Cycling

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Monday 2nd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I was fortunate to sit on the “Get Britain Cycling” inquiry earlier this year. There was huge interest in what we were doing. When we started the inquiry, we were the best trending name on Twitter. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) for securing this debate and to Adam Coffman, who put so much work into making it a professional, Select Committee-style inquiry.

In the short time available to me, I will focus on three areas: vision and leadership, which for me is where it starts and ends; the design issue; and the summer of cycling in my constituency. I am extremely proud of the report and believe that it stands up really well. Having read it again in writing these remarks, I think that it will age well. We launched the report in April and the Government responded last week. In the light of everything that has happened since we produced the report, I think that is more relevant now than when we launched it.

On leadership, it is no coincidence that one of the first points in the report is the need for

“vision, ambition and strong political leadership”.

As the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) said, we recommend the appointment of a national cycling champion. I share his regret that that recommendation was not accepted in last week’s Government response. It is all too easy to regard such things as somebody else’s responsibility. The Minister need not look further than City hall, where Andrew Gilligan is the Mayor’s cycling champion, for a good example of how a cycling champion can work.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. Does he agree that leadership at a local level is important? I have seen the difference in my borough as the political leaders have started to take this issue much more seriously and to engage much more vigorously with local cycling campaigners. That really makes a difference.

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[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak in the debate and very pleased that the Backbench Business Committee could find the time for it. It follows a very successful and over-subscribed debate in Westminster Hall last year and perhaps illustrates the point that very over-subscribed debates in Westminster Hall can transfer to the main Chamber and attract even more speakers, as today’s debate has done.

I speak as an occasional cyclist daughter of a serious veteran road-racing cyclist father. I want to talk today about London in particular and some of the measures that have been adopted here.

I will first say a bit about why cycling is so important in my constituency. There was an enormous reaction last year in Battersea to The Times’ “Cities Fit for Cycling” campaign. The average age of people who live in Wandsworth is 32, so that is probably also typical of my constituency. Many people cycle to work and for pleasure, and from quite a wide demographic range, although I agree about the need to widen it, which will set up a virtuous circle. As an occasional cyclist, I know that it can be very off-putting to go into a cycling shop with an old bike and hear three young men in Lycra leaning against the counter saying, “Poor old girl”—I am never quite sure whether they are talking about me or the bike. I encourage all cycling shops to remember that they will do better if they are open for business to everybody, including those who might not be such serious cyclists.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Jane Ellison]

I will give way, but only once.

[Mr Turner]

One thing to consider is that in the UK there are around 25,000 bicycles but in Germany there are 360,000, and the difference is that many of those bicycles are electric, which can help even the elderly to cycle.

[Jane Ellison]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Electric bikes have had a few honourable mentions in the debate so far, although I am not an expert.

In London, cycling is set to double over the next 10 years. However, as was pointed out earlier, cities such as London were not designed for cycling; it is a very old city. We must therefore take every opportunity offered by redevelopment to make it more suitable for cycling. We are certainly seeing some innovative thinking in my borough, as I mentioned earlier.

[Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Jane Ellison]

I am afraid not, as so many Members have prepared speeches and want to get in.

Wandsworth has come a long way. One of the pleasures of the summer was going to a meeting of the Wandsworth Living Streets campaign and seeing the genuine engagement between it and Councillor Russell King, the cabinet member who covers strategic transport issues. I certainly see that as a positive movement since I first came to Battersea in 2006.

In last year’s debate I talked about the need to champion engineering solutions, something we have always been good at in Britain. Again, my council is working with Transport for London to bring forward plans for Dutch-style roundabouts, one of which is planned for my constituency. Elsewhere in London we are seeing other plans for engineering solutions, such as bike boxes and signal control junctions with advanced stop lines. ASLs help motorists and cyclists by providing an area for cyclists to wait in front of traffic when the lights are red, making them more easily visible to motorists and giving them the space to move off when the lights turn green. We are also seeing plans to introduce Dutch-style segregated sections of cycle superhighway to increase safety—we have heard a lot about Holland in this debate and paid tribute to its great cycling efforts—which will see one of the longest continuous segregated sections through the heart of London and on to Canary Wharf and Barking. It will be very interesting to see how that develops and whether it could be replicated in other cities.

The Mayor of London is looking to spend significant sums of money on cycling. The need for leadership has been mentioned, and Members on both sides have been generous in paying tribute to him for his leadership on cycling. London’s cycling budget will double to almost £400 million over the next three years, roughly two and a half times what was previously planned. He is investing almost £1 billion in London cycling over the next 10 years as part of the “Vision for Cycling” published in March. That will mean spending £145 million a year on cycling by 2015, which equates to roughly £18 per head, which is similar to the amount spent in Germany and almost on a par with the debate’s favourite country: the Netherlands. It is good to see both Dutch-style engineering coming to London’s roads and Dutch levels of spending per head on cycling.

