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Andy McDonald (centre) at Space for Cycling rally, Labour Party Conference 2017 (picture credit Cycling UK) Labour pledges to spend £10 per head annually on cycling and walking if elected
Shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald has said that a future Labour government would spend £10 per person per year on cycling and walking in England.
He made the announcement at a rally organised by Cycling UK and Brighton cycle campaign group Bricycles outside the Labour Party Conference yesterday evening.
McDonald, who is MP for Middlesbrough, said: "Our country is blighted by illegal air pollution, crippling congestion and a public health crisis. Cycling and walking can holistically address all these issues in an efficient, cost-effective way.
"Labour is committed to ensuring that potential is met and is committed to revolutionising our transport system through cycling and walking."
The rally was held to highlight the Space for Cycling campaign, initially launched by the London Cycling Campaign and subsequently taken nationwide by Cycling UK, with Brighton and Hove the first city outside London to adopt it.
> Brighton becomes first council outside London to back Space for Cycling campaign
In its 2013 report Get Britain Cycling, the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group called for spend on cycling to be raised to £10 per person per year, ultimately increasing to £20,
While former Prime Minister David Cameron said in 2015 that the government planned to raise spend on cycling to £10 per person per year, the amount allocated to cycling in most of the country remains woefully short of that figure.
According to Cycling UK, from 2010/11 to 22014/15, Department for Transport (DfT) per capita spend on cycling (excluding London) was £1.90 annually.
Adding in local spend the national figure was equivalent to £6.70 per person in 2015/16.
However, that figure will be skewed heavily by the inclusion of the Cycle City Ambition cities as well as London, which is home to around one in six people in England and alone has annual spend of £17 per person.
Earlier this year, the government published its long-awaited Cycling & Walking Investment Strategy, which pledged £1.2 billion to cycling and walking outside London over the next five years, which works out at a little over £5 per person per year.
> £1.2bn in funding as Government finally publishes cycling and walking investment strategy
Labour MP for Leeds North and APPCG treasurer Fabian Hamilton commented: "As a longstanding member of the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group, I am thrilled to hear our shadow transport secretary pledge £10 per head for cycling and walking if elected.
“We need a radical shift in our transport system and we are committed to making sure that happens."
Cycling UK’s Space for Cycling campaigner Tom Guha added: “This is a landmark announcement from the Labour Party.
“Around the country, local political leaders have been doing their best to invest properly in cycling to unlock the many benefits it can bring.
“However, it is national funding like this that is necessary if we are to see the cycling revolution we so desperately need.”
In the Netherlands, estimated spend on cycling per head of population is £24 a year while in Denmark it is £17 – although both countries have a four decade or so head start on England in terms of building infrastructure for people on bikes.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
- FionaJJ 2 sec ago
When I was a student it was virtually unheard of for someone to have a car. It wasn't even that it was considered a luxury that almost no-one could...
- Hirsute 18 min 50 sec ago
According to twitter @magistratesblog It's an obligatory disqualification, so it will have been made.
- RoubaixCube 42 min 43 sec ago
Could it also be that the victim didnt have valid insurance/driving license or M.O.T so didnt report it in fear of themselves being investigated???...
- RoubaixCube 48 min 33 sec ago
You mean they called up one of their friends or family members to stump up the £7 to get it greenlit....
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If the chains snap that is lack of build quality or material.....
- Hirsute 1 hour 55 min ago
"Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good."
- Jaijai 2 hours 20 min ago
His life was only worth shy of 7 years ,that's too lenient in every book .Let alone drugged up and leaving him to die
- webbierwrex 2 hours 25 min ago
I came here to basically write the same thing, the floating bus stop near me has a very narrow cycling lane between a very narrow pavement and a...
- AS52 2 hours 48 min ago
It wasn't an official consultation meeting - see my comment above.
- GMBasix 3 hours 21 min ago
Right, well that could be handy: I'm going round with my baseball bat to have a quiet chat about ownership. You can use their names to see if they...
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35 comments
Ernest Marples. End of.
For those that dont know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Marples#Business_interests
We just want to ride bikes safely with respect and without malice from other road users, j am I correct in saying this?
The headline was nice to read, it will draw some trusting people in to maybe think that their vote actually means something to the Labour party. However history says that politicians tell lies to get votes, and this politician/party who, not being in power, have no view on the public balance sheets or incoming fiscial pressures.
It's simply pie in the sky thinking and gutter press PR tactics from an opposition party with lots of ideas, to start spouting this bollocks this far away from an actual election. Saying that, lots of ideas are better than no ideas. Bad road.cc for this headline, it may as well read 'Corbyn promises to cycle to work if he wins the election' which would have been equally as interesting to me what with the election 56 months away or 5 classics seasons away if you prefer.
Easily affordable- money we will no longer have to bribe the DUP with
Politicians are always the same - promising to bribe people with their own money...
Beware of politicians bearing promises...
This is the same crowd who, before the election, promised to 'deal with' existing student debt, and then afterwards said they couldn't. It's the same mob whose finance bloke, just yesterday, promised to bring all PFI contracts in house. And then, just 24 hours later, the health bloke admitted they wouldn't actually be able to do that.
It's the same mob who were making costly promises left, right and centre prior to the election, and the same mob whose security minister thought police officers could be recruited for £30 each, per annum.
Oh, and it's the same mob whose leaders praised the Venezuelan economy as a model to follow, even when it became abundantly clear it was going down the toilet. The same Venezuelan economy that's now bankrupt and whose government is casually killing dissenters in order to maintain itself in power.
