Cycling

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and Richard Burden

Thursday 16th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to respond to the debate, which is a credit to all the right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken. No fewer than 11 Members have made speeches, more if one takes interventions into account. It is a credit in particular to the officers of the all-party group on cycling: my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), who introduced the debate, and the hon. Members for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and for Winchester (Steve Brine).

It is also right to mention the cycling and active travel organisations that support the all-party group. They have played a big role in making today’s debate happen. Between them they have a great deal of power, because we were told by Ministers more than a year ago—this has been mentioned already—that there would be a cycling delivery plan. More than a year ago, we were told the Government were working on that. We have been asking the Government for a year, “Where is it?” It has been a bit like waiting for Godot, but, amazingly, one Back-Bench debate and suddenly, hey presto, the delivery plan appears—or, as some have called it, the derisory plan.

As this debate has made clear, there are huge benefits to cycling. In particular, it improves people’s health—physical inactivity costs the NHS between £1 billion and £1.8 billion every year—and protects the environment by tackling air pollution and congestion in our towns and cities. As hon. Members have said, therefore, this affects all road users, whether motorists or lorry drivers, cyclists, bus passengers, pedestrians or motorcyclists, and many of us are all or some of those things at different times; we are all road users, and our roads must work for everyone. Getting Britain cycling is not simply a two-wheeled agenda. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) pointed out, the voice of the motorist, the AA, supports the report as well.

If I remember correctly, last year the Minister promised a walking and cycling plan to promote active travel as a whole, but as far as I can tell, we have here a delivery plan—if it is a delivery plan—for cycling only. Why is that?

As the report shows, just 2% of journeys are made by bike, while nearly two thirds are made by car, over half of them shorter than five miles. We lag behind other countries—Germany, Demark and Holland have all been mentioned—that have set impressive targets for cycling. For that reason, the “Get Britain Cycling” report was clear that we needed vision, ambition and strong political leadership, as my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) also pointed out. But what progress have we seen? The Government’s delivery plan today starts with a section entitled, “Vision, Leadership and Ambition”. Given that the Minister wants to show those things, I would like to ask him about how the plan measures up to that.

The plan puts much emphasis on new partnerships being created between the Government and local authorities to support cycling, and says that they want local authorities to register and expand cycling in their areas. However, unless I have missed something, the incentives on local authorities in the delivery plan are vague at best. What about those areas that do not sign up? Where is the national vision, leadership and ambition there? How will the Minister encourage areas to get onboard that are just starting to dip their toes in the water? How will he share best practice there? In that respect, the point made by the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) was very pertinent.

The Minister talks about the Department’s active travel consortium and an extended local sustainable transport fund knowledge-sharing network being responsible for sharing best practice, but how will that work? Has he learned from past mistakes, because the Government’s record on this is not good. Ministers scrapped Cycling England, which co-ordinated action on cycling, and the replacement cycling stakeholder forum and the so-called high-level cycling group have met just a few times in a year. What confidence can organisations involved in the active travel consortium have that they will have the clout and reach to promote active travel and ensure that better travel infrastructure for cycling is delivered?

I accept that the Minister is serious in his personal support for cycling, but where is the buy-in from other Departments, particularly from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who suggested that cycling was the preserve of the elite? He is not alone in that view. In my own town, Birmingham, a prominent Conservative councillor is on the record saying that cycling is discriminatory against women, particularly women from ethnic minorities. Fortunately, most people in Birmingham do not share that view.

It is good to see a review of how the planning system can support walking and cycling, but I understand that DCLG will imminently be publishing new guidance on transport planning. Will this be another silo, separate from the Minister’s, or will the two relate, and if so, how?

[Mr Bradshaw]

The lesson from when we were in government was that this only works when the Secretaries of State in every Department with an interest in the matter work together. This is a classic area of cross-departmental cost-benefit. At the moment, the problem is that everything is done in silos. Individual Departments are not putting their heads together to work out how much cycling benefits all of us, and that is why nothing is happening.

[Richard Burden]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Why does the Minister himself not take a look at best practice elsewhere? Why not learn some of the lessons that will be unfolding from the active travel legislation in Wales, which will require all corners of government to co-ordinate and get buy-in to promote active travel?

Another message that has been impressed upon us today, time and again, is the need for a clear funding stream. Funding streams need to be predicable and continuous. Today’s delivery plan seems to contain a lot of the right words, but if we look a little more closely, it is not clear exactly what those commitments are. We have heard a lot of talk, including in the delivery plan, about aspirations and wider funding opportunities, but I am still not clear what those are. Forgive me, but I think we need rather more than that from a Government whose use of smoke and mirrors on this issue has been second to none.

This is a Government who claim to have doubled spending on cycling, but when we look closely, we see that they funded Bikeability by top-slicing £63 million from the local sustainable transport fund, which was itself meant in large part to promote cycling. Then the Government claimed they were increasing funding for cycling with the money they gained by scrapping Cycling England. The Government cannot have it both ways. The double counting has to end. All this comes at a time when Ministers have slashed local authority funding by a third and when our research has shown that half of councils have had to cut spending on walking and cycling since 2010.

How about a bit of a change of approach? Instead of centralising power and localising blame, why not do what we have suggested and devolve £30 billion of funding to strong, accountable combined local authorities to get such schemes going? If the Government have set out £28 billion for our roads until 2021, with funding certainty for road and rail, why not get a bit of certainty in funding for cycling? How about heeding what my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) set out in our recent party conference, when she called for action on education, engineering and enforcement?

On engineering, I hope that all references to cycle proofing in the Minister’s delivery plan will take on board Labour’s call for new cycle safety assessments, to ensure that all transport projects are assessed for their impact on vulnerable road users and active travel. However, the proof of that pudding will be in the eating. We need all engineers and planners to include cycling at the design stage, not as an afterthought.

What about enforcement? Nearly half of cyclists say that it is too dangerous to cycle on the roads safely at the moment—we all listened to what the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) said about the tragic case of John Radford. We have called for the restoration of national targets to cut road deaths and serious injuries. I want to know why Ministers continue to resist that. Why do they have to be the ones dragging their feet on HGV safety in the UK and the European Union, rather than taking on board our suggestion of an HGV cycle safety charter, with industry regulation to ensure that HGVs are fitted with minimum safety features to protect cyclists? How will hiking HGV speed limits on single carriageway roads—despite the Department’s own impact assessment saying it will increase deaths—contribute to what we are talking about today?

[Richard Burden]

What I can say to the hon. Gentleman, if he was following my drift, is that we have been absolutely clear that in order for the objectives in the “Get Britain Cycling” report to be taken forward, money has to be available and it has to be predictable and continuous. He will also know that it will be for the shadow Chancellor, just as much as it is for the Chancellor, to commit precise amounts. However, what I can give the hon. Gentleman a commitment to is continuous and predictable funding—something that simply is not in the cycling delivery plan.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I may be being a bit dim, but although I completely accept that Chancellors and shadow Chancellors set overall budgets, surely as a ministerial team with a departmental budget—my criticism of the Government is that they have not done this—it is perfectly within the powers of my hon. Friend and his right hon. Friend to earmark a small proportion of the Department’s budget to reach the target. He does not require the permission of our right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor.

[Richard Burden]

The issue of providing clear, predictable and continuous funding is exactly that; it is about providing funding through a funding stream for cycling. A number of prominent people within the cycling community have put it to me that the issue of predictability and clarity is more important than whether we are talking about £8, £9, £10, £11 or £12. That is the point, and it explains what we are going to bring forward.