Official Report 1071KB pdf
The next item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S6M-15006, in the name of Gillian Mackay, on the North Lanarkshire school bus campaign.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes with regret the reported reduction to school buses in North Lanarkshire; understands that, following the reported reduction, pupils who live less than three miles from school have to walk or get a service bus; notes that there have been reports of buses not stopping or being too full for pupils to get on; recognises that some parents believe that many of the proposed alternative walking routes are unsuitable, especially during the winter where some are unlit; understands that there are plans to extend this reduction to include primary school pupils; congratulates parents from across North Lanarkshire on their campaign, and notes the calls on the Scottish Government to engage with North Lanarkshire Council to urgently resolve this issue, and to work with all local authorities to ensure that travelling to school is safe and affordable, including through school transport guidance, the promotion of municipal bus provision and ambitious investment in safe active travel routes to school.
12:53
I thank all members who signed the motion and so enabled this debate to happen. Before I go into detail about the motion, I extend my thanks to the many parents across North Lanarkshire who have contacted me to share their personal experiences of how the proposed cuts will affect their families. They include Laura, Jim, Leonna, Diane, Lorraine and Kerry Anne, who join us in the public gallery today. The determination, commitment and continuous campaigning by those parents has been inspiring and uplifting, and it should be a reminder of the power and importance of local issues.
Some 590 parents have signed the petition to overturn the decision to reduce the number of children’s school buses across North Lanarkshire. The decision is a disaster for children’s safety. I hope that North Lanarkshire Council and the Scottish Government can take immediate action to deliver a workable solution.
For background, for those members who represent other areas of the country, I highlight that in North Lanarkshire, local councillors have implemented cuts to school buses for secondary pupils by increasing the qualifying distance that children have to live from their school from two miles to three miles, and have also proposed a similar approach for primary schools, with the qualifying distance moving from one mile to two miles. That will have a significant impact on a large number of young children, causing them to rely on their parents to drive them to and from school every day. Families and teachers from across the region have already spoken out against the decision.
It is clear that these cuts will put children’s safety at risk by packing more cars on to the already crowded streets around school grounds—areas where children are walking and cycling in large numbers. It will also increase pollution and carbon emissions around schools at a time when we are becoming increasingly aware of the damage that that can cause, and it will add an extra burden on parents and carers, who are already struggling.
It is already having an impact on secondary schools, with some reporting an increase of up to 30 per cent in the number of cars, with pupils leaving the campuses to get to parents’ cars, which are waiting in queues, and pupils having to walk along the grass verges of dual carriageways. How on earth can anyone think that that is safe?
My inbox has been inundated with correspondence from parents, teachers and members of the local community, who are rightly very concerned about children’s welfare. I have had particularly moving conversations with parents of children with additional support needs, who rely heavily on their school buses and the importance of routine that the school bus allows their children. I will share some words from a parent to whom I spoke recently. She said:
“My child doesn’t have social awareness or safety awareness due to his autism. On walking from home to school, he would need to cross two very busy main roads and cross through a park which another high school sits at.
On Hamilton Road there is a gap of roughly half a mile between traffic lights to get safely across the road, and on Airbles road the distance is longer. He wouldn’t be able to process when was best to cross the road between traffic which would lead to a breakdown with anxiety over how to get across.
It’s the same with trying to access public transport. Most buses are either full or nearing capacity when they reach his stop. The heightened noise on the buses would be over stimulating for him and this could also lead to a stressful and traumatic experience.
I believe there has been a gap in understanding of the needs of all children with Additional Support Needs and not just the ones with mobility issues.”
Is not the point, though, that there has been so little consultation with the parents? It is not just that they have not been listened to, but that they have not even been spoken to properly.
There has been an element of consultation in some places—the parents definitely do not think that it is enough—but in others, schools were told that they did not have to engage with the consultation process, and then found that their buses had been cut, so I agree with Mr Kerr on that point.
It has been suggested by members of the local authority that children and young people should simply use the service buses instead. However, we have had reports of buses not stopping, and of buses that are overly busy. In some places, there is only one bus an hour, and if it is full, children face a long walk or a wait outside school for the next one. North Lanarkshire Council says that it is following Scottish Government guidance, but there seems to be no consistency across local authorities as to how that is being interpreted.