If they do spend £10 per head annually on cycling, you can bet a lot of magic money trees will get cut down to pay for it.
Wow! Frightening! If only it were true. But so completely stereotypical of the tory party distraction strategy from their own total and utter failings on transport. £56bn for HS2.
Which bits aren't true? Do you want me to give links to John McDonnell's speech and Jon Ashworth's interviews on the PFI thing? Or Diane Abbott's pre-election interview on policing? Or Abbott and Corbyn's praise for Chavez and (more importantly) Maduro's Venezuela? Or Chris Williamson's interview today claiming that the main problem Venezuela currently has is that the media coverage of the country's travails is biased?
You're 100% correct about HS2 being a looming disaster, but slapping that on the table in no way disproves anything else I'd said. BTW, which party was in power when HS2 was devised? I'm not a tory either by the way, so quit with the straw man rubbish and, if you are going to respond at all, address the points I made.
Which 'points'?
'costly promises left right and centre' is a bit light on specifics. But yes - let's get angry about the party trying to come up with progressive ideas while not in power, rather than the party borrowing more money to cut funding to services actually used by the people who need them most in society. It's what the Nasty Party would want.
I'm not sure Venezuela was ever held up as an economic model. They've definitely been a bit cosy, but I haven't seen anything that suggests the model point that you made (could be wrong - but yeah, a link, if you wouldn't mind).
Agreed on Abbott - a disaster who's out of her depth, and should have gone out to pasture and not allowed back in.
Adonis is an abomination. So 'Labour' he went to work for Osborne at the first opportunity. He's one of those middle-of-the-road slimes (like Osborne and Mandy) whose only loyalty is to themselves. But granted: he was 'New' Labour for long enough to come up with some awful ideas that this lot are trying to figure out.
No doubt it'll come from the same orchard as the DUP payment tree came from?
Buzzzzzzzzz! Vote-grabbing focus-group derived massive porky!
Politicians are all the same, promise then break promises once in power. Take it all with a pinch of salt. It's the giant corporations that decide what's what.
politicians are mere puppets.
Democracy is the biggest lie told to the masses.
Fuck that. Our flavour of democracy might be, but it wasn't always party bullshit bullied into shape by lobbyists. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Democracy no, capitalism yes.
Quick pause to reflect on how cycling-related this section has become.
The sugar tax starting in 2018 is expected to raise £1bn, accordingly there should be ample funds to easily cover this commitment, so this plan could and should be much higher.
Good that he has said it but verbal promises in his position are cheap and easily made.
£10 per head per year is massively better than the Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy produced by this government, ably summed up by CUK as very little strategy and even less investment.
Of course it needs to be more, and it needs to be written into a manifesto, but a good start, and I trust labour more than the tories, using the experience of the past fifty years.
Don't know if you've been voting for the last fifty years Burt, but I have and, try as I might , I can't think of an exception to the first rule of British politics: all socialist governments end in a financial crisis. And so I'm filing this one alongside Gordon Brown's 2006 promise to "end boom and bust", the fullfilment of which I keenly await.
Not this shit again.
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/03/13/the-conservatives-have-bee...
I can't boast a 50 year voting record but I do notice that conservative administrations tend to end with a crisis in public services and underspend on infrastructure.
Aw, don't let facts get in the way of a Tory banging on about 'Socialism' and Boom and Bust.
They don't have anything else to look forward to, except living mortgage-free, a decent pension, an NHS that won't have completely crumbled by the time they need it, and fucking the young over by voting the incompetent, spiteful bastards in again next time.
Thanks for saving me the trouble of looking it up.
Funny how it is never mentioned by their supporters that the tory governments all support driving to a massive extent, while labour is much more keen on public transport, cycling and walking. See John Prescott's white paper on transport, a positively visionary document that would have radically changed transport and life for the better if only much more of it had been implemented, instead of just free buses for oaps.
John '2 jags'prescot? Who went in the tube for a photo opportunity, while his driver followed him on the surface to take him back again. 2 car journeys for someone who wasn't actually going anywhere.
The moment where you start taking Richard Murphy seriously is where you begin to lose the argument. The man is a retired tax accountant whose detailed understanding and knowledge of economics is scant at best.
Two ad-homs for the price of one. That clattered two people and was so far from the ball, I believe it's called a 'Souness'.
Well I also can't boast a 50 year voting record.. however I do believe you two have just summed up the two main arguments for and against, given, for both parties.
And the wheel keeps turning... well done.
I'm going to say something controversial.
Yes the conservatives borrow more money....but before it is lambasted... just bear in mind many fiscal policies take several years before their full outcomes are felt. Commitments to spend money made by one government are often funded and resultant borrowing incurred by the successive government. i.e. borrowing incurred by one political party is quite often as a direct result of decisions made by the previous government.
In much the same way that Trump has been boasting in the US that his government is seeing massive falls in unemployment, however, this is before any of his policies have had a chance to make an impact.
I also echo concerns of stating an arbitrary figure to spend on cycling, with no real plans as to what will be done.
A. That's bollocks.
B. When was the last socialist government of the UK? It sure as hell wasn't New Labour...
Oh not this shit again.
I'd like to see a properly costed plan detailing what they want to create, over what timeframe and scale and then allocate money to it. NOt just go "oh we'll spend £10 per head" becasue I can guarantee it'll be spent on random crap like green paint and a job load of Cyclists Dismount signs but they'll go "oh but we spent loads of money..."
If your plan to build x, y and z costs £7.38 per head then that's great, if it costs £10.42 a head then find that extra 42p but don't just spend £10 per head on random shite. Give us the proper plan first.
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