Cycling

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Norman Baker]

I wrote down what the right hon. Gentleman said, but let us not argue about the nuance of that. Suffice it to say that we are doing a lot of good work, to which I will now refer.

First, the coalition agreement explicitly refers to the promotion of cycling. That document was put together quickly and it is short, but cycling is very clearly mentioned. As a coalition Government, we recognise that it is good for the economy, good for the environment and good for personal health to get more people cycling. That is the direction of travel we have been trying to pursue since the Government were formed. The local sustainable transport fund has been mentioned by some hon. Members this afternoon.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Norman Baker]

I will in a moment because my hon. Friend has not spoken so far and I promised I would let him in. That is an exception to the rule.

Without arguing about the detail of the local sustainable transport fund, I want to put it on the record that I was advised that the £560 million, which is a very substantial sum, is greater than the aggregate of the schemes under the last four years of the previous Government. I do not want to make a partisan point, but I say that in response to the suggestion that we have cut funding. We have not; we have increased it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge suggested that we should do even more in the local sustainable transport fund for cycling. As he recognises, 38 out of the 39 projects so far awarded money have involved cycling. We cannot go much further than we have gone already in ensuring that cycling is reflected. The bidding for tranche two closes tomorrow. I can tell him that there are a large number of cycling elements in that and, no doubt, a large number of projects will be funded as part of tranche two of that important fund.

Last week—as the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) mentioned—I was able to find a further £15 million directly for issues that Members have argued for today. I am very happy to say that. There is £8 million for Sustrans and specific routes, nearly all of which will probably be off-road. That will secure the separation Members rightly identify as being useful for safety purposes and for getting more people to have confidence in cycling. Some £7 million will go to the Cycle Rail Working Group, which is an extremely useful body that will help provide better infrastructure at our railway stations to improve the encouragement of end-to-end journeys and deal with the deficiencies that people have rightly identified at some of our major stations. Match funding for that will add a further £13 million to make £28 million for that package, which was announced just last week. So there is no shortage of funds coming from the Government in terms of the commitment to cycling.

We are also in discussions with Network Rail, which has allocated a further £7 million to cycle improvements at stations. There will be a transformational arrangement at our railway stations as a consequence of the Cycle Rail Working Group and Network Rail.

The hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), who is no longer in his place, said that Amsterdam was the place to emulate. Of course, Amsterdam and the Dutch experience is fantastic. I have been to Leiden to see how they do it over there. Frankly, I am very envious of what they have been able to achieve in Holland so far. He did himself a disservice by not referring to the Leeds cycle hub, which is a major achievement that put cycling bang in front of the station there. That is an example of the integrated cycle approach everyone wants to see—not simply somewhere to put a bike, but somewhere to put a bike safely under cover. People also want somewhere to hire a bike and to get a bike repaired when they go off to work. They can then pick the bike up when they come back in the evening. That is the sort of integration we are keen to develop. I hope that more of those hubs will be introduced with the money that Network Rail has allocated—the £7 million.

Let me make it clear that the bikeability funding has been guaranteed for this Parliament. That was a request made by cycling groups when we took office. They said that the most important thing was bikeability, so we said as an Administration that we will guarantee that right through the Parliament—£11 million this year and £11 million next year through to the next election. I hope that that underlines our commitment to bikeability.

I was asked about bikeability for adults. There is a range of training available to suit all requirements, from the complete beginner who wants to boost their confidence to those who want to develop more advanced skills. Some local authorities are providing free or subsidised adult cycle training. I am considering further what we might do, if anything, to deal with the need to ensure that adults who want to have training can access it.

I should also say that, on a personal level, I was asked on day one if I wanted a ministerial car and I said no. However, I do have a ministerial Brompton, which is parked downstairs somewhere in the House of Commons. It is important that those of us who want to cycle do so and indicate that it is not a minor activity for a few people. Cycling is central to how we want to get around individually and as a society. That is a key message I want to get across.

I have also formed a cycle stakeholder forum, which was established last year. The cycle groups represented and I agreed that the forum should not be a talking shop. It is about getting things done. There are a series of sub-groups, including a safety sub-group that is meeting on 6 March to take forward a range of proposals. We are very interested in listening to those involved, and that forum provides very useful advice. We want as Ministers to ensure that we understand what the cycling groups and others regard as important.

On safety issues, Members rightly said that more people are cycling. When more people cycle, motorists adjust. Motorists are far more tolerant of cyclists when they are in large numbers and are more common than they are of individual cyclists. The right hon. Member for Exeter and others said that if we get more people cycling, it makes it safer. That is another reason to encourage the development of cycling in our country. We should also encourage councils—as we do—to take forward their plans to improve cycle infrastructure in their areas. We want more people cycling.

