Human Trafficking

Debate between Peter Bone and Dai Havard

Thursday 20th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bone]

Indeed; it is unique. The right hon. Gentleman’s speech was really powerful, but everyone who spoke did so exceptionally well. I am very grateful to everyone who attended today and to the Backbench Business Committee.

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

Thank you very much, Mr Bone. It is my duty now to bring this debate to an end. Cyfarchion y tymor i chi—season’s greetings to you all—and if we survive the Mayan new year tomorrow, we will resume in 2013.

Question put and agreed to.

Cycling Safety

Debate between Peter Bone and Dai Havard

Wednesday 21st November 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), although I am afraid I agreed with virtually nothing that he said. I welcome the new Minister, for whom we have great hopes. He is following on from an excellent Minister, who is now in the Northern Ireland Office, and whose work on cycle helmets we certainly appreciate.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma) on being brave enough to introduce this really important debate. By the time he leaves this room, the Twittersphere will be filled with hate mail for him. It is extraordinary how members of the public and cycling groups can object to anyone who suggests that we recommend wearing a helmet; that is so wrong.

There is a simple statistic that always amazes me: 15% to 21% of young people wear a helmet and 35% to 40% of adults wear one. So parents are happy to go out and put a helmet on their heads to protect themselves, but will not do it for their children. I do not think anyone would regard me as a pinko lefty liberal. That is not the view of me in the House. Yet it is clear to me that the right thing to do is to bring in the mandatory wearing of cycle helmets for young people. I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill to that effect. The reason for that is simple. Children’s skulls are not developed, so the protection of a helmet is even more important for them than for an adult. Children cannot assess the dangers as an adult can. If adults freely decide to wear helmets it is absurd not to tell children that they must wear them.

My hon. Friend talked about horse riding. We now require children to wear helmets on the cricket field when they are batting and if they are keeping wicket. That has worked well, and now more adult players wear helmets, both when they keep and when they bat. If I had been wearing a helmet when I tried to hook this guy for four off a bouncer, I would not have lost most of the sight in my right eye. I was old enough to make that decision, but when it comes to cycling, surely we should protect children by law.

I know that that is not the Government’s view, and I entirely understand their point of view. The previous Minister made it clear; but he also made it clear that he would do anything outside legislation to promote the wearing of cycle helmets, and in the past few months I am afraid that things have gone backwards from that. I want to read from a letter to the Prime Minister, from the Bicycle Helmet Initiative Trust, which is a splendid organisation. I deal with many charities in my role as a Member of Parliament, and there are those that do something at grass roots, and care about something, and those that just talk about things and are worried about their next grant. The trust is a small charity that cares and does something about it. Angie Lee is a feisty lady who has been fighting on this question for a long time. She is a trauma nurse and sees the results of dreadful injuries. I think she needs to be supported. She has written a powerful letter to the Prime Minister, which is dated 16 October, and which unfortunately has not been replied to or even acknowledged by him, but she puts the case much better than I can. She says:

“When we last communicated back in March this year, you conveyed to me that the Government and the DfT encouraged the use of cycle helmets, especially for children. This offered me some assurance along with the confidence we had in the then Roads Safety minister, Mike Penning. I have not had the opportunity to meet his replacement, Stephen Hammond, as yet.

However, what you conveyed to me is in reality not the case. There is a fundamental conflict between sectors of the DfT, the road safety sector and the sustainable transport unit, with helmets being the ‘sell off’. Over the last two years we have seen a systematic move to undermine helmet use and its benefits and to exclude stakeholders, like ourselves, from being included on forums where cycling and helmets are discussed. It was only through the commitment of Mike that helmets remained high on the agenda.

Your coalition minister, Norman Baker, has publicly voiced his negative views on helmets and their use. Mr Baker’s personal choice and opinion have been widely used by cycling trainers and organisations to legitimise opposition to helmets. The attached document used by the UK’s largest provider of Bikeability training, Cycle Training UK, demonstrates this. This organisation also uses your picture to support its stance. We understand that Mr Baker has set up and leads a forum of selected cycle stakeholders. This is not open to all, but only a selected few who appear to us to be of a similar opinion. Mr Baker appears to be using his ministerial position to support his personal preference not to wear a helmet.

This is not the only conflict to be of concern to us. Last month the DfT launched a new Think! Campaign. The poster design is dreadful. It depicts a ‘green man’ cyclist without helmet, bike lights or reflector band. The ‘green man’ car driver has no seat belt on. These fundamental safety actions were all identified by a group of ten year olds whom I showed the poster to. I also understand that the DfT had discussed using Olympic cyclist, Bradley Wiggins, to launch this campaign but the CTC objected and Mr Wiggins was excluded because of his positive views on cycle helmets. If this is the case, then there is a serious strength of bias that is undermining the independence and impartiality within the department.

These conflicts, bias and segregation are damaging the work of organisations like ourselves, who have little or no access to DfT funding. We had drawn up a business case following a meeting we had with Mike Penning but since his departure, this, not surprisingly, has not progressed as we were expecting. We have invested vast amounts of energy, conviction and hard earned funds in the attempt to protect child and youth cyclists and support the road safety agenda. We have the skills and knowledge to take child cycle safety forward. However, we are not able to overcome constructed obstacles, bias and use of poor science.

Both adult and child cycling casualties are increasing. This is down to poor guidance, personal obstruction and a failure to be open and objective to all views in the interest of a holistic approach to this issue.

I have had the support of the DfT for 20 years, working with changing Governments and numerous ministers over this period. It is, however, the first time that I truly believe that children and young people are being ‘sold off’ in the interest of sustainable transport. Who are the winners? Who is gaining the most and what checks and balances are in place to evaluate this?

You know how hard our charity works. We have been held up as the true ‘big society’. Child cycle safety needs people who are in tune with child and youth needs, who are not financially driven and who are determined to lead on this issue despite external negative extremists.”

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

Order. This is a very long quotation. Quotations are meant to be quotations rather than essays.

[Mr Bone]

I am conscious that I may be running over time, so I will not complete it, but I think the Minister has got the flavour of what Angie says. The issue is important; if possible would he nudge the Prime Minister to reply on that vital issue? I know that the Minister’s sympathies are with people wearing helmets, but I think that there has been a movement away from that in his Department in the past few weeks.