The hon. Lady probably knows that the active travel commissioner, Chris Boardman, is a huge fan of side road zebra crossings and the potential they have. That is why we have said in the cycling and walking investment strategy that we intend to legislate for them in future.

In Manchester, London and now Wales, side road zebra crossings without Belisha beacons are allowed, yet in the rest of England they are not currently available. The Secretary of State mentioned the new cycling and walking strategy. Dunyeats Road in my constituency is suffering from multiple issues that are causing people and traffic to collide. Will she consider allowing councils to bring forward those crossings?

The Government recognises the importance of improving safety for people walking and cycling. On 12 June the Government published the third Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS3) which outlines the Government's vision for walking, wheeling and cycling to be safe, easy and accessible choices for everyone. Over £4.5 billion is projected to be invested in active travel up to 2030 from a wide range of funding streams including £1.1 billion of funding for Active Travel England.

The Government has also set ambitious national road safety targets to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured on Great Britain’s roads by 65% by 2035, and to reduce the number of children killed or seriously injured by 70% by 2035, both against a 2022 to 2024 baseline. These targets sit alongside the active travel safety performance indicator to monitor the rate of cyclists and pedestrians killed or seriously injured on England’s roads, measured as the number of fatalities and serious injuries per billion miles walked and cycled. The Department will actively monitor this indicator, which should help to assess whether active travel is becoming safer as more people walk and cycle.

We have learnt from the previous Cycling and Walking Investment Strategies of the importance of providing long term funding certainty for local authorities and third sector delivery partners to deliver our ambitious targets by 2035.

Estimates of the proportion of children who usually walk or cycle to school in England are obtained from the National Travel Survey. In 2024, 43% of children aged between five and 16 usually walked to school, and 3% usually cycled to school.

Further statistics on travel to school are available in table NTS0615, which can be accessed on the gov.uk website.

On 12 June, the Government published the third Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS3), which will enable more children to walk, wheel and cycle to school.

Active Travel England published its delivery plan on the same day, ‘Worth Every Step’, which sets out how it will support CWIS3. As part of this, Active Travel England will publish the ‘Streets for Schools’ tool and supplementary planning advice to support developers, local authorities and other transport and planning professionals involved in the planning, design and delivery of new and existing schools and the street environment around them.

Both the tool and advice note are designed for a wide range of users and organisations, setting out why active school travel matters and how they can design to maximise opportunities for walking, wheeling and cycling to school.

Over the course of the third Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy we will focus on enabling millions more children to walk, wheel and cycle to school by supporting local authorities to provide safe, coherent networks that connect neighbourhoods which will deliver health benefits for generations to come. This includes providing more than £760 million of devolved funding for walking, wheeling and cycling schemes and £135 million of revenue funding to support schools and community-focused programmes.

Active Travel England’s (ATE) delivery plan, ‘Worth Every Step’, outlines how ATE will help ensure delivery of more safe routes to schools with mayors and local authorities.

Active Travel England works collaboratively with local authorities, building their capability to enable more people to walk, wheel and cycle. Milton Keynes Council and Buckinghamshire Council each received a level 2 rating in Active Travel England’s 2025 Local Authority Active Travel Capability Ratings. Published in December 2025, the report accompanying the ratings describes level 2 as ‘Strong local leadership and organisational capability, with clear plans that form the basis of an emerging network with a few elements already in place.’

As part of the government’s £626 million investment in active travel over 2026/27 to 2029/30, Buckinghamshire were allocated £9,119,124 and Milton Keynes allocated £4,733,197.

Estimates of the proportion of short stages in towns and cities in England that are walked and cycled are obtained from the National Travel Survey. In 2024, 48% of stages of less than 5 miles made by residents of towns and cities in England were walked or cycled.

The department’s home-to-school travel policy aims to make sure that no child is prevented from accessing education by a lack of transport. Children of compulsory school age, 5 to 16, are eligible for free travel if they attend their nearest suitable school and live more than the statutory walking distance from it. The statutory distance is 2 miles for children under 8 and 3 miles for children aged 8 and over. Children are also eligible if they cannot reasonably be expected to walk to school due to special educational needs, disability or mobility problems, or the safety of the route. There are extended rights to free travel for children from low-income households intended to support school choice.

We know that men can find it more difficult to talk about their mental health, and that initiatives such as peer support walking groups and other community-based mental health initiatives may be helpful in improving men’s mental health and reducing loneliness and social isolation.

We appreciate the valuable role that the voluntary, community, and social enterprise sector plays in mental health, and we continue to work with a wide range of voluntary, community, and social enterprise stakeholders which play such an important role in supporting men at risk of mental ill health.

The Men’s Health Strategy, which was launched in November 2025, includes tangible actions to improve access to healthcare, provide the right support to enable men to make healthier choices, develop healthy living and working conditions, foster strong social, community, and family networks, address societal norms, and tackle health challenges and conditions. These include investment in community-based men's health programmes and suicide prevention programmes, and a groundbreaking partnership with the Premier League to make sure people know what mental health support is available to them.

Raising awareness of loneliness across society and reducing the associated stigma for all groups at risk of loneliness, including men, is a core part of the Government’s current approach to tackling loneliness. This includes providing loneliness advice as part of the Better Health: Every Mind Matters campaign.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is also supporting organisations which can play a role in reducing loneliness stigma amongst men through the tackling loneliness hub, an online platform that connects professionals from across sectors working to reduce loneliness.

Unlike the previous Government, who took £200 million out of the active travel budget, this Government are putting £600 million into improving walking and cycling and ensuring safer routes to school and safer crossings more generally. We are making sure that we invest in safe infrastructure to enable more people to walk and cycle more often. It is a priority for the Government to get this right. Walking and cycling will save people money, since they will not have to fork out at petrol stations, and it is better for the country’s long-term health and the environment. What’s not to like?