Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Official Report 691KB pdf

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Seat Belts on School Transport (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Item 7 is evidence on the Seat Belts on School Transport (Scotland) Bill. I welcome George Mair, director, and Paul White, communications manager, from the Confederation of Passenger Transport. I also welcome Alex Scott, bus services manager, and Alan Hutton, team leader for schools, from Strathclyde partnership for transport, and Gary McGowan, who I am told—I hope that I get this right—is the chairman of education transport at the Association of Transport Co-ordinating Officers. Have I got that right?

That is correct.

I apologise to you all for the slight overrun on the timings that you were given at the outset. I am afraid that we have had quite a lot of business to deal with this morning.

I ask members to keep their questions as tight as possible. I also ask witnesses to keep their answers as tight to the questions as possible, please. If there are any questions that we struggle to get through, we might ask for your opinion at a later date.

Stewart Stevenson will kick off the questions.

I will compress what I am going to ask, although there might be more than one issue in it.

Do you support what is proposed? Are there any other non-statutory ways in which we could proceed with the policy? Do you think that we have constructed a bill that is capable of implementation? Perhaps you can answer in turn from right to left, starting with George Mair.

Sorry—I thought that you meant my right.

I beg your pardon. I meant my right, but it does not matter.

Maybe I can help, as the convener. Let us hear from George Mair first.

We have supported the work throughout the process, from conception to where we are now. We have been part of the working group that was set up to deal with it, which involves local authorities and various others. There was a point when I wondered whether it was necessary to go down a statutory path to deliver the policy, but as we have gone on, I have concluded that it was probably wise to do that rather than try to get a collective agreement across 32 different local authorities. There were different views on different things. We have supported the work, and we will continue to support it and to play an active part in the process.

Like the CPT, SPT has been engaged in the work of the working group since the outset, and I echo George Mair’s comments. Anything that improves safety on public transport—particularly school transport, because of the client group—is to be welcomed.

In its own way, legislation raises the profile of the issue. At the outset of the meetings, I flagged up to the civil servants who were handling the bill the importance of messaging, which is perhaps the most important aspect of the process. Children—particularly secondary school children—are a tough audience to convince to wear seat belts, and that will be a continuing challenge. Everyone has a part to play in that, and we have involved parents in the working group.

We support the bill as a key component of overall safety.

I echo the statements that have been made by George Mair and Alex Scott. ATCO has been involved from the start of the discussions and we support the measures, which will improve safety on school transport.

As Alex Scott said, however, the difficulty will be in getting the message out there. We would like to see educational measures or the dissemination of information to schools and children, including those at secondary school, to try to get them to wear seat belts. Getting children to wear seat belts is probably the biggest issue for the councils that have implemented the policy.

The next question is mine. Do you think that the requirement for seat belts to be fitted to all dedicated school transport is the best way to improve the safety of school transport? If not, what would you like to see happen? I went to a primary school on Monday, where I was told that one of the best ways to improve safety was for teachers and parents to tell the children to wear the seat belts, rather than to just have them fitted. Is there anything else that you think ought to be done, or is fitting seat belts the most important thing?

I agree that we need to have some educational development, which should cover schools, parents, teachers and parents associations, to enforce and to establish or re-establish the wearing of seat belts on school transport.

It is important. It is a constantly changing situation, because the audience—if you like—is constantly changing. Kids start school and leave school. Continuing that messaging will have to be seen as a long-term project.

Culturally, if we can encourage the primary school children to get into the habit of wearing seat belts, perhaps that will seep through as they progress to secondary school and they will be less loth—because of peer pressure or whatever other reason—to wear seat belts.

There needs to be a suite of options to encourage kids to do that and to get the message out there. There are examples in our area of operators taking buses to primary schools and encouraging kids by giving them hands-on experience of fitting the seat belts themselves. That is part of the bigger, wider message that we all have a part to play in getting across.

If we look at how other transport modes, such as cycling, have done things, this might be a good opportunity. Cycle safety classes address safety but also allow familiarisation with the mode, which encourages further use. Familiarising primary school age children with public transport will have effects that go beyond the use of seat belts and beyond secondary school. It will encourage more use of sustainable and active transport as they move on to being fare payers in adult life. There is a real opportunity.