As an MSP from the Scottish Green party, which proudly introduced free bus travel for everyone under 22, I find the suggestion that children as young as four years old should use public transport as an alternative to their school bus to be concerning. Since the scheme was introduced, thousands of young people have benefited, taking more than 50 million bus journeys, and it has saved family members money during a cost of living crisis. However, it should not be used to plug gaps.
Yesterday, I walked one of the proposed walking routes with parents and pupils in Motherwell. I sincerely hope that other members will take up the opportunity to walk the route; I know that some have already been out, and the parents were really pleased by the support. The route is simply not safe. We walked along busy roads and narrow paths, and over broken glass. One of the children told me that they would not be comfortable walking the route without an adult because they did not feel safe.
We, as politicians, try to put across arguments in a compelling way, but it is only fitting that the final words of my speech are from one of the pupils who has been affected. Ella, who is 10 and from Motherwell, sent me a video detailing the challenges as she sees them. She said:
“The people in charge of North Lanarkshire Council have decided to stop our school buses in order to save money. I don’t think this is fair. It’s the wrong decision.
The school bus gets lots of children to school safely and on time. If I didn’t get the school bus, I’d need to walk a really long way in the rain to and from school. Between my house and school, there are big dangerous roads that are especially dangerous for young children like my brother and sister. They’d be tired and cold before we even get to school. 129 children from our school will lose their bus next year. I worry that our school campus will get really busy and dangerous with lots more cars.
This is also bad for climate change. I thought grown-ups were trying to stop as many cars being used on the road. Then why take away our buses? It doesn’t make sense. I want the grown-ups in charge to put our safety first before saving money.”
I share Ella’s concerns. The proposed cuts will put children’s safety at risk by packing in even more cars. For some parents, having to take children to or from school will cause more hassle in the mornings, as they will be trying to get children to both secondary and primary schools because of the cut to the buses.
I do not disagree with anything that Gillian Mackay is saying, but does she know how much the council is forecast to cut over the next three years? Does she agree that we will be discussing a lot of those sorts of issues in relation to what services will need to be cut because of the budget settlements that will be delivered to local government?
We will be discussing those issues, but we need to hope that councils will take sensible decisions that will not put children’s safety at risk, which is why this is such a disastrous cut, and because of the lack of consultation, as Stephen Kerr has pointed out.
I realise that I am running out of time, Deputy Presiding Officer, so I will finish. I am calling on the Scottish Government to look again at the guidance to ensure that this cannot happen in another local authority area, and for the Scottish Government and North Lanarkshire Council to do the right thing for children by reversing the decision for secondary school pupils and committing to protecting the current bus entitlement for primary school pupils.
We now move to the open debate and will have speeches of up to four minutes.
13:01
I thank Gillian Mackay for securing the motion for debate in the chamber and allowing us to discuss an important issue. Like Ms Mackay, I have received a significant number of inquiries from constituents regarding the changes to provision. As my colleagues have done, I have written to North Lanarkshire Council on numerous occasions, representing my constituents’ views and ensuring that their dissatisfaction with the changes is made known. In May, along with Clare Adamson, I met the minister, and we asked her to write to North Lanarkshire Council and encourage it to meet the communities that are affected as well as elected representatives to help us all understand how the assessments were being made and to allow the council to hear the on-going concerns.
In my constituency, Coatbridge and Chryston, three main routes are affected by the proposed changes to secondary school transport provision, resulting in an approximately 2.8-mile walk to Coatbridge high school and St Ambrose high school from Bargeddie, a walk of between 2 and 3 miles from Stepps to Chryston high school—depending on where pupils live in Stepps—and a walk of more than 2 miles from some parts of Carnbroe and Coatbridge to Coatbridge high and St Andrew’s high school.
I agree with Gillian Mackay’s motion in that walking routes should be suitable. We should not expect children to have to walk via an unlit canal on dark, cold nights—a route that has been deemed suitable by North Lanarkshire Council for those who are walking more than 2.5 miles from Bargeddie—or to have to walk alongside dual carriageways. That is the reality facing children who live in Bargeddie as well as those from Stepps, who are expected to walk alongside the busy Glasgow road and A80, respectively. Both roads had speed cameras until recently and are often considered accident hotspots by local people in the respective areas.
As well as the obvious impact on the safety of pupils when getting to and from school if they walk, there will also be an impact on traffic, as parents resort to driving their children to school, which is not exactly good for the environment. Worse, I have concerns that some parents will simply keep their child off school on days when it is dark, snowing or blowing a gale, if their child is expected to walk more than 5 miles a day, carrying their books, which would not be good for closing the attainment gap.