With regard to enforcement, one of the debates we are having locally is whether 20 mph zones can be enforced. We are at least seeing TfL, the Met police and the City of London police stepping up the enforcement of safety zones for cyclists and clamping down on people who jump red lights. I hope that we will return to this topic and have regular cycling debates. I hope that in a future debate we can look at some of the other issues that affect cycling, such as planning and residential developments with safe cycle storage, which is a problem in flats. In particular, there are high levels of cycle theft. I have constituents who have lost five, six, seven or even eight bikes in a few short years. I hope we can visit those topics in future.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

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[Norman Baker]

I certainly welcome that, and I welcome the constructive response we have seen already from the Freight Transport Association, for example. That comment is very welcome and I am sure that my colleague, the hon. Member for Wimbledon, is aware of that and can take it on board and move forward appropriately.

As I said, any one death on the road is one too many. Figures for London show that between 2008 and 2012, 53% of all pedal cycle fatalities were a consequence of direct conflict with HGVs, so there is a serious issue that we are very much aware of, as I think is the Mayor. We are taking steps to deal with it through a number of changes. It is also important to note that cycling in London has increased by 173% since 2000, and figures for cycling deaths and injuries have to be borne in mind in relation to the big increase in cycling that has taken place.

[Jane Ellison]

On the point about HGV safety, tomorrow morning I am visiting the regeneration site at Battersea power station, where the developers, owners and constructors are running a specific day of cycle awareness training with HGV drivers and cyclists. Does the Minister welcome such moves where developers take responsibility for HGVs moving in and out of their sites? Perhaps that is a way forward.

[Norman Baker]

That is exactly the right response, and I hope that it will become common practice across industry and across the country.

I want to respond to some of the comments made by Members. In the previous cycling debate, the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) called for the Prime Minister to lead and take action. The hon. Gentleman was very nice to me today but lamented the fact that I was, he implied, dealing with this without support. That is not the case. There is support from all my colleagues in the Department for Transport and from different Departments across Government, and the Prime Minister himself made a statement in August. That clearly indicates the importance that the Government as a whole attaches to the matter. If any colleagues across Government were not taking it seriously, I am sure that the Prime Minister’s appearance in August will ensure that they take it more seriously than they did previously.

There have been a number of suggestions that we should have a cycling champion. The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) talked about that. I am very sorry that he is no longer on the Front Bench, by the way. He has been a very good Minister in his time, and a shadow Minister as well—not just the Member for Poplar but a popular Minister. He asked whether I am the national champion for cycling. I hope that I am a national champion for cycling, but so are my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, my other colleagues in the Department for Transport, and the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister. We want to make sure that this is owned across Government by all Departments. The danger of having one person identified in the role is that others do not feel the need to participate in the same way. I am not particularly keen to use the word “tsar”, by the way. The history of tsars at the end of imperial Russia is not a happy one, and we can probably do without it.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) for drawing attention to the health benefits of cycling. We used the World Health Organisation economic assessment tool in assessing the cycle city and national park bids and the grants we subsequently gave. She mentioned 20-mph speed limits. I hope that she will welcome, as others have, the fact that this Government have made it easier for local councils to introduce 20-mph limits, which I campaigned on for a decade before they finally became reality under this Government. She asked about enforcement, which several other Members properly raised. The hon. Member for Wimbledon and I had a meeting with Suzette Davenport, who is a lead member on this for the Association of Chief Police Officers. She has agreed to rewrite the guidance for ACPO on the enforcement of 20-mph limits, and I hope that that will appear before long.

I have to say that there were a couple of churlish comments. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) complained about the Government’s approach. I should point out that she has had £10 million in two local sustainable transport tranches, £5.7 million through a cycle city ambition grant, and £1.24 million for cycle safety funding. That is £17 million for Newcastle and she was the most ungrateful Member here today. The second most ungrateful Member was the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who said that the Government were doing nothing and forgot to mention that the scheme at Brighton station that she identified—the cycle rail fund—and the cycle lanes on Old Shoreham road and Lewes road are paid for from the Government’s funding.

I am delighted that this has been such a good debate and that so many people have turned up to contribute. I confirm that the Government takes this matter very seriously, and we will make further progress. In the spirit of coalition unity, let me say that I have something in common with Norman Tebbit—we both want people to get on their bikes.