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Cycling

My Lords, although there have not been many participants in this short debate, it has had some high quality contributions. I congratulate not only the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, who is a keen advocate of cycling, but all those who have taken part. We do not spend enough time talking about issues such as this. That reflects that it has been neglected—not by the Government, I hasten to add, but more generally—to acknowledge and celebrate the merits of cycling in our culture. It is only a generation ago that probably most people cycled to work, to their factory or their office. I grew up in the flatlands of Essex and cycled every day, and so did those I grew up with. It was part of how you were. Much as we talk now about the contribution that cycling can make to reducing our carbon footprint and tackling the obesity timebomb, my generation did not see it that way at all—we just thought it was a fun thing to do. Acquiring the skills of cycling was part of growing up. I assure the House and the noble Earl, Lord Howe, that the Government are fully signed up to appreciating and promoting the health and environmental benefits of cycling. Indeed, our support for and funding of Cycling England, which has its own appointed experts in health and environment on its board, in 2005 to assist in formulating programmes to give life further life to a cycling strategy is clear evidence of that. In October 2007 the Government published Towards a Sustainable Transport System, which responds both to the Eddington study on the transport contribution to improving economic growth and productivity and to the Stern review on reducing carbon emissions. Meeting the transport needs of a modern economy while delivering those important CO2 reductions is a challenge, but not an insuperable one. Cycling is an important alternative to the car and one of the key low-carbon transport options we will need to employ in meeting the climate change challenge. On top of that, as all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate have observed, there is the challenge of the obesity timebomb that the Foresight report highlighted. That has been responded to by the Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives cross-government strategy for England. It is clear that cycling can offer a significant contribution to addressing all these challenges and, through government departments working together and recognising our shared objectives, we have already started to deliver on the plans set out in Towards a Sustainable Transport System. In January this year, we awarded a record £140 million to Cycling England after considering its already notable achievements and upon the evidence in a report by the economic consultants SQW on Valuing the Benefits of Cycling. This provided evidence of a 3:1 benefit, much of which relates to health and the environment. The noble Lord, Lord Young, observed the benefit of that cost-benefit ratio in those terms. The six-fold increase in Cycling England’s budget is further evidence of the Government fully understanding and accepting the case put forward by Cycling England and others interested in promoting greener travel options. As part of a joined-up approach, the Department of Health is contributing £15 million towards cycling, demonstrating its recognition of what cycling can do to improve the health of the nation. So what are we planning to do with the additional funding? That is the question asked by the noble Earl, Lord Howe. The first aim is to give children an opportunity at an early age to set a blueprint for life. These primarily have to be good health and a recognition of the importance of the environment. With Cycling England, we have pledged to give an additional 500,000 schoolchildren the opportunity to undertake high-standard on-road cycle training, to address some of the issues that the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, drew attention to, of core practice among cyclists. We have agreed also to provide 250 additional links to schools, connecting 500 schools via traffic-calmed or traffic-free routes, in addition to the 295 links already provided to over 600 schools since 2005. We have also agreed to double the number of ““cycling to school champions”” to work with around 400 schools, to maximise the benefits of these combined programmes. We are therefore giving the next generation the skills to improve their health and providing improved infrastructure to ease parents’ understandable fears over allowing their children to cycle to school. It will also give children greater independence while at the same time reducing the need to ferry children around by car. Cycling England announced in February £47 million to extend the Cycling Demonstration Towns programme, including creating the first large cycling city. Existing demonstration towns such as Darlington, where the numbers of those cycling to school has quadrupled, and Aylesbury, where the number of people saying that they are using a bike as one of their main modes of transport has risen from 3 per cent to 14 per cent, demonstrate to all what local authorities can achieve. This investment will provide around 3 million people with levels of spend on cycling seen only in the very best European cycling cities. The assessment criteria for the new demonstration areas includes the requirement for local authorities to show how their bids contribute to the aims of the Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives strategy and to think strategically across all departmental remits, such as environment, transport, education and health, and most importantly to show high level leadership and commitment. Cycling England, together with the Department of Health, are already working with two primary care trusts in Nottingham and Northamptonshire in the Community Health Improvement programme. By working with staff and those most at risk to poor health, such as the middle-aged and deprived communities, through cycle training and cycle rides they will be able to demonstrate to other care trusts what can be achieved. Cycling England also published Cycling and Health in 2007 and distributed it to local authorities and primary care trusts, which provides all the evidence in one document, with some practical ideas on how the two can work together. It does not end there. We have given Cycling England a remit and funding to find new solutions to encourage adults and at risk groups to cycle more, particularly for the journey to work and through leisure. On the topic of the journey to work, the Department published guidance on the Cycle to Work scheme in 2005 and at the same time negotiated a group consumer credit licence to ease the burden upon business in setting up the scheme. Since then, around 100,000 people have participated. In addition to our work with Cycling England, our successful initiative Sustainable Travel Towns is entering its final year of a five-year project and has so far seen a 10 per cent reduction in car trips and around a 30 per cent increase in cycling. That is on a target population of more than 180,000 people. The main tool used to achieve that is personalised travel planning, and I would like to point out this is not a ““nanny state”” intervention on how people should travel, but provides tailored information to enable people to make voluntary alternative travel choices to the car. A trial in one of the towns, Peterborough, showed that in a three-mile rush hour trip into the city centre, the cyclist took 15 minutes, had free parking and took some exercise burning off around 200 calories, while the car driver took 22 minutes, had to pay for parking let alone fuel and running costs and of course had no exercise. Providing that kind of tailored information can motivate people to make cycling the preferred option, especially in an urban environment. We recognise that we must improve cycling facilities in order to tempt more people to take this option. We are doing precisely that through Cycling England's free advice service to local authorities on the design of cycling facilities and through guidance such as the Manual for Streets, which promotes the highest priority to be given to pedestrians and cyclists in the design of residential streets. Finally, the Government implemented the local transport plan process in 2000 to enable local authorities the opportunity to develop their transport priorities and recognise that we share some, such as reducing congestion and improving air quality. Through that process we have asked local authorities to develop a cycling strategy as it can clearly contribute to improving not only people's health but the environment. Enabling local authorities to recognise their priorities has since been strengthened through the second local transport plans and local area agreements. In summary, Cycling England's programme and other initiatives such as Sustainable Travel Towns have given insight and inspiration to all local authorities as to what can be achieved in terms of improving health and contributing to a better environment, while the local transport plans and local area agreements provide a framework for them to achieve precisely that. Some of the contributions this evening were truly inspirational. I certainly cannot match the exploits of the noble Lord, Lord Young, with his trip from Land's End to John O’Groats. If someone in your Lordships' House is giving a lead and showing himself to be a role model, the noble Lord, Lord Young, is the number one candidate. He has done his bit for the environment. The noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, has done his bit for health. His was a wonderful practical example of how one person can adjust their lifestyle to improve their life expectancy. The noble Viscount is willing and more than capable of picking up that baton and also receiving a prize. I also congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Howe, on his contribution in terms of adding to our wisdom on the subject and making the links with health. He also asked two very good points, one of which I shall follow up—he made an interesting technical point about the position of electric bikes. I have heard that before, but I shall write to the noble Earl about that. Like the noble Earl, I, too, am attracted by the pick-up and drop-off schemes. I will not become an advocate of Boris’s mayoral candidacy, but I know that our good friend Ken Livingstone, with his the big injection of funds for cycling in London is more than his equal to claim to be the cyclist’s friend. Ken recently committed to pick up on all good ideas, and we will see that as being one of the most urgent to assist with after the outcome of the mayoral elections is secure. I congratulate all noble Lords who have participated. I have greatly enjoyed this debate and if we can spread a little more sunshine in the world of the cycling fraternity then we will do your Lordships' House and the nation a good service.