Although I appreciate Ms Mackay’s call on the Scottish Government to ensure that school transport guidance is suitable, the criteria for safe walking routes is currently decided by local authorities, and North Lanarkshire Council has failed to review the criteria for its area since 2018. It is for local authorities to determine the nature of the provision that they offer. This decision lies solely with North Lanarkshire Council. It is my hope that the member-officer working group, which was recently proposed by the council’s Scottish National Party group, will remedy that.
I absolutely agree that the guidance on safe walking routes is a matter for the council, but because the council is using the Scottish Government’s school transport guidance as an excuse, does the member not think that we should tighten that up to make sure that it cannot be used by another council to make the same decision that North Lanarkshire Council has made?
I will come back to what we can perhaps do. Everything is on the table, but where decisions are local authority decisions we have to respect that. The main issue at play with that particular decision is that of parental engagement.
For me, this is not a bash North Lanarkshire Council session, as there are many good things that my local council area does. Just this week, for example, the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee heard from the head of the housing at the council about some of the great work that has been done in the housing sphere.
However, the council and the councillors from the ruling group have simply imposed the decision on secondary school transport and the soon-to-be-implemented decision on primary school transport without relevant engagement with the communities. They have not taken the people with them, which all elected members can see in the amount of correspondence that we are receiving. Indeed, my constituent, Diane, who is in the chamber today, believes that the lack of engagement is contrary to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Scottish Schools (Parental Involvement) Act 2006, and I know that she will have made those feelings known to the council.
I have been given full reassurance from the North Lanarkshire Council SNP group leader that she will push for parents’ representations to be heard on the member-officer working group that has been set up to review and update the criteria used in the existing school transport provision. I am also told that that has been communicated to key figures in the community, including those on the grass-roots NLC transport action group. I pay tribute, as Gillian Mackay did, to the members of that group, including Marisa, Lesley, Diane, Lorraine and many others—there are far too many names to mention, but it is not my intention to leave anybody out.
The SNP has shown an unwavering commitment to preventing the cuts. The North Lanarkshire Council SNP group was the only group that presented a fully costed budget proposal in 2023 that did not include cuts to school transport.
Will the member take an intervention?
The member is about to conclude.
For those who are unfamiliar with the set-up, the cuts were implemented as a result of the Labour-Conservative joint budget. I would like members across the chamber, including Gillian Mackay and any Conservative members who are going to speak, to consider how councillors voted on the cuts.
Free bus passes are welcome, but they are not without issue.
Mr MacGregor, you will need to bring your remarks to a close, please.
I had more to say, but I will stop there.
13:07
I am not going to make my comments party political. I do not think that children’s safety is an issue that should be party political. I will present an idea to the minister at the end, because I am one for solutions. He knows that.
North Lanarkshire Council has got itself into a bit of a mess. Part of the reason for that is the way in which it consults, or does not consult, with parents. It is not the only council that does that in a cack-handed manner. Often, decisions are imposed on people—in this case, parents. Councillors are reassured by officers that processes have been followed when perhaps they have not been. I am not going to stand here and blame councillors for taking a decision that takes a council to the legal limit, because I have been in that position myself as a councillor in South Lanarkshire. These are tough decisions to take, and all councils are up against it budget-wise. That is why they end up in the position that they are in.
Graham Simpson mentioned budgetary challenges. There are budgetary challenges, but the fundamental point in this case is that there was a group of councillors—SNP councillors—who identified funding. There was an underspend of £8 million by North Lanarkshire Council and the SNP councillors identified just over £2 million of that to keep the bus service going and continue to provide school buses. That was voted down by a combination of Labour and Conservative councillors.
I should declare an interest, Presiding Officer, being the father of two children who have lost their school bus provision.
I said that I was not going to make it party political. I am not going to make it party political. I am describing the challenges that councillors face. However, we end up in a situation where school buses are being withdrawn, which puts some children—not all children—at risk.
I, too, have walked one of the routes. That was from Stepps to Chryston and it was along a busy dual carriageway. Would I walk that route to work? No, I would not. Would a teacher walk that route to work? No, they would not, so why would we expect a child, possibly at the start of their high school journey, to do the same? I do not think that we should.
