Cycle Trails

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[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]

I apologise, I was focusing far too much on my hon. Friend.

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

Mr Speaker is very clear about that.

[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.

[Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con)]

When the Minister makes that visit to Aylesford, will he also come to the west of the county of Kent and visit the Bedgebury forest, where there is a much-used network of cycle trails? It is used by my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) as well as by me. The Minister will enjoy that, but he will also see that it is quite isolated from public transport and towns such as Tunbridge Wells. It may give him pause for thought about how we can make cycle trails accessible for people who live in towns and may not have access to cars.

[Guy Opperman]

My right hon. Friend makes a very serious point. I have the great honour and privilege of being asked to visit a whole host of cycle trails, whether they are in Tunbridge Wells, Batley and Spen, or Strangford, all of which possess amazing countryside that I would be very happy to visit. However, getting to and from these locations, particularly for children and those on a low income—with all those complications—is not easy, bluntly. We must take that on board.

This and future Governments need to wrestle with a whole host of challenges, as do local authorities. Some of that is funding, but we also need to have a different sort of vision about the community we are looking after. There are examples of train companies that will not allow bicycles on trains, and of bus companies that are reluctant to have bicycles on their buses—I could go on. Frankly, that sort of stuff must stop.

When I took this brief on, I specifically made the strong point that although, yes, I would be looking after roads and buses, there was relatively little point for the active travel aspect not to be integrated with other parts of the portfolio. The beauty of that is that if we are having a conversation with local authorities or bus companies about trying to do things in a different way, we are also trying to integrate active travel and accessible travel so that the system is joined up. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) and my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford know the great joy of being a Minister—it is amazing—but any Minister knows that joined-up Government is a holy grail that we all aspire to and cannot always achieve. Getting different Departments and parts of an individual portfolio to talk to and integrate with each other is utterly key.

[Richard Foord]

There are places where we have public transport links and good rail services, such as in my Tiverton and Honiton constituency. Does that suggest that perhaps the Department would be more welcoming of constructing cycle trails around places such as Tiverton Parkway, the new railway station at Cullompton, and Feniton, Axminster, Honiton and Whimple?

[Guy Opperman]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, this amazing Government brought forward the new railway station at Cullompton.

It is clear that I want to see more people on a bike, and more accessible and active travel. The best bit of that is Bikeability. I will just talk about that very briefly, because it really matters. The Government have given £21 million for Bikeability, which has delivered almost 500,000 places and reached 51% of year 6 children in 60% of primary schools. I genuinely believe, however, that we can do a lot more. Local authorities really need to step up to the plate, because this matters. Learning to cycle from a young age is a life skill. Aside from all the health benefits and independence that it provides, and aside from the fact that it is so much cheaper in the long term, cycling gives individuals great confidence in their capabilities and develops our children in a game-changing way.

Over the coming years, we will invest a further £50 million in Bikeability to deliver training for over 1 million more children. We believe that, by 2025, 80% of year 6 children will be taking part in on-road cycle training before leaving primary school. Turning to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells, although teaching kids in school how to ride a bike is great, we also need local authorities to use their local cycling and walking infrastructure plans and development funding to ensure that it is easy for kids to cycle to school, as we discussed in the debate on active travel in the House last week. That is the holy grail. With no disrespect to individual parents, we want kids to walk or cycle to the local school. That is why so many of us support 20 mph zones outside schools, which make total sense and support ongoing cycling.

I echo the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford for the national cycle network and the work of Sustrans. The network is clearly a national asset; it provides more than 12,000 miles of signed paths and routes for walking, wheeling, cycling and exploring the outdoors. The Department has supported the upkeep of this national asset to the tune of £75 million. I take my hon. Friend’s point about cycle trails, and note her example of cycle trails funded by the police and crime commissioner. Without a shadow of a doubt, we want to do more, and I am keen to look at that. I will engage with Danny Williams and the Active Travel England team in York to see what more we can do.

[Kim Leadbeater]

The Minister is making fantastic points about the amazing work of Sustrans, but will he commit to looking at its funding? It is a charity, and unfortunately the lack of funding means that we have lost the warden for the Spen valley greenway, which is in my constituency. The warden did a fantastic job of making people on the greenway feel safe and ensuring it was a clean and tidy space for people to work.

[Guy Opperman]

I am not going to get into the question of funding decisions for charities, but this Government have backed active travelling and cycling to a degree that no other Government ever have, and are continuing to do so. My respectful view is that this House should welcome the journey that we are on.

I look forward to visiting Aylesford in the near future. We are here only because Harrison stuck his hand up and had the courage to do something that we wish everybody would do: write to their MP, in a respectful, kind and constructive way. I put on record the due thanks of the House to him. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford for securing the debate, and look forward to driving forward greater cycling infrastructure in her part of the world.

Question put and agreed to.