It is also worth pointing out—as others have, including the shadow Secretary of State—that it is not a question of the campaign being about an unsafe activity. Cycling is not an unsafe activity. She rightly referred to the fact that the incidence of collisions has decreased. That is a result of a great effort, and we are all pleased with that. If we consider the long-term trend over the past 20 years, cycling is getting safer, with the rate of those killed or seriously injured decreasing by 50% from more than 1,500 per billion miles cycled to between 800 and 900. I very much welcome that downward trend. We obviously want that to continue as a result of the efforts we put in. I know that that is a priority for the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead as well; he has made that very plain.

On the number of deaths, any death is too many and is a tragedy for the families involved. However, we can take some comfort from the fact that the average between 1984-88 was 186 deaths a year. That figure is now down to 111, which is about a 40% decrease. It is 111 too many, but it is going in the right direction in terms of the long-term trend. The casualty rate per billion miles is down 43%. However, we must do more. We must make every effort to ensure that that rate continues to decrease, and we intend to try to do that.

I welcome The Times campaign and the eight points it identifies. It is really helpful and positive, and I am delighted that it has been taken up not just by hon. Members of all parties, but other newspapers, too. I hope the campaign will continue, because it is putting cycling centre stage, and that has not been the case for some time. The first point states:

“Lorries entering the city centre should be required by law to fit sensors, audible turning alarms, extra mirrors and safety bars to stop cyclists being thrown under the wheels.”

The Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead is leading discussions at European level on improving standards for heavy goods vehicles to help reduce accidents caused by poor visibility, and to look at those precise issues. We want to ensure that any steps agreed achieve the outcome we want—that is the very careful caveat we put on that. For example, if we have sensors on the side of lorries that then detect bus stops, litter bins and everything else, it is possible that drivers will ignore them, and that could make the situation worse. We have to be careful, therefore, that what we do achieves the result we all want, which is to reduce cycle injuries and to ensure that lorry drivers are more aware of cyclists. That is a technical caveat, but we are leading discussions at European level to consider what can be done to achieve the best outcome.

The second point states:

“The 500 most dangerous road junctions must be identified, redesigned or fitted with priority traffic lights for cyclists and Trixi mirrors”.

I am happy to say that in the past two weeks I gave authority to all local authorities in England to install Trixi mirrors as and where they deem it appropriate. Previously, that was a London pilot only and local authorities had to come to me with lots of paperwork to ask for permission, which was nonsense. Local authorities are able to make their judgments about their own junctions and where they should apply the mirrors. I encourage local councils to do so. It is not our job in central Government to determine which junctions around the country should be fitted with Trixi mirrors, but it is our job to give a lead to local authorities. We have done that and I strongly encourage local authorities, on the record, to look at their junctions to see what might to done to take that further.

Road safety is a criterion under the local sustainable transport fund. Bids can come in, and have come in, to improve road safety for cyclists at junctions and elsewhere. We will look sympathetically at any such bids in the next round. We have also published guidance on cycling infrastructure through the “Cycle Infrastructure Design” and the “Design Manual for Roads and Bridges” documents to try to give clear guidance to local authorities about how best to incorporate the needs of cyclists into the roads they are designing.

[Jack Lopresti]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. My own local authority, South Gloucestershire council, is working very hard to promote cycling, both in my constituency and across the wider Bristol area as part of the West of England partnership, thanks to the funding that has been recently secured through the first phase of bidding for the Government’s local sustainable transport fund. The council has submitted a larger funding bid as part of the next bidding round. I urge the Minister to look favourably on that bid and support local efforts to promote more sustainable means of travel across the sub-region.

[Norman Baker]

I hear that that bid has come in. I had better not comment on it until I have evaluated it, but my hon. Friend has placed his point on the record, which is no doubt what he wanted to do.

The third point in The Times campaign asks for:

“A national audit of cycling to find out how many people cycle in Britain and how cyclists are killed or injured should be held to underpin effective cycle safety.”

The Department for Transport already maintains a range of data sources on cycling levels and road casualty statistics, and we consider them very seriously. This year we have also commissioned a new question in the Sport England Active People survey to give us more detailed information on cycling at local level. That will be public information and we will be happy to share it with hon. Members.

The fourth point makes the suggestion that

“the Highways Agency should earmark 2 per cent of its budget for next-generation cycle routes”.

