Cycling: Government Investment

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Westminster Hall

On resuming—

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) for securing this debate.

As a cyclist myself, although I do not wear Lycra, I am fortunate to live in Portsmouth, a compact, flat city in a beautiful setting, with the sea, two harbours and the Hampshire downs behind it. Portsmouth should be a paradise for cyclists, but in fact its casualty rate for cyclists is one of the highest in the country; indeed, it was second only to London in 2014. During a five-year period, 157 cyclists were killed or seriously injured on our streets, and quite rightly local cyclists are lobbying strongly for improvements to our roads, and for cultural change to bring that terrible figure down.

We have some great national groups fighting for cyclists, such as the CTC, but the figure I have just quoted comes from our excellent local cyclists group, the Portsmouth Cycle Forum. It has produced a strategy document called “A City to Share”. The vision of that document, and mine, is to make Portsmouth the cycling capital of the UK, and given what I said a moment ago about the city’s geography, people will see why that makes sense. The strategy document identifies five goals: a safer city; improved health outcomes; a stronger local economy; a better environment; and a more liveable city for everyone, not just cyclists.

Another source of inspiration for everyone is the Tour de France, which Portsmouth City Council hopes to bring back to our streets. We were lucky to be visited by the Tour over 20 years ago, and I know that the cyclists and organisers had a fantastic time touring our historic streets in Portsmouth and the beautiful Hampshire countryside. Since then, Portsmouth has seen a huge amount of renewal and the city would like to have le Grand Départ in 2019, to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings. Any help the Minister can give to ensure that that event comes to Portsmouth would be helpful, not least to tourism. Any help—financial or otherwise—would be great.

I hope that, through the access fund, it will be possible to get support for a thorough survey in Portsmouth, so that we can match up the vision set out in “A City to Share” with the city council’s road strategy. We need to do that because the roads in Portsmouth are under growing pressure.

Finally, while we are debating cycling here in the context of what the UK Government can do, I want to remind everyone that there are all sorts of cycling schemes operating across the EU. Having recently pointed Portsmouth City Council in the direction of one such scheme, called FLOW, I want to make sure that everyone is getting the best out of the various programmes in Europe. We can learn a lot from best practice on the continent but, as with many other areas of policy, I am not sure that we are yet very good at ensuring that we tap into all the resources that are available through the European Union.