I suggest that we look at the issue in the round and accept that there is a problem throughout Scotland with the school run. Too many cars are being used to take kids to school, so we need to rethink things. We have council officers, perhaps even Government ministers, in an entrenched position, saying, “Well, that’s the legal limit—that’s all we have to do”. In fact, we should be looking at the whole issue of there being too many cars on the road taking kids to school.
There is perhaps a role for Government here in rethinking the issue and considering whether we can do come up with a different system whereby councils—it could be councils—organise buses. Maybe some parents could be asked to contribute towards that. I know that a lot of parents will not like that, but the issue is that there is a lack of provision in a lot of council areas to get kids to school, so they are put in cars. That adds to congestion, which is also a safety issue.
We need a rethink. If the minister, whom I do not think will not come up with any solutions today, can accept that we need to rethink the matter and end the school run throughout Scotland, we might get something positive out of this.
13:11
In the same vein as Mr Hepburn, perhaps I should declare an interest, in that two of my children will cease to get their entitlement to the bus provision next year.
The motion in front of us states:
“the Parliament notes with regret the reported reduction to school buses in North Lanarkshire”.
Of course we note that with regret, just as every councillor who made the decision to reduce school transport provision regrets that they felt that they had no other option but to make that change in the face of budget cuts from the Government. However, I find it strange that, in the motion, there is no mention of regret about the cuts to local council budgets that have forced councils to make that decision. There is no context at all around the financial situation in which councils of all political persuasions across the country find themselves.
North Lanarkshire Council raises less than 20 per cent of its own revenue—
Will the member take an intervention?
I will just get to the end of this point. North Lanarkshire Council raises less than 20 per cent of its own revenue, in line with most other councils, so the cuts that it has been forced to make are a direct result of budget decisions made by the Government. We should be clear and honest about that when it comes to criticising decisions that are made by councils.
This is another attempt to make the point that I just made to Mr Simpson. I do not underestimate the challenges for local authorities, but will Mr Griffin reflect on the fact that an £8 million underspend at North Lanarkshire Council was identified by SNP councillors? They said that £2.2 million or thereabouts could have been used to maintain bus services, but that was voted down by a combination of Labour and Conservative councillors. Will he not accept that as fact?
Single-year underspends and raiding reserves—we hear the same things over and over. Those can be spent only once, and the bus provision is a recurring cost to the council.
MSPs have rightly criticised the cuts to the Scottish Government budget over the years, but the same MSPs seem to be strangely silent when those cuts are multiplied and then handed on to councils. Councillors are now left to choose between lots of bad things. There are no more positive choices to be made in the world of local government—only where to make cuts after a decade of deprioritisation of council budgets.
Councils must choose between teachers and school buses; between teaching assistants and school buses; between breakfast clubs and school buses; and between swimming pools, libraries, dealing with potholes, grass cutting or play parks and school buses. All those council services are being pitched against school buses. Twenty-seven other councils have already made that decision—some now provide only the statutory minimum—and yet we have no motions of regret here about those decisions.
Government ministers and back benchers regularly tell Opposition MSPs that, if they want to spending cuts to be reversed, they need to say where the alternative cut should be made. Those ministers and members need to start practising what they preach when it comes to council decisions, because councils all over the country are now reverting to statutory minimum levels of services across all departments, not just on school buses, because of those Government cuts.
I agree with the motion that all walking routes should be robustly assessed for safety, and if a route is not safe, free transport absolutely should be provided. I also agree that the Scottish Government should engage with councils on that issue, because the guidance on assessing the safety of school walking routes is set nationally by the Government. I am sure that the parents who are here in the chamber and across the country will be interested in hearing from the minister about any proposed change to that guidance.
North Lanarkshire Council has been clear that, if the Government wants to revise the national policy to reduce the mileage limits or the guidance on safety, it should provide the appropriate funding nationally. If there are to be any substantial changes to that policy, given the in-year increases to the Government’s budget and the substantial increases to its budget for next year, I understand that North Lanarkshire Council stands ready to look again at its decision in the light of those changes to guidance and of increased funding.
13:16
I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate, albeit that MSPs have no jurisdiction to reverse the decision to cut school buses in North Lanarkshire. It is an important debate all the same.
In the interests of being open and transparent, I say that I was a councillor between 2017 and 2021, and I also led the Conservative group on North Lanarkshire Council.