So the issue is more about encouragement and education than it is about enforcement. Who would be responsible for ensuring that the seat belts on the bus were used? Would that be anyone’s responsibility, or would we just hope that they would be?

There are a couple of things to mention. First, the minute a seat belt is available on a coach, it is a legal requirement for children of 14 and above to wear it. If they do not wear it, it is an offence, and it is an offence that they can be fined for. If they are between three and 13, it is a different situation. That is currently being looked at by the Department for Transport. We hope that that will be resolved. Work has been done on the issue; I think that officials indicated that when they appeared before the committee a couple of weeks back.

However, in the age band of 14 and upwards, it is a legal requirement to wear a seat belt if it is available. If someone is caught not wearing a seat belt, it is classed as a criminal offence.

So the legal responsibility falls on the individual who is not wearing the seat belt and not on, for example, the bus driver or a monitor.

Duties are placed on the driver, and there are four options that an operator can use. The driver can make an announcement at the start of the journey or as soon as possible after that. On Citylink services and some other inter-urban coaches, the drivers make an announcement at each stop, so that people who get on are aware of the legal requirement.

The points that Alex Scott and others have made about a partnership approach show that it is a key issue for the industry. Draft guidance documents are being drawn up as part of the current work. Those need to set out clearly the key responsibilities that are placed on drivers, operators of vehicles, schools, parents and everybody who is involved in the process.

Given that wearing a seat belt is a legal requirement and there is an onus on everybody who is on the bus, including the driver, if there is an accident and someone is hurt, is the driver somehow culpable?

At the start of a journey, the driver will indicate that seat belts are available and that it is a legal requirement for people to wear them if they are aged 14 or above, but he cannot monitor the situation while he is driving the vehicle. If he were to do so, that would perhaps put the folk on the coach in greater danger than would not wearing the seat belts, so we have to be sensible about it.

We encourage kids to wear seat belts through the different methods that everybody has mentioned: working with schools and with kids themselves to get across the message that, in the event of the vehicle being involved in a collision, wearing a seat belt will reduce the risk of them being injured. Everybody has a duty to try to get that message across to the kids. The way to do that is to say that their parents would not put them in a car without getting them to put a seat belt on. They will then do it themselves and get into the habit of doing it. The approach should be a collective one that sets out the responsibilities of each individual.

Some of those responsibilities are already in place through the Motor Vehicles (Wearing of Seat Belts) (Amendment) Regulations 2006, which set out some clear and specific responsibilities on individuals, drivers and operators of vehicles. There is some legislation there. For children who are a bit younger—those aged three to 13—the position is a bit vague, but we hope that the DFT will come up with some additional clarification on that in the weeks and months ahead.

I think that Mairi Evans wants to push a wee bit more on that.

I do. I also want to follow on from Gail Ross’s last question and to clarify something. If there was an accident and a child had not been wearing a seat belt, would that be the individual’s own fault? Are they the one who is considered to be at fault rather than the driver?

I am not a solicitor, so I cannot answer that question from a legal point of view, but the legislation sets out in quite clear terms that, if a person is aged 14 or above, they have a legal responsibility to wear a seat belt where one is available.

Okay.

I understand that there is a legal responsibility. Does that make the parents culpable if somebody of that age is not wearing a seat belt or can the person be held culpable themselves?

Again, I am not—

I just wanted to know whether you knew the answer.

I am sorry—Mairi Evans has some more questions.

I want to talk a bit more about the rules governing the use of seat belts by pupils travelling on school transport. There are lots of different restrictions depending on whether they are travelling on a coach, a small minibus or a large minibus. Do you think that those rules need to be simplified? If so, do you have any suggestions to make in that regard?

George, before you answer that, I am keen to bring in other members of the panel—although you are giving very authoritative answers, for which we are grateful. Would anyone else like to come in before George answers?

The law is slightly different for minibuses, taxis and so on anyway. There is an existing legal requirement for passengers to wear seat belts in those smaller vehicles, so I suppose that your question is about larger vehicles that do not currently have seat belts. Large vehicles such as coaches are required to have seat belts and people are supposed to wear them anyway if they are travelling on them, so it is only the vehicles that do not currently have seat belts that would be brought into the legislation.

