Cycling

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Monday 2nd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Indeed. I saw that with my own eyes, and I took part on a more conventional bike in that Pedal on Parliament. The point that my hon. Friend makes is a good one. One reason we have seen an increase in Edinburgh in the percentage of journeys undertaken by bike has been the political commitment over many years—political commitment in which, I am pleased to say, the Labour party over the decades has taken the lead, and which, to be fair, is now widely shared across the political parties in Edinburgh, just as it is in the Chamber today.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) pointed out—and I should mention that we were joined by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) in Pedal on Parliament this year—we have also had a very effective grass-roots campaign, first in the form of Spokes, the Lothian cycle campaign, of which I have been a member for many years. That campaign has consistently and in a well-informed way put pressure on local government and central Government to deliver both cycle spending and the integration of policies in wider planning and transport activity, to give cycling a higher profile. We have also seen the very successful Pedal on Parliament initiative, which started in 2012 with a couple of thousand people lobbying the Scottish Parliament at the end of a cycle ride, and which in May this year ended up with 4,000 people in a very impressive lobby of the Scottish Parliament.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the significant things at that event was the reaction of those who were there to a spokesperson from the Scottish Government who gave only warm words—compared to the local council, which has committed 5% of its transport budget, to rise by 1% each year to 9%—because cyclists know that words are not good enough?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend points to the commitment of Edinburgh council not just to maintain a 5% level of all transport spend, both revenue and capital, on cycling but to increase it year on year by 1%, which is a major commitment. In a briefing to some of us earlier, Chris Boardman said that it was the first city in the UK to make that commitment. That contrasts with the poor record of the SNP Scottish Government in supporting cycling. It is interesting that the success of the Pedal on Parliament campaign in Edinburgh has had the effect of shaming the Scottish Government into putting more money into cycling. That is a tribute to such campaigning work, which is so important at the grass roots.

I do not want to make jibes at other political parties in what has otherwise been a non-partisan debate, even if those parties are not represented in the Chamber today. In Edinburgh we have now seen a cross-party consensus on cycling policies. Although it is true that our Labour colleagues on the council made a commitment to increase the spending on cycling year on year, it is being done now with the support of the minority party in the Edinburgh council coalition, the Scottish National party. So let us hope that the SNP at Scottish Government level will follow the example of its colleagues on Edinburgh council.

As has been mentioned a few times in the debate, some of those who organised the Pedal on Parliament campaign to lobby the Scottish Parliament had personal experience of death and serious injury to cyclists on our roads. The increase in deaths and serious injuries to cyclists in England over the past five years has been replicated in Scotland. We have seen a similar increase over the past five years. Let us not forget that as well as being in every case a personal tragedy for the families and friends of those involved, every cycling death or serious injury has the effect of discouraging people who might otherwise come back to cycling, because they do not realise the wider relative or absolute safety of cycling compared with most forms of transport.

There are many reasons why it is vital to have targets to bring down the toll of death and serious injury to cyclists on our roads, and I have no doubt that if the measures proposed in the “Get Britain Cycling” report were implemented, they would dramatically reduce the number of cyclists killed and injured on our roads.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Some of my constituents who urged me to take part in the debate may have been surprised when I wrote back to say that, although I would put in for it, I could not guarantee that I would be able to speak, or able to speak for long. I think that, in general, the British public underestimate the extent and seriousness of the House’s interest in cycling. Debates on the subject have been greatly over-subscribed, at least during the time for which I have been a Member of Parliament, and I think that that is a huge step forward.

It is a pity that a debate which has been so well supported will not receive much publicity. It will not, I suspect, feature on the front pages of many newspapers, despite our best endeavours. That is probably because it is too consensual. The British public, or perhaps the media, are sometimes a bit odd in that respect. We are always being urged to be more consensual, but when we are more consensual, we tend to be ignored, and what we say is not considered very important. I hope that at least some attention will be paid to this debate, because—as was pointed out by the hon. Members for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) and for Gloucester (Richard Graham)—it is important for us to mention not just the problems but the fun and enjoyment of cycling.

It is also important for people to realise that Members of Parliament are human beings who “get” cycling. The hon. Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) said that we might not look like MPs if we turned up sweating from cycling, but MPs are people as well. When I was first a councillor and cycled around my ward all the time, my constituents initially thought that I was a touch eccentric, but as they got to know me, they realised that that was actually a very sensible thing to do. Cycling gets us to where we want to be very quickly and efficiently, especially in cities. Sadly, in rural areas cycle use is falling rather than rising, and that is clearly an issue that we should think about.

When I was a young trainee solicitor, I was asked to deliver an offer. Housing offers had to be delivered by a deadline of noon, and this was before the days of fax and e-mail: they had to be delivered physically. When my boss said that the offer must be delivered by 12 o’clock, I said “I will just go and get my bike”, but he threw me the car keys and insisted that I take the car. Of course, taking the bike would have been much more efficient. Once you get the car to the destination, assuming that was in time, there would be nowhere to park it, and in parking it five minutes’ walk away, absolutely nothing has been gained. People have to understand that.

Even in a city such as mine, where generally, as I indicated in an intervention, a lot of money is being spent on cycling and there is a lot of support for it, the proposal for how to deal with Princes street once the trams arrive and start working was, disappointingly, to have an only one-way cycle route, along that prime street of the city. One argument for that was that the alternative route, which would have had a two-way cycle route, was on one of the big national cycle routes and people would want to go through it. I greatly admire people who do long-distance cycling, but I am not one of them; for many of us we are talking about a daily event, and people want to go from A to B easily. Perhaps Edinburgh council is listening, along with other councils, because they have to make it easy for us to get to where we want to be, as that will encourage a lot of people to get cycling.