Regrettably, it comes as no surprise to me that North Lanarkshire Council eventually took the difficult decision to reduce bus services to the levels required by statutory guidance. That guidance, as was rightly pointed out by Gillian Mackay, was created in Parliament. This particular cut was on the table when I, as a councillor, was leading my group through budget processes, and it has been on the table year on year. That does not make the decision right, but I am hoping to use my time today to present a timeline of events that puts the decision into context.
We can all agree that cuts have consequences and that budget-setting processes in councils are becoming near impossible. If we look at council budgets in the round, we see that council tax payments from taxpayers make up roughly 14 per cent of the full core budget. The rest of the budget relies on funding from the Scottish Government, and that comes at a heavy cost. Ring fencing is restricting choice for councillors, who face impossible decisions while searching through a menu of cuts that are outlined by council officers in order to pass a balanced and legal budget. When education takes up roughly 50 per cent of the budget in North Lanarkshire, there is little to no wiggle room to fund any service that is non-statutory.
That is why North Lanarkshire has lost services such as club 365 and the Kilbowie outdoor centre. It will now charge for brown bins, it has removed librarians and it will reduce the number of classroom assistants. We are considering closing swimming pools and community centres. I do not think that any politician in their right mind would reduce or close services unless they absolutely had to in order to get a balanced budget.
The forecast of cuts over the next three years for North Lanarkshire Council—this is a really important point, and it is why I asked the question of Gillian Mackay earlier—is about £60 million, and that will come on top of the £0.25 billion that has already been cut since 2013. The communities that Gillian Mackay, Fulton MacGregor, Mark Griffin and I represent will need to brace themselves for more pain and suffering this year. That could have been reflected in the motion. Like many of us, I am completely fed up with the state of local government, and I am completely scunnered that communities bear the brunt of poor political choices.
I move on to the buses. When I was a councillor, I fought hard not to cut school buses at a time when the council was skint. Councils are not skint now—they are at the brink of bankruptcy. We have completely surpassed the point of councils being skint. I do not think that I would want to be an elected member of a local council now, having to face communities knowing that any decision that the council takes will impact the poorest, the disabled, the elderly and our children.
North Lanarkshire Council has agreed to review walking routes to schools that are deemed as not safe by a member-officer working group. Given that they were not safe when the matter was reviewed back in 2019, I do not know why the situation would have changed and why we are now having a repeat of the discussions that took place back then.
When we look at this issue in the round, we see that it all comes down to children and their safety. I am disappointed that parents’ groups have been excluded from the decision-making process; after all, it is their children who will be directly impacted. Therefore, I ask the council in my contribution to apply some common sense and ensure that the UNCRC is adhered to and that parents can be actively involved. They do not want to cause trouble; they just want to make sure that their children are safe getting to school and getting back home. As a parent, I understand the fear of having children walk dangerous routes, because the council has supplied no buses to get them to school. I would not tolerate my daughter being placed in such a dangerous situation, and the same goes for any child in North Lanarkshire.
The decision to reverse the cuts to school buses is ultimately one for councillors, because this Government will not step in. I applaud the parents who are taking a stand today and who are with us in the public gallery, but I am fearful that this is only the beginning of many unpalatable and difficult decisions that will need to be taken over the next three years. It is incumbent on us, as MSPs, to continue to fight for local government so that we do not have to debate more motions in this place on cuts to local government funding.
13:21
I thank Gillian Mackay for securing this debate on behalf of her constituents, who are here in the chamber today, and I congratulate those constituents on raising the profile of the often very complex issue of school transport on the national stage. I am sure that their campaign is really resonating with communities across Scotland.
Getting the wee ones out safely to school in the morning and back in the afternoon is a real challenge for many families. It defines the working day for many people. Indeed, I fondly remember those days myself. I am minded to think back to my former role as a councillor in Dunblane, where I supported many families who had similar school transport problems.
In the case of Dunblane, a commercial bus service linking both sides of the town was withdrawn, leaving many pupils stranded, and, in the dark and wet, children like Ella would struggle to get to school, while half-empty buses carrying distance-entitled pupils would go past, unable to stop. The distance-entitlement criteria meant that some of their friends in neighbouring streets could get the bus, while they could not. In the end, more parents drove to the high school, causing more parking safety issues. Some of those who managed to walk did so on unlit paths, while those who cycled had the benefit of the national cycle network in the town, but unsafe crossing points still had to be negotiated, which put off many children.
