Safety of Riders and Horses on Rural Roads

Caroline Spelman Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the safety of riders and horses on rural roads.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, and to open this important debate; a number of colleagues have been very active on this issue and would also like to have secured it. I will welcome interventions and speeches later. I congratulate the new Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), on his appointment and welcome him to his first Westminster Hall debate. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) on his role. Welcome.

First, I have two confessions to make. I am not a horse rider; I have been on a horse twice in my life. The second occasion was because my wife is a horse rider: when we were courting, I was not really getting the opportunity to spend as much time with her as I intended, so I went horse riding with her. There was only the one attempt, and I eventually won the argument and we married. The earlier occasion was when I was younger, and I cannot really recall that experience.

My second confession is perhaps more serious. I am one of the Members in this place who has had to take a speed awareness course—I was caught speeding in Bristol some years ago. During that course, I was made aware of what damage a moving vehicle can do to vulnerable road users: children, motorcyclists, cyclists, and horses and riders. I welcomed that opportunity and wake-up call about why it is so important to keep to the speeds that are set out for us. So when a constituent, Debbie Smith—she is here this afternoon; welcome, Debbie—came to me wanting to raise the issue of the safety of horses and riders in west Cornwall, I had an open door and was ready to listen and do everything I could to support her campaign and the campaign of many of her friends who ride horses.

[Dame Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does he agree that one of the problems is that most drivers are unaware that they should not pass horses any faster than 15 miles per hour? They are often just guided by the speed limit, thinking that it is okay. Would he commend the work of the British Horse Society, which has advocated raising greater awareness of the speed at which one should pass a horse?

[Derek Thomas]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her intervention; she is absolutely right, and I was pleased to meet the BHS today to discuss its concerns. A lot of the work, including this debate, that we have been doing over the past couple of years with Debbie Smith, the British Horse Society and many others is about raising awareness of how we should use our roads and consider others’ safety, and pressing on the Government that we believe that there is more they can do to take part in this cause.

For many years, Debbie Smith has been working with others to campaign on behalf of horse riders for safer rural roads. Her most recent petition about passing wide and slow, calling for stronger legal protections for riders on our roads, has reached almost 110,000—maybe now it is 110,000—signatures on the change.org site. I first met Debbie in November 2015 and required little persuasion to join her cause to make our roads safer for horses and their riders. Our initial encounter led to a meeting in February 2016 with the former roads Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), and civil servants from the Department for Transport. We discussed the need for a concerted effort by the Department to make our roads safer. Since then there has been a horse-riding awareness day—earlier this year, in which 15 different locations in the UK took part—and 110,000 signatures on the petition, as I said.

Horse riders make up a significant group of vulnerable road users, but despite there being 2.7 million across the UK, they often find themselves as the forgotten demographic—an afterthought in the minds of drivers and unacceptably low down many politicians’ priority lists. It is for this reason that the British Horse Society launched the horse accidents website in November 2010. Since that launch, 2,510 reports of road incidents involving horses, including near misses and collisions, have been logged by the BHS. That is but the tip of the iceberg. Most significantly, since the launch 222 horses and 38 riders have been killed. This problem is not in decline. In the past year there has been a 29% increase in the number of road incidents involving a horse reported to the British Horse Society.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robertson]

I am grateful for that intervention. Even 40 miles an hour on the wrong kind of road could be too quick. This goes back to what my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) said about education being very important, in connection with horses but also with driving safely according to the road conditions. It is often not possible to go faster than 10 or 15 miles an hour on a very narrow country lane to remain safe, so education is crucial.

My final point is that in order perhaps to take horses off roads that might be dangerous we could do with reviewing the rules on bridleways. It might be that many existing footpaths could be made dual use, and function as bridleways as well. That would help to ease the problem.

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, as I know time is tight. Precisely on bridleways, close to urban settings there is a terrible dearth of them and they do not connect up. I think it is the fact that they are seen as multi-purpose—for pedestrians, cyclists and even motorised transport as well as horses—that leads to great reluctance on the part of landowners to extend any sort of bridlepath network. Might we appeal to the Minister to consider a new designation for off-road safe riding for equestrians?

[Mr Robertson]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend’s remarks. I will not take up any more of the House’s time except to stress that horses are part of our countryside and our country. We only have to look at the startling statistics that have been cited to realise that we really must do something about the issue.