Would anyone else like to answer?

George, would you like to come in, as I cut you off earlier?

I have lost my line of thought; it might come back to me.

I have another question. You talked earlier about the work that needs to be done to educate children into wearing seat belts, but are there any specific actions that you think the Scottish Government should be taking to promote the use of seat belts by children at whatever age? Do you have any specific recommendations?

12:45  

The bill is moving through the Scottish Parliament. If and when it is passed into law, there will be a real opportunity to have a publicity campaign to raise awareness. If the Scottish Government were to work with parent groups and bus operators, that would assist greatly. Parents are invested in ensuring that their children are safe, as we all are. As George Mair said, there is a legal responsibility on those over 14 to wear seat belts anyway, but it is clear that more work needs to be done on the younger ones.

There is no silver bullet or magic answer to this. There will have to be a lot of serious partnership working between all the stakeholders—the schools, the local authorities, the Scottish Government and anyone else who can bring anything to this matter.

I have a final question. Do you have any concerns about the enforcement of the duty on school authorities to operate school transport services using vehicles that are fitted with seat belts? Could that have implications for bus operators and their staff?

George, that is probably your domain.

If you look at the situation—this picks up on some of the previous discussion about coaches taking kids to school—you will probably find that the vast majority of coaches that are used for that type of work have seat belts. Having been the managing director of a bus company, I know that some of the schools were very pedantic about the safety features that they wanted to see in coaches that transport kids. In the majority of cases these days, a coach will turn up at a school to take kids to activities, and in many cases it will be the same coach that transported them to school in the morning.

The important thing for operators and staff is that we try to operate one set of guidance. Let us not have two sets of guidance—one that is linked to the legislation and a separate one for the dedicated school bus. For the benefit of the staff, it will be far better to have one guidance document that everybody can work to. That is a more sensible approach. That has been my plea throughout the process: let us not duplicate things. If there is already guidance, it should be refreshed and made suitable to cover both eventualities so that, if kids travel on a school bus in the morning, we have the procedures to be followed and they have to wear their seat belts, and the same applies if the same bus or coach comes back to take them to the swimming baths.

I think that Alex Scott wants to come in, and then a point that you made there, George, will lead me neatly on to the next question.

I echo what George Mair said. In the SPT area, we are responsible for transporting approximately 37,000 kids every day to and from school. Most of our local authorities had already started the move towards fitting seat belts before the bill process began, so it is not as if there is a huge mountain to climb, at least from the point of view of the bus operators. However, as George Mair said, clear and uniform guidance would be helpful.

At one of the meetings of the working group, I made the point that, whereas dedicated home-to-school transport would be covered by the requirement for seat belts to be fitted, the same child who arrives at school in a dedicated bus might then be taken to the swimming baths or another educational establishment for vocational training, and there would be no requirement for seat belts to be fitted for that. My concern is that that dilutes the message about the importance of wearing seat belts.

That is exactly the point that Rhoda Grant picked up on. I think that she wants to come in on that.

Yes. The bill only covers travel to school. It does not cover school excursions and the like. Does that throw up anomalies or can that be dealt with in guidance? If it can be dealt with in guidance, can the aim of the whole bill be dealt with in guidance? Does it cause a problem to have two different systems?

Yes, I think that it causes a problem. To go back to my previous comment, I guess—and it is a guess; I have no statistics to back it up—that a fairly high percentage of the vehicles that are used to take kids to swimming or other activities already have seat belts. The issue is the need for one set of procedures.

Coaches have been required to have seat belts since 2001, which is 16 years ago. I believe that the number of coaches that are older than that, and might therefore not have seat belts, is quite low. As time passes, it is likely that the coach fleet in Scotland will move towards being fully fitted with seat belts. The legislation would therefore say that, if a seat belt is available, people should use it. It is important that the guidance flows through those two scenarios. If coaches without seat belts are still being used, that is confusing for kids.

Does anyone else want to come in on that?