At that time, there was no concessionary travel for children over five years old. Today, there is free bus travel for all under-22s, which has provided flexibility for young people and supported commercial bus services. That said, there is a critical need for councils to co-ordinate services between education buses and fare-paying services. As many members have reflected, the critical elements are parental engagement and planning.
At the start of last term, students in Dunfermline were desperate to get on commercial buses going to Woodmill high school, but, given the numbers of under-22 card holders and fare-paying passengers, there was overcrowding to the point that some buses drove past students, leaving them stranded on the pavement. Some buses were late, while others did not arrive at all, which made it stressful for families and forced teachers to challenge lateness. One of my constituents told me:
“Having to provide comfort and support for my daughter as she transitioned to high school is naturally being part of a parent, but having to manage unreliable bus services and to tell her that it is not her fault that the bus did not stop or was a no-show was painful.”
This term, in Dunfermline, a new commercial bus service has been introduced to plug the gap and meet demand, but that could have been anticipated by Fife Council much earlier in the summer. The fact, though, is that parental engagement and planning are really important.
It is also important that councils consider how we make walking, wheeling and cycling to school more accessible, safer and fun for young people. Councils need to keep working on creating safer routes from the streets where young people live to their schools.
The first step in that respect is safer 20mph speed limits. The next step is proper investment in walking, wheeling and cycle paths away from traffic, with better crossing points and other improvements. That will require funding in next year’s Scottish budget, so that councils can deliver the tier 1 projects at pace and finally complete their planned roll-out of 20mph speed limits. I hope that the transport minister is listening to that point and will reflect on it when closing the debate.
In particular, the national cycle network is a great resource that connects many local streets to schools, but it requires investment to make it more accessible and safer.
Of course, all those investments support health, road safety and traffic and pollution reduction. All schools must be supported to deliver bikeability training on the streets around schools, while building a confident school cycle culture, with bike buses and other programmes.
Again, I thank Gillian Mackay and the campaigners. I wish them well and hope that other school communities and councils across Scotland will take inspiration from their campaign, get the engagement right and design the right school travel solutions for their communities. A package of solutions is needed. Buses and active travel are part of that, and parents and pupils must be at the heart of that conversation.
13:25
I thank Gillian Mackay for bringing the debate to the chamber.
In April 2023, I ran a consultation on the safety concerns about the reduction in school bus services. I had an overwhelming response, with those taking part saying that they could not see how the reduction would improve pupil safety. I also walked from Cathedral primary school to Adele Street with pupils, parents and carers, including Kerry Anne Ferrie and some of the campaign supporters who are in the public gallery today. The walk crosses Airbles Road, a partially dualled carriageway, which is due to undergo major extension work in order to join the M74 to the M8. Two of the busiest roads in Scotland will be joined in an arterial route through Motherwell, which is declared a safe walking route for primary children. That pan-Lanarkshire link will have a big impact on the area, and it is still in its development phase. While that work is completed over the next four years, it is likely that there will be additional traffic on the surrounding roads, too, which will create a dangerous hazard for our young people.
On that walk, we had to negotiate traffic that was stopped across the pedestrian crossing on Windmillhill Street. I am well known in the Parliament for campaigning on safety issues and starting the cross-party group on accident prevention and safety awareness. That is because my teenage niece was killed on a pedestrian crossing in 2003. The vehicle that was involved in that accident with Mhairi could not see her and was not in a position to see her because traffic was stopped across a pedestrian crossing. We can imagine the same situation happening not just with a teenager but with a primary 1 or 2 pupil trying to negotiate gridlocked traffic at rush hour in Motherwell. That is of great concern to me.
I am a member of the Catholic community in North Lanarkshire and a supporter of Catholic education in the area. Education Scotland’s His Majesty’s inspectors of education 2023 report on the proposals highlights that inspectors had met church representatives from the archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, the diocese of Motherwell and the archdiocese of Glasgow, who reported a concern that the proposals would impact Catholic education, because the catchment areas for Catholic schools tend to be larger for both primary and secondary schools.
That makes it all the more unbelievable that there was not an equality impact assessment as part of the decision-making process in North Lanarkshire. There was no engagement with the dioceses and no risk analysis that would provide confidence for parents and guardians. There was no meaningful engagement, as has been said, and there was no consultation with the young people who will be affected. That flies in the face of all the work that we have been doing on young people’s rights to be heard on issues that will directly impact them.