I am hesitant about a specific figure, because it seems a little arbitrary. I agree, and the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead agrees, that we have to reflect on what the Highways Agency does and where it might do more on the roads for which it is responsible. For example, it has traditionally been the Highways Agency’s approach to put cycle lanes next to improved roads as opportunity costs have been made available, but that has sometimes meant that cycle routes stop in the middle of nowhere. Looking at those sorts of routes first seems to be a sensible first step. My hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead has indicated that he is undertaking a stocktake of Highways Agency routes to consider what we might do further in that regard.

The fifth point was:

“The training of cyclists and drivers must improve and cycle safety should become a core part of the driving test.”

Apart from the bikeability matters to which I referred, there are six questions in the driving test on vulnerable road users. We are considering how to increase motorists’ awareness of cycling issues. We welcome initiatives such as Exchanging Places, which was mentioned earlier. I welcome the commitments made by the freight industry, including the Freight Transport Association, regarding cycle safety to encourage all drivers of large vehicles to become more cycle aware. I mentioned that I had established a cycle safety sub-committee of the stakeholder forum. It meets next month and deliberately includes motoring organisations. The AA, the Road Haulage Association, and the Freight Transport Association will all, I hope, be present at that meeting so that they, not just the cycling groups themselves, are aware of the cycling issues. The driving test has been made more realistic and less predictable. We are considering how to improve training for drivers after they pass their test to help them develop their driving skills and knowledge with regard to cyclists.

The sixth issue in The Times campaign was the 20 mph speed limit, which hon. Members have suggested should become the default speed limit. I hope hon. Members know that I have already taken action on that front—last year, in fact—to make it much easier for local authorities to introduce 20 mph zones and a 20 mph limit by reducing the bureaucracy, removing the requirement to submit a whole load of paperwork and allowing them, for example, to have roundels painted on the road in place of repeater signs, therefore reducing the cost of such 20 mph limits. We have done that already. Some local authorities, such as Portsmouth, have done a great deal of work on 20 mph limits and I congratulate them on that. I encourage other local councils to follow suit.

Point 7 states:

“Businesses should be invited to sponsor cycleways and cycling super-highways, mirroring the Barclays-backed bicycle hire scheme in London.”

What can I say, except that I agree? We will send the message out from the Department for Transport to encourage that action.

The eighth point states:

“Every city…should appoint a cycling commissioner to push home reforms.”

I happen to think that that is a good idea, especially for large urban areas. Ultimately, it is a matter for local authorities to take forward, not for us to dictate to them. I would certainly endorse and welcome any such action by local authorities.

I hope that hon. Members will see that we are doing, and have done, quite a lot already. Of course, more needs to be done and I welcome the excellent campaign from The Times and the signatures—I was told there were 25,000, but now it is up to 30,000—which it has managed to accrue.

The right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) asked what the requirements were to look after cyclists on roadworks sites. I am advised that the code of practice contains advice on signing, lighting and guarding road and street works, including provision for cyclists, and that utility companies must comply with it. This is in the process of being revised, with a note on the need to take account of cyclists in particular.

An issue was raised about Ministers working together across Departments. I assure hon. Members that that does happen. For example, I have met one Health Minister to talk about the benefits of cycling for health purposes, and how we can work together on that. I have also met a Minister at the Department for Education about encouraging children to get to school by bike. That sort of co-operation does, I am happy to say, already exist. I have no doubt that we could do more, but we are working to try to ensure that that works across Government as far as possible.

May I just say that starting a speech with

“Thirty years ago, I fell in love on a tandem”

is probably the best opening line I have heard for quite some time? I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) on her 50th birthday. The issue of safer manhole covers is serious for cyclists and motorcyclists. We are looking at that, not least because they are subject to metal theft—it is on the agenda. I have referred to the separation of routes for cycles and vehicles. The money we are giving to Sustrans will, I hope, go some way towards dealing with that. On guidance to councillors with regard to road design, that is covered in the guidance notes, “Cycle Infrastructure Design”, which cover local roads and providing appropriate measures for cyclists. Much of that guidance on traffic management measures also includes guidance on cyclists. I hope that they cover that issue, but we are happy to look at it again.

My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech), who has long been a champion of road safety in the House, advised me to speak to the Leader of the House, who is interested in cycling, to advance my hon. Friend’s 10-minute rule Bill. I will pass on the message. That is probably as far as I can go in promising—[Interruption.] The Leader of the House is here and has heard that remark.

I have tried my best to get through as many points as possible. If I have missed any point, it is not for lack of trying. I will write a letter to any hon. Member who has raised a specific point and place a copy in the Library.