To pick up on that point, there is a potential problem in having two different types of trip. We organise trips on behalf of some of our councils to swimming baths, and there are consortium and vocational journeys as well as home-to-school trips. It depends on councils’ individual needs. If individual councils are aware that seat belts are required on home-to-school trips, they might decide to introduce that requirement for journeys during the day, which might reduce the potential for conflict.

I suppose there might be a difficulty when individual councils do not control the provision. Such schools might not have been given the same type of guidance—which George Mair mentioned—to say that they need to ensure that there are seat belts in their vehicles, and that, as vehicles are brought in, schools should ensure that they are fitted with seat belts.

Perhaps the message needs to be extended to cover other transport requirements during the day. As I said, councils may actually begin to introduce such a requirement. Even though many of the current contracts do not specify the provision of seat belts, the operators are providing them. They have been moving forward as certain councils’ contracts have changed, so in other councils’ contracts they are providing seat belts over and above the statutory requirement.

You said that there are occasions on which transport is not the responsibility of the school. I would have thought that any transport from school to school activities would always be the school’s responsibility.

I am sorry; I was referring to a school that is not within the local authority. In other words, who arranges that contract? Is it the school or the local authority, or is it a private school? That relates to who draws up and controls the contract, and the need to ensure that they build in guidance so that it is part of the process.

I want to ask about the lead-in time. The date of implementation is 2018 for primary schools and 2021 for secondary schools. Does that give operators enough time to make the changes that are required and to ensure that all buses have seat belts? Are any contracts already in place that run beyond that term?

We have been keeping the industry up to date from the outset of the project in 2014. Among the 18 authorities that are already there, a third are in the SPT area. Keeping authorities that have multiple contracts informed allows them time to work through the process and renew the contracts. The operators who tender for work in the areas in which the scenario is new will deal with the requirements through the tender price and such like. We have been warning people for two or three years already that the change is coming, and we have told them when it is likely to come into effect.

Before we move on to a question from another member, which I think leads on from something that George Mair said, may I clarify something, so that I fully understand it? Is everyone on this panel saying that they would prefer to have the same laws for transport from home to school and transport from school to activity? That appears to be what you all said, and it is important that the committee logs that. Can I take that as an affirmative?

Yes.

We have 32 councils, of which 18 ensure that seat belts are fitted. That leaves 14, of which six might be doing that. Why are some authorities doing it already? I was a councillor in North Lanarkshire Council for 36 years—very boring—and we brought up the issue several times. We have been talking about having seat belts on school transport for seven, eight or nine years, and we still have not done it, although we are steadily moving towards it. Why have some councils done it while others have not?

Alan Hutton will correct me if I am wrong but, as of this year, all our authorities will specify seat belts—I see that Alan is nodding. It has been a gradual process over the years. We organise transport for 11 local authorities in our area and, over the years, authorities have variously decided to specify seat belts. We advertise the tender specifications based on what the authorities instruct us to do, but I cannot speak for the councils themselves.

I admire Richard Lyle’s tenacity, because 36 years as a local councillor is a long time, with many challenges. You have obviously risen to a greater level—

Steady on, George.

Greater heights. [Laughter.] Maybe the council wanted rid of me. I do not know.

Richard Lyle asked why some authorities specify seat belts and some do not. There could be a number of factors. I suspect that the additional cost might have been enough to make local authorities think that specifying seat belts would be challenging. In the early days, there were significant issues when councils said, “Yes, we want to do it but we are uncertain about the type of seat belt to use” and got into legal debates about the implications of using the wrong type. It might have looked a bit too difficult.

I have not heard anyone among those who are doing it now being negative about the approach. They might say that they went through some pain to get there, but it is working reasonably well. Over the next few years, we will see the rest of the local authorities pick up the approach and run with it.

You referred to coaches, but in the SPT area double-deckers are used—that is what I mostly see serving schools. Is that maybe why there has been resistance? Some of the double-deckers are not six years old; they are a wee bit closer to being 14, 15 or 16 years old.

There are technical issues with fitting seat belts on certain types of double-deck bus, particularly in the upper saloon. Some of them have been got round and the required standards have been met; other local authorities have moved from double-decks to high-capacity 70-seat coaches. There are a variety of options at operators’ disposal.