In addition, I do not believe that there has been any additional investment in safe walking and cycling education or road safety education in those areas. As Mark Ruskell pointed out, the funds were there for active travel measures such as improving safe cycling and walking routes. North Lanarkshire Council could have engaged in those processes before making its decision, which has had a devastating impact on our young people.
Finally, we know that budget issues are a problem for councils, but we also know that the unallocated reserves in North Lanarkshire Council’s general fund run at 16 per cent—at £39 million—whereas the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Accounts Commission have said that a reasonable level of unallocated reserves for a council to hold is 3 to 4 per cent. There is money available, as identified by the SNP group on the council. I hope and trust that the working group will look at the safety issues and reverse the decision before any damage is done.
13:30
I thank Gillian Mackay for bringing the debate to the Parliament. I do not represent North Lanarkshire, but I represent one of the 27 other council areas that Mark Griffin referenced. I am absolutely behind parents who are campaigning on the issue because, as the motion states, the situation across Scotland is unacceptable.
I believe that the policy and guidance on the distance limits lie at the heart of the issue. It is not a coincidence that 27 councils—with more to follow, I suspect—are coming to the same decision. That guidance was written for a different age.
We are forgetting that, at the heart of the debate are children, who do not make a choice to go to school; we make that choice for them—they have to go. They do not choose where they live, either. As MSPs and politicians, there is always a danger that we accept the myth that all parents think that it is important to get their kids to school. Yes, there are some parents in the public gallery who are campaigning passionately on the issues, but there are other parents for whom that is not their priority. Likewise, it is not their priority to think about what their kids will have for lunch at school. On some of those issues, there is a strong case for universal provision and making sure that our guidance is fit for purpose.
In my constituency, children are told that it is safe to walk down 60mph single-carriageway roads, with no pavements and often with ditches at the side. They are told that they can walk through fields in the rain—often fields that have livestock in them for half the year. They are told that they can get on public buses that do not exist or that do not run to timetable and get them to school on time. Best of all, we have had council officers—I do not blame them, because they have the hard job of defending some of the changes—saying that, because of health and safety at work regulations, they cannot walk routes with parents or young people because those routes are not safe. Something not right is happening in the background.
We have to be willing to go back to the guidance because, as several members have said, the policy should be based on safety and not distance. The proposals should also be equality impact assessed. As well as the fact that there are more cars on the road, which is clearly a problem, I suspect that many young people are giving up on school and are absent more often, perhaps because they do not have the support that we would all like them to have from their families. Those young people are disproportionately impacted by the changes.
The motion touches on the provision of buses more widely and investment in active travel. I believe that, if the guidelines were changed, there would be greater encouragement for local authorities and other interested parties to work on safe active travel. As a rural member, it often seems that such projects are seen as being too difficult, too expensive or not important enough.
I draw the minister’s and members’ attention to a project at Penpont in my constituency, which has involved millions of pounds being spent on a safe route for cycling and walking, which is allowing young people who live at the boundary of the three-mile limit to cycle and walk to school. These things can be done if the will is there, but the Government needs to make changes to encourage local authorities to think again.
I call Jim Fairlie to respond to the debate.
13:34
Like Graham Simpson, I will very much attempt to keep away from politics because a lot of local politics have been described today.
I thank Gillian Mackay for bringing the debate to the chamber and everyone who has contributed to what has been a really interesting debate.
I have engaged considerably with Fulton MacGregor and Clare Adamson over a long time. People are clearly talking about the issue and looking for a solution to it. I also give credit to the campaign groups that are in the chamber today. They have been working hard over a long time.
Delivery of effective, fair, safe and climate-friendly home-to-school transport is an important responsibility for all local authorities, and I know that they do not take it lightly. It is also of central importance to the Scottish Government’s priorities of tackling child poverty, ensuring high-quality, sustainable public services and tackling the climate emergency. It is therefore critically important that we work together to ensure that school pupils in Scotland can travel to and from school safely.
Local authorities rightly have wide discretion on how they meet their statutory obligations on home-to-school transport. They are best placed to make those decisions, based on local knowledge of the transport network and the needs of all the pupils in their council area. That said, the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 sets out statutory walking distances. Those are a long-standing feature of our education system and they broadly reflect the statutory position in other United Kingdom nations. I can confirm that there are no plans to change those.
