THE chief executive of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority told a meeting of local council representatives in the Upper Dales that Britain “hates” its young people.

David Butterworth was responding to complaints from angry parents who are having to pay £550 a year for a bus to take their sixth-form student children from Hawes to Wensleydale School in Leyburn.

“This is yet another attack on young people. In Britain we hate young people. We make it difficult for them to go to school to get the qualifications for university, and then they come out of university with massive debt,” he told the Upper Dales area partnership.

Diane Raw, of Hawes, said her son had been told that if he didn’t pay the fare, he could not get on the bus.

“Legally, they now have to be at school until they are 18 so we have no choice. It is grossly unfair. We all have jobs so we can’t take them ourselves to the school which is 18 miles away and we can’t car-share because their timetables are so different. They are trying to get the best education they can and are being penalised for it,” she said.

Councillor Steve Sheldon, from Carperby, said what could not be known was how many young people had been deterred from going into the sixth-form because parents couldn’t afford the bus fares.

“This is nothing less than a tax on education opportunities for our children,” he said.

Mrs Raw said many parents were paying daily rather than in an yearly lump sum yet no tickets were issued and no receipts.

The chairman, Councillor John Blackie, said with the support of the area partnership he would raise the issue of the fares and the tickets at the area committee meeting of North Yorkshire County Council in March.

After the meeting Mr Butterworth said the way young people in Britain were treated was “a national disgrace.”

“When their exam results come out and they’re shown to be doing well, they are sneered at and derided in the national media. They’re paying thousands of pounds a year for a university education that to our generation and the previous one was free.

"We protect and ring fence older people’s benefits like bus passes and free TV licences and so on because they are seen by government to be untouchable. I am not saying older people should not be treated well, only that young people should be treated fairly. The contrast is starker now than it’s ever been and we should be ashamed.”