Oral Answers to Questions

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Thursday 13th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Lloyd Russell-Moyle. Not here. I wish he were here. I hope the fellow is all right. Anyway, we move on. I call Rachel Maclean.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

4. What measures his Department is taking to encourage cycling and walking.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Jesse Norman)]

The Government very much seek to make cycling and walking the natural choices for short journeys, or as part of a longer journey. In April this year we published the first-ever statutory cycling and walking investment strategy for England. The strategy details our plans for increasing cycling and walking and identifies £1.2 billion of funding, which may be invested until 2021.

[Rachel Maclean]

I very much thank my hon. Friend for his response. My constituency has many footpaths, cut-throughs and small tracks that link our green spaces together. These are extremely pleasant for residents to make use of in their leisure time. However, they are not always visible on mapping platforms such as Google Maps. We would like to encourage their use to promote health and wellbeing in the constituency, so will the Minister tell me what discussions he has had with those technology platforms to make those paths more accessible to local residents?

[Jesse Norman]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question and share her delight in these informal paths, of which we have an enormous number in Herefordshire, as she might imagine. Local authorities are best placed, in the first instance, to use their knowledge and understanding of local networks, as are tourism agencies and local map providers. From my point of view, there have not yet been any discussions with the electronic mapping services, but I very much take my hon. Friend’s point and I have already made plans to meet some of them in order to take forward this agenda.