Cycle Trails
Debate between Derek Twigg and Guy Opperman(9 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Guy Opperman)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), a fellow ardent cyclist, on securing this important debate. Although I have a very good speech written by the Department, I will try to respond to the individual points that she made.
I will start with the origin of the debate, which is Harrison. My hon. Friend told the tale of a young man getting in contact with a Member of Parliament in the probably slightly sceptical hope that he could make a difference—both locally and by getting through to the MP. Clearly, that is why we have this debate. I hope that I will be able to give some good long-term news to both Harrison and the wider Medway community of which my hon. Friend is part. That is a great story—it really is—and I for one want to put on record my personal thanks as, frankly, this is what Parliament and representative democracy are all about. I sincerely hope that Harrison not only wins various future cycling competitions, but contemplates running for the local council and being a Member of Parliament. I look forward to welcoming him to the green Benches and, ultimately, to him becoming Prime Minister in about 25 years.
That is my first point. The second is that I must also make a declaration as an ardent but slightly fat cyclist, who has done everything from the Rye 100 to the Dunwich Dynamo as well as a variety of interesting cycle routes, including through most parts of Kent. I took the train down to Margate and cycled all the way back to London along the coast on the amazing trails that Kent has. As my hon. Friend rightly says, it is a fantastic opportunity to get out and about, get into the fresh air, try to fight the flab, get fitter and do all the things that we want to do. She is right to highlight the interesting differences in Bikeability stats in Medway and Kent, and we would like to work on them. I will come on to that in more detail. The figures for year 6 pupils of 13% in Kent and 47% in Medway are not too bad, but we would like to make that bigger. I encourage local authorities to get behind that supportive scheme, and we have to ask why they are not fully behind such things.
We should put on record our thanks to Luke, Stewart and the PCC for getting behind the individual cycle trails and then putting forward the money for the initiative locally, which sounds eminently sensible to me.
Derek Twigg (in the Chair)
Order. I remind the Minister that he is supposed to be addressing the subject.
Guy Opperman
That is a good point. I apologise unreservedly for not addressing the House and for speaking too much to one individual colleague. As I say, we put on record our thanks to the individuals involved.
I will now return to the cycling and walking investment strategies of 2017 and 2022 and the establishment of Active Travel England. Last week, my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison) led a debate on active travel in the main Chamber, in which my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford spoke, and, as we said, we are on a journey in this country, without a shadow of a doubt. Countries such as Holland have a whole host of state-of-the-art cycling infrastructure that has transformed their cities, yet decades ago they looked exactly the same as the UK. Those countries had the same problems and difficulties of trying to build infrastructure, segregated lanes and so on.
First and foremost, we have committed more than £3 billion that will be invested across Government in active travel up to 2025. That includes money from the city region sustainable transport settlements and the levelling-up fund. I should declare that I have a £9 million project in my constituency of Hexham. There are also other opportunities through the local transport fund, which was the money announced for northern and midland regions through the termination of the second leg of High Speed 2. It was announced on Monday, and many billions will go to local authorities up and down the country to ensure they can drive forward infrastructure, which can include cycle trails and all manners of road improvements.
On delivery, Active Travel England has been providing capital funding to local authorities for active travel infrastructure through the active travel fund. Since then, £515 million has been provided to local authorities for the development and construction of almost 1,000 permanent schemes, of which 299 have been delivered. In May of last year, we announced £200 million of capital funding for walking and cycling schemes to improve road safety, ease congestion and ultimately improve the health and wellbeing of the millions of people we want to choose active travel.
To turn specifically to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford, that funding included £138,976 of dedicated capital funding from the fourth tranche of the active travel fund that is being used to fund two school streets in the area, among other projects. Since 2020, over four tranches of the active travel fund, more than £12 million of dedicated capital funding has been provided for active travel within Kent and Medway. Indeed, Kent and Medway have also received £1.3 million of revenue funding through the capability fund and I am pleased to say that both are in the process of developing authority-wide local cycling and walking infrastructure plans.
On the Aylesford river path, it is fair to say that my hon. Friend has been extremely assiduous—that is how I think they describe it in the House of Commons—in standing up for her local community as a Member of Parliament, as we all should do. I am aware that Kent County Council has been working with Active Travel England to undertake further design and assurance work to put the scheme forward under the active travel fund 4 extension programme. I can confirm that I have approved ATE’s recommendations for allocating funding through the programme. Although I cannot announce the funding for the scheme today, we expect to announce further capital and revenue funding allocations very shortly. I sincerely hope that I will be jumping on my bike and coming down to Aylesford to meet my hon. Friend, Harrison and anyone else so that we can formally announce the Aylesford river path and the work that my hon. Friend has so assiduously sought.