Cycling: Government Investment

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Bone.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) on securing this important debate. I wish to follow on from my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), who talked about women and children cycling. In my constituency, I have literally hundreds and hundreds of cyclists, but they are not families. Families are frightened to go out on bicycles. The most amazing world heritage site—the Derwent Valley Mills—is in my constituency, but cyclists cannot get to it. We cannot encourage tourists in, because they cannot get to it. To reach it, cyclists have to go up the main A6. There is no sensible place to put a cycle route, so we need an off-road, dedicated cycle route, but one that can be used by walkers and others as well, so that it is multi-use.

I have got a group of local people working towards plotting such a cycle route. They are working with all the local authorities, who are mainly on board, apart from Derbyshire County Council, which does not like to do anything in a Conservative area. Everybody else is on board.

We need that cycle route, so that we can encourage tourism into Belper and other places. We can get people cycling for leisure, instead of having to put their bikes on their cars to drive out into the countryside to go on the various trails. I do not have a cycle route in my constituency at all, which is a real deficit for people who genuinely want to get out and take their families out, without having to make a major journey to do it. They want to be able to just take their kids out for a cycle on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. That dedicated route would help that happen and encourage more and more people to cycle.

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) on securing this debate. I wholly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) on this point. It is great that we get the investment—in Greater Manchester there has been £40 million of investment in 100 km of cycleways, and there have also been smaller schemes, such as the cycle friendly district centres scheme—but it is crucial that we also have the feeling of safety. Perhaps we could increase driver awareness —their consciousness of cyclists on the road and their safety.

[Pauline Latham]

My hon. Friend is right that we need to raise awareness, but with a road such as the main A6, which is just a two-lane road with huge lorries—sometimes those lorries are coming from quarries and going all over the place—it is dangerous for anyone, whether man or woman, and definitely so for a child.

I implore the Minister to look at how we can get more people off the road in my constituency and on to cycle routes, because I know that there is demand. That would not only help the leisure cyclist, but commuters coming into or going out of Derby—some do commute out for work. Removing cyclists from the main road could benefit the whole population by making cyclists’ lives safer and helping prevent traffic congestion caused by cyclists weaving in and out. They can cause hold-ups. I would like to see that dedicated cycle route happen, so I hope that the Minister will give us a crumb of comfort that he might look at investing in that route in Mid Derbyshire.