At the end of the day, the council will set the spec, and if the operator wants to tender for the contract, he will have to come up with a solution. If that means investing some money in changing the seating or fitting seat belts, that will undoubtedly be reflected in the price that he puts in his tender. I am not sure about the double-decks. Alan Hutton might be able to answer that one, but in the six SPT areas where it has been done, the operators will have met the tender specification. If you do not meet the spec, you do not get the work.

13:00  

Before we move on to our last question, I am happy to let Alex Scott and Gary McGowan come in briefly, if they have something to add to that.

I cannot really add anything to that. There should not be an issue if the operator meets the specification and the seat belts are Department for Transport approved.

As the chaps have said, a reason for the delay has been the perceived cost of fitting seat belts to certain vehicles. The councils that relied heavily on having a large quantity of double-deckers to move volumes of children might have been concerned about moving away from those vehicles.

In addition, as George Mair said, since 2001, the law has been that all coaches must have seat belts. Therefore, the availability of seat belts in the fleets has been greater. Changes in transport are often incremental and fairly slow moving, so the fitting of seat belts has probably happened over time. On one hand, there was a bit of resistance from the councils to move on; on the other hand, there are operators with newer fleets or fleets that have seat belts.

John Mason has a final question.

The financial memorandum tells us that the estimated cost of implementing the bill’s proposals is £8.9 million. That is quite a high figure. We are also told that there are only 110 buses in operation that do not have seat belts and that the vast majority of those are in Strathclyde. If I heard the evidence correctly, all the Strathclyde authorities are committed to phasing out those buses. Why do we need to spend any money? Do we need the bill at all? If the bill is necessary, is the £8.9 million an overly generous amount?

Would Alex Scott like to answer that? John Mason’s argument is that £8.9 million is to be spent on just over 100 buses. Is that correct?

Yes, and the vast majority of those buses will not, I think, be operating after the summer.

That is correct. I am not entirely certain where that figure came from, although I presume that it was produced by Transport Scotland officials. As I have said, bus operators have been aware—probably for some time—that this was the general direction of travel on the seat belts question and, over the years, they have gradually been refreshing their fleets. This year, all our local authorities will specify that seat belts are a requirement.

During the information-gathering exercise, we were asked by civil servants whether we had seen considerably increased tender costs. The cost will vary from area to area, but in the SPT area there are a large number of operators, so the competition is fairly healthy, and there was no noticeable uphill struggle in that regard.

George, do you want to justify the figure?

I thought the figure to be fairly ambitious, but I note that the allocation period is up to 2031. I have heard that some local authorities have made the change and that it did not turn out to be as costly as they had expected it to be. Other than that comment, I do not want to justify the figure, thank you.

That is helpful. We will probably reflect on that point when we question the member or the minister on the bill.

We are talking about a lot of taxpayers’ money. What has come out in this morning’s evidence is that—unlike what we were led to believe, as the convener mentioned—a lot of local authorities do not have this programme to come. Is it possible to get an update on which local authorities are—if I can call it this—lagging behind? Is the bill necessary if the councils are signed up to the measure anyway?

I do not really know, so I would not want to pronounce on that. All our local authorities are acting to comply in advance of legislation—

Are all 32 local authorities in the same position?

I can only provide information on the 11 local authorities that we deal with.

Are they on track?

Yes.

It would be helpful if we could find that information.

Yes, we will look at that issue. We will try to include information on that point in the briefing for the next evidence session.

The bill does not apply simply to local authorities. I take it that your evidence has not covered private schools.

No.

One of the officers indicated in their response that the vast majority of private schools are using coaches with seat belts.

Sure. I am just making the observation that another sector is involved.

It is an interesting point on which we might want to seek clarification.

I thank the panellists for coming to give evidence. I apologise again for keeping them waiting.

That concludes today’s business. After the recess, we will continue to take evidence on the Seat Belts on School Transport (Scotland) Bill, and we will get an update from the Minister for UK Negotiations on Scotland’s Place in Europe, Mike Russell.

Before I close the meeting, on behalf of the committee, I thank Mairi Evans for her work on the committee and wish her well in her move to her new committee. I also thank members for the work that they have put in this morning.

Meeting closed at 13:06.