Will the minister reflect on the situation now, compared with the 1980s, and the fact that those limits were put in place before I was born? With regard to the level of traffic, we are living in an entirely different time to the time when those limits were created. Roads are now much busier and much more dangerous for children. The fact that those limits have not been reviewed in so long demonstrates an absolute failure on our part to ensure children’s safety.
I very much take on board Gillian Mackay’s point. However, as I said, there are no plans to change the limits. I absolutely accept that infrastructure has changed over that time, but I will come on to talk about the safety element of what local authorities should be considering.
It is important to be clear that statutory walking distances are only one element to be considered and that they do not negate the duties of local authorities in relation to pupil safety. Oliver Mundell also made that point. Where routes are considered to be unsafe, alternatives should be considered, including the provision of transport, even if the distance involved falls short of the statutory eligibility criteria.
The minister said that alternatives should be considered, but does he not agree that they must be considered?
Local authorities have a statutory duty to consider these positions, and I would expect any local authority to have taken that point on board.
The Scottish Government expects local authorities to keep the school transport eligibility criteria under review, taking into account factors that might affect pupil safety, and to meaningfully engage with pupils and families when considering the impact of changes. That point has been made a number of times today in relation to the consultation process.
Will the minister give way?
Yes.
I thank the minister for giving way, and I promise that I will not take too long.
These are just words. It would be helpful if, today, the Government were to agree to a review or to consider a review. That would benefit not only parents, but children and their safety, which is what we are talking about today.
I am going to keep moving on, and, perhaps, without more interventions, members will get answers to some of their points.
The Cabinet Secretary for Transport, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills and I have commissioned an update to the Scottish Government’s school transport guidance for local authorities to provide further clarity and to highlight the points that I am making this afternoon and that have been made by a number of people in the chamber. The updated guidance will set out our expectations in relation to factors that local authorities should consider when making decisions on the provision of school transport.
I understand the disappointment of pupils and families in areas such as North Lanarkshire where a local authority has chosen to bring in changes to the distance in relation to eligibility for where dedicated school transport is provided.
In June, together with Christina McKelvie and Monica Lennon, I met members of the North Lanarkshire transport action group, and we heard directly from parents’ groups from North and South Lanarkshire about concerns over proposed changes, in particular around the safety of the journey that some children will be asked to make to school.
I welcome North Lanarkshire Council’s decision to set up a working group to review school transport provision for its primary schools in advance of the proposed reductions to eligibility for school transport for those pupils next year. I strongly encourage that council—and, indeed, all local authorities considering changes in provision—to ensure that the views of young people and their families are included in that exercise.
Members have also referenced the young persons free bus travel scheme. It is a transformational policy that is opening up opportunities to young people right across Scotland in leisure, learning, work and social activities—and in keeping family ties very close—that would not otherwise be available. At the same time, it is encouraging bus use among young people in order to create travelling habits, helping us to meet our climate ambitions.
However, I would stress that that scheme does not change the specific responsibilities and duties of councils in relation to the provision of school transport. It was not designed to replicate dedicated home-school transport. The scheme gives young people access to an entitlement that allows them to travel independently, for free, across the whole country.
To mitigate potential child safety risks, parent or guardian consent is required for under-16s. That allows those who know the child best to make a careful judgment about whether they are suitably equipped to exercise their entitlement responsibly and safely. That right should not be used as a proxy to remove the obligation to provide school transport for young people when that is required. Mark Ruskell eloquently described some of the issues that that causes. He also talked about home-school transport going beyond the school bus.
Over the past four years, the Scottish Government has invested more than £500 million in walking, wheeling and cycling, including £157 million this year. For 2024-25, the delivery models for infrastructure and behaviour change projects have changed. They now provide direct funding to local authorities and regional transport partnerships, so that they can drive forward local priority projects, including those that will support pupils and their families to walk, wheel or cycle for the school run.
In respect of safety, we have supported the delivery of the bikeability Scotland programme through Cycling Scotland, with more than £2 million of funding for 2024-25. A record number of Scottish councils delivered on-road cycle training at every local primary school last year. There is continued investment in that area, which is critical to the safety of school children on our roads.
I reiterate my thanks to members for their valuable contributions this afternoon. It is of key importance that all parties involved in the discussions in North Lanarkshire—and in other local authority areas in similar circumstances—reach a settled position to minimise disruption and concern for young people in their areas.
13:42 Meeting suspended.Air ais
First Minister’s Question TimeAir adhart
Portfolio Question Time