Joe Fagan, a Scottish Labour leadership candidate, is under fire for cutting free school buses for pupils when he was a council leader. Fagan blamed the SNP Government for a decision that removed the eligibility for over 1,200 young people.
Background on the candidate
Fagan, who was elected to Holyrood for the first time in May, is going head-to-head against fellow MSP Michael Marra to succeed Anas Sarwar. He led South Lanarkshire council for four years from 2022 and has cited his record in leading the £1bn organisation during the contest.
Fagan is now facing scrutiny over a hugely controversial cut to the school transport system when he was in charge. Secondary pupils in South Lanarkshire had been given free buses if they lived more than two miles from school. But the Fagan administration angered campaigners by changing the qualifying criteria to three miles.
Impact of the cuts
A council paper last year said 3,768 pupils qualified for free transport under the new rules, down from 5,038 - a reduction of 1,270. The cut was estimated to generate an annual saving of around £2m.
Speaking to the BBC last year, parents hit out at the change affecting their children. Barbara Clegg said her daughter and her friends were scared at having to make the 2.8 mile journey home when it was dark in winter. Another mum, Heather, whose son Elliot relied on free buses to get to school in East Kilbride until the rules changed, also said at the time: "It's unacceptable the length of time it takes, asking children to walk through unlit or poorly lit areas, areas where we know there has been crime, areas where there's not a huge amount of visibility from other people, that's not safe at all."
Political reactions
SNP MSP Clare Haughey said: "500,000 more people are in poverty under the Labour UK government and it is appalling that the Labour Party in Scotland directly inflicted sweeping cuts on families across local communities in South Lanarkshire. Given Michael Marra penned their disastrous manifesto in Scotland, it’s likely he signed off on Joe Fagan’s choice to cut transport for 1000 school kids - this pair have nothing to offer Scotland. Scottish voters should be in no doubt that no matter who their next leader is, they will continue to fail our communities and deny Scotland the right to choose its own future."
A Labour source said: "Fagan is making a virtue of introducing free swimming lessons for under 16s, an announcement that was all about building a legacy for himself before the election. He made the political choice to withdraw school bus passes from working class kids. These kids now need to walk to school in the rain and on poorly lit paths but rather than protect them he acted like he was powerless. Fagan threw thousands of kids under the bus and it won’t be forgotten."
Fagan's defence
Speaking to the Record, Fagan defended the decision: "We did it to protect the education budget and we tried to do it as fairly as we could, and we did it by speaking to local bus operators to try and make sure that we were avoiding gaps wherever we possibly could."
Put to him that young people lost out as a result of the cut, he said: "Yeah, and the decision was a consequence of the fact that we have an SNP government in this country that has stripped more than £7 billion out of councils in real terms since 2013/14."
He was also asked if his administration could have increased the council tax more to protect school transport. Fagan replied: "When you're in a council and you don't have a majority, you have to work with other parties. We worked with other parties to get the budgets passed that we did and in that instance the decision that we took was, first of all, South Lanarkshire had a particularly generous policy around school transport, and we brought it closer to the national average. And we tried to mitigate it wherever we could. But the reality is that councils, whether they’re Labour councils or SNP councils right across the country, are grappling with the consequences of decisions that are not taken in their council, but taken in Holyrood."
