Cycling
Debate between Hugh Bayley and Baroness Primarolo(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
The House has a fairly rigid dress code, and I think I inadvertently broke it earlier today because, for the first time in my career, I wore a pair of cycle clips in the Chamber. That was not because I was trying to celebrate the debate, but because I had rushed here from one of my two bicycle visits today so that I would be in time to ask my question during Defence questions—[Interruption.] I got no answer, but that is the nature of parliamentary questions. I make the point because I have been cycling to Parliament and to meetings near Parliament for more than 20 years. As other Members have observed, in that period there has been a huge growth in the number of people who cycle—not just the number of people working in the Palace of Westminster but the number of people in general on the roads of London. That increase has not just happened—it occurred as a result of public policy and public spending. That is the first thing that I would say to the Minister: we need an increase in Government spending to promote cycling and make the roads safer for cycling, but it needs to be long-term and predictable funding, which is why I particularly welcome the proposal that there should be spending by his Department on cycling measures at the rate of £10 per capita.
There are environmental and health benefits from cycling. It is a convenient and time-saving way to travel short distances. No one has mentioned the fact that it is a cheap way of travelling. For MPs, there is one more advantage. I sometimes use a car in my constituency, and when I do, no one notices me driving round. However, when I am cycling round my constituency people notice me all the time. They point, they probably laugh, but at least they see that I am in my constituency—that is a tip for Members on both sides of the House.
Between 2008 and 2010, York received £3.68 million as one of the 12 cycling cities designated by Cycling England. It had a number of goals, including increasing the use of cycling by 25% from 10%—a relatively high level—at the beginning of the period to 12.5%. In fact, it increased the use of cycling by twice the target—by 50%—to 15%. Interestingly, in York, as many women cycle as men, and that is a goal that we ought to try to roll out nationally.
Under the scheme, we pledged to increase commuter cycling by 10% from 12% at the beginning of the period to 13.2%. Although there was no national survey of the number of people who commute to work by cycle, looking at the big employers in York, the increase in that period ranged from 17% to 35%. Achieving an increase depends on whether employers provide incentives such as safe cycle parking, cycle workshops where people can repair punctures for instance, and cycle loan schemes. The House could do a lot more for the people who work here, and I hope that that is something the all-party group will press for.
I welcome the proposal in the report for a goal of increasing cycle use to 10% by 2025, but we need different goals for different local authorities. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), who introduced the debate, has in his city a cycling participation level far above 10%, and so does my own city. We will not achieve 10% national usage unless we set challenging goals for those local authorities that are in the lead.
Finally, greater efforts should be made to employ trained personnel in local authorities to supervise the safety of transport schemes, and for institutes such as the—
NHS Risk Register
Debate between Hugh Bayley and Baroness Primarolo(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
I believe that the Government should publish the risk register relating to the Health and Social Care Bill, and I wrote to the Secretary of State last year to urge him to do so. I received a reply from a junior Minister in the Lords that gave the arguments that were advanced to the Information Commissioner about why it would be dangerous, including the suggestion that civil servants would pull their punches if their risk assessments were made public. The commissioner rejected those arguments, but even after he made his decision they were still being advanced by the Government, and we heard them advanced once again in the Chamber today.
The Government have got themselves into an utterly impossible position. Dozens of constituents have written to me, and I have been told by people with very high posts in the NHS, including senior clinicians, senior mangers and professors of health policy, that the Government ought to publish the register. Underneath this all is a growing belief that the only reason the Government can possibly have for not publishing the register is that it would be politically embarrassing for them to do so. [Interruption.] The Minister shakes his head, but the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) drew an interesting parallel. When the former Speaker in the previous Parliament sought to overturn the Information Commissioner’s decision that the information on MPs’ expenses should be published, I tabled a motion stating that we should publish the figures for second-home allowances. This was before The Daily Telegraph exposed what it did, and, had the House published at that stage there would have been a public outcry, but there would not have been the loss of public trust in this House, which came when we were seen to be hiding the data and seeking to overturn a reasonable decision, made by the Information Commissioner, that it should be made public.
The Government have got themselves into precisely that position because if, after the tribunal, they are told that the information has to be published, the embarrassment that they know they will face, they will face, but they will face it against a background of public cynicism that would not have existed if they had published in the first place. If, however, they win their case and the information on the register is not published, the public will still believe that the Government have something to hide, so my advice to them is, “You’re in a hole, stop digging and publish.”
The Secretary of State said in his speech to the House that all the information that is relevant to the debate about the Bill is in the impact assessment so there is no need to publish the risk register. But if all that we—and the public—need to know about the Bill has already been published, the Government have nothing to lose by publishing the risk register.
If we look at the impact assessment, we see that from time to time the Government have redacted certain figures, so if one or two things, for some particular reason, had to be kept secret, they would still be able to publish 99.99% of the risk register, and they would satisfy this House and public opinion and build greater confidence.
There is public fear because there are inevitably risks to increasing competition in the provision of NHS services. Increasing competition is not in itself a bad thing. The Labour Government increased competition between acute London hospitals in coronary care and achieved better coronary care outcomes, but when we contract to private providers we inevitably create risk. I should not need to tell Government Members that risk is what private companies take, and that it is given as a justification for making profit and reward, but if risk applies to profit it can and does apply to the quality of patient care.
Several Government Members have said that they want to drive up the quality of patient care and to drive down the cost of care, but they will do so only if they publish comparable data on outcomes and cost for every supplier of service to the NHS. The Government need to commit to do that and to include it in the Bill; otherwise, members of the public will fear that the consequence of the reforms, forcing competition on the NHS, will mean that some care standards will fall, which is what happens when we have unregulated—
BBC (Proposed Cuts)
Debate between Hugh Bayley and Baroness Primarolo
Hugh Bayley
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to stress the local links that local radio has with the community and the identification of listeners with their local radio station. During the catastrophic floods in York 11 years ago, I was tasked by the police silver command one Friday night, when we ran out of sandbags, with trying to find some people to come in overnight and sew additional ones. I put out public appeals on BBC Radio York, Radio Humberside and Radio Lincolnshire. Two hours later, a factory manager in Lincolnshire said that he had been called up by workers who had gone to the factory having heard the programme, so that they could open it up and sew. Within 24 hours there were 1 million sandbags. Is there not a risk that such local community service by radio—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. We have now had an advert and an intervention that is really a speech. Interventions are supposed to be brief and relevant to the point that the speaker who has the floor is making. I would be grateful if we could stick to that.