulated, we already have Ofcom, Ofwat and Ofgem; I do not think we can have Offonholiday—that would not work. A reduction in air passenger duty has been proposed, but there would be problems with that. First, it would not benefit UK holidaymakers. Paul Cookson, who I referred to earlier, was worried about the doubling of prices at Center Parcs. As Center Parcs is in the UK, a reduction in air passenger duty would not have an effect on people going there. If the APD proposal reached the Treasury, it would go into a nosedive; we would find that it was not a flyer—[Interruption.] Sorry about that. I will give up on the jokes now.

We come to the question of what will happen as far as flexibility for holidays is concerned. I have found an interesting copy of Travel Trade Gazette from 1963, which reports:

“It was in the House of Commons on February 12, 1960, that approval was first given to the setting up of a committee to examine the question of extending the U.K. holiday season.

The subject was introduced by Mr. Robert Mathew, M.P. for Honiton, in a motion which read:

‘That this House, recognising the need to extend and adjust the holiday period so as to relieve congestion at the peak period, asks Her Majesty’s Government to set up a committee to examine this question urgently with special reference to the educational, tourist trade and transport interests concerned, and the problem of summer time, with the power to recommend early action.’ ”

We are now a good few years on; we did not have the early action. That was in 1963. In 1964, the heads of Germany’s regional governments, which are responsible for state education, were called together to stagger the summer holidays in such a way as to prevent all the region’s leisure seekers from leaving for and returning from their holidays at the same time, with the corresponding detrimental effect on traffic and demand for accommodation in tourist areas. They divided the country into five roughly equal population blocks, which were all to have different holiday periods that moved around. It is interesting that Germany managed to do something. In fact, I understand that the Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland and France also have such a facility.

Interestingly, schedule 14 to the Deregulation Bill, currently being discussed, allows head teachers to decide when holidays are. The general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, Russell Hobby, said recently that the NAHT has been saying for some time that there is an argument for more flexibility over term times, to relieve the pressures that drive up holiday costs. However, it is important for schools to co-ordinate timings across a town or region; parents with children at different schools would not welcome the inconvenience and child care costs of different term dates. That is obviously sensible. We must also think of the teachers; those with children would not like their children’s holidays to be at a different time from theirs.

Staggering holiday dates can definitely be done, but it will need co-ordination; it will not be something to wash our hands of. It may be for the Select Committee on Education to consider, in conjunction with other people, how we might stagger holidays across the country so that we do not end up with everyone trying to go on holiday at the same time and prices rocketing.

That is one question. The more difficult question is when people should be allowed out of school during term time and what exemptions should apply. Again, I will quote from what people have said to me. One person says:

“This coming Tuesday is my uncle’s funeral in Folkestone…Our three children were quite close to him. We enquired of their schools (primary and secondary) whether they would be prepared to grant exceptional circumstance leave for one day only and in both cases they said they felt unable to do so under the new rules.”

There we have a specific example of children being refused permission to go to the funeral of their great-uncle. Personally, I think that is wrong.

Other parents do not have a choice as to when they have holiday. A lady who returned from maternity leave to her post as a staff nurse in a bone marrow transplant unit at a hospital put in an early request for annual leave during the Easter or summer half-term break. Her requests were not granted, as too many other nurses were off during those periods and the unit must remain adequately staffed. In addition, her husband has been unable to secure annual leave during the summer. They have always made their best efforts to book holiday time during school breaks, but the only week that they could secure together this year was in June, when there is no school holiday. That lady spends her time saving lives. She is committed to that, so she does not have flexibility in her holidays, and the new rules say that she cannot go on holiday with her children. I think that is wrong, too.