Orders of the Day — Protective Headgear for Young Cyclists Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 11:20 am on 23 April 2004.

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Photo of Mark Lazarowicz Mark Lazarowicz Labour/Co-operative, Edinburgh North and Leith 11:20, 23 April 2004

I congratulate my hon. Friend Mr. Martlew on the way in which he presented his Bill, and on taking on a subject that any of us who have been involved in transport issues, especially cycling, knows will be liable to provoke strong emotion on either side of the argument. When I was fortunate to come high in the private Member's Bill ballot a couple of years ago, the subject that I chose, employee share schemes, did not seem to provoke the same enthusiasm or emotion on either side of the argument that understandably exists on an issue of this nature.

My constituency is a long way from London, so I, like my hon. Friend Mr. Pike, do not find it possible to attend regularly on Fridays for private Member's Bills. I therefore look at the agenda to work out which Bills I want to be in Westminster for. On this day, this Bill, and the subsequent Bill, which I am sure will also be worthy of detailed examination, attracted my attention, so I decided some time ago to make a specific effort to be here for Second Reading. At that stage, I generally supported the Bill's objectives; like most people who are interested in road safety, including those in the Chamber today, my gut reaction was that the Bill must be a sensible idea. However, as I have had information sent to me, and as I have tried to investigate the subject in more detail, I have swung from being generally supportive to being extremely sceptical—certainly about the breadth of its proposals. I am not saying that I would oppose the Bill in its entirety, but I would have to be convinced strongly that it would be right to take it forward. In those circumstances, I am sure that my hon. Friend wishes that I had not bothered coming here today, but having made arrangements to be here a long time ago, I want to contribute to the debate.

My earlier interventions may have given some indication of the reasons for my shift of position, and I want to explain the reasoning behind my growing doubts. My attention was first drawn to possible problems with the Bill by the postcard from the CTC to which my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley referred. Like him, I was somewhat amused that the letter inviting me to express my opinions did not give me an address to which I could respond. I was also struck by the way in which the postcard featured a picture of a happy family cycling in summer on a rural path, with, stamped across it, the word "criminals". I wondered whether that was really the content of the Bill.

On issues of this nature, I am aware that when people try to lobby MPs, they put their case in the strongest possible terms, and, like Sir George Young, I am aware that, in this field in particular, emotions and simplifications of the argument can be the order of the day. I was therefore dubious about whether the Bill would make this happy cycling family into criminals. I therefore studied the Bill, and it is true that it would make that family, apparently doing no harm to anyone by cycling along a rural off-road path, into criminals.

I looked at the Bill in a little more detail and considered an example that I gave in an earlier intervention from when I took one of my children to a local park, and she met one of her friends, who offered to let her ride her bicycle for a short period. That indicates the problem with the Bill's approach. We must move towards regarding cycling as being as natural a way of getting around the community as walking. We do not want it to require special protection. No one suggests that pedestrians should have to wear helmets when they cross the road, but pedestrians are much more likely to suffer head injury than cyclists.