Chamber and committees

I am afraid that I am just closing.

This is about choice, delivery and leadership. Scotland can be a nation where walking, wheeling and cycling are the first and natural choice for so many more people. We can deliver transformed paths, roads, streets and communities more swiftly and more inclusively. Over the next 90 minutes, let us demonstrate that we have the vision and the leadership to make that happen.

I move,

That the Parliament welcomes the Scottish Government’s record investment in active travel in 2022-23, which includes new funding for footpaths, significantly increased funding for local authorities and more than doubling the funding to the National Cycle Network; recognises the unprecedented ambition of the Co-operation Agreement commitment to invest at least £320 million, or 10% of the transport budget, for active travel by 2024-25 as a means of improving health and wellbeing, enhancing the quality of neighbourhoods, promoting social inclusion and tackling the climate emergency; further welcomes the commitment by Police Scotland to take forward the National Dashcam Safety Portal Initiative; agrees that prioritising walking, wheeling, cycling and public transport and reducing private car trips will be essential to cutting transport emissions and achieving Scotland’s climate targets; acknowledges the leadership shown to date by local and community partners, and hopes that all future local authority administrations will recommit to this leadership and achieve rapid delivery of active travel schemes on the ground.

I am genuinely delighted to speak to the motion. This is the first opportunity for us to debate active travel in the current session of Parliament, and the first opportunity for me to set out my priorities since I became the minister for active travel. I want to highlight three themes: choice, delivery and leadership.

Over the past couple of years, many more people in Scotland have chosen to walk, wheel or cycle. They have discovered new ways to see their neighbourhoods and interact with other people around them. They have discovered the social, health and wellbeing benefits of making those choices, and they have discovered joy in experiencing less congestion, quieter streets and cleaner air.

However, the political choices that have been made over the past 60 years do not make it easy for them. Choices that were made in past decades about the location of shops and services, the layout of streets and the design of footways and junctions, along with the sheer volume of traffic that we have generated and the car-centred culture that we have allowed to develop, all conspire to make the choice to walk, wheel or cycle—which should be the natural first choice for many more people—feel at times like a choice in the face of adversity.

For every person who has told me how much they have relished the freedom to walk, wheel or cycle more, someone else has said that they feel apprehensive about doing so—as I did when I moved back to Glasgow. I had been a regular cyclist as a student in Manchester, with Europe’s busiest bus route as my daily commute, but even compared with that, my home city did not feel safe to cycle in. Then there are people who tell me that they need their car for certain trips but they would happily leave it behind in favour of active travel or public transport for the majority of their travel. Active travel choices are not binary choices.

My job and, I believe, our job as a Parliament is to make the political choices and the personal choices come together. That is why I am very pleased to be overseeing the biggest-ever budget for active travel in Scotland’s history—£150 million next year, which represents a big step on the way to our commitment to allocate £320 million or 10 per cent of Scotland’s transport budget to walking, wheeling and cycling by 2024-25. It is a level of investment that equates to £58 per person in Scotland, which is far above the £10 per head in England and the £23 per head in Wales.

In two years’ time, our commitment will also outstrip the per capita spend of the Netherlands. Admittedly, our Dutch friends have been at it for rather longer than we have, which illustrates the importance of sustained investment over a long period and that investment in active travel needs to be part of a much bigger picture of how we plan and design our streets, towns and cities.

However, this is about more than just money. Dutch levels of walking, wheeling and cycling did not get to where they are simply through the allocation of budget. How the money is spent also counts, so over this year I have set in motion a full review of how we deliver such a rapidly growing programme. I want to ensure that our delivery model for active travel makes the most of the scale of the investment that we are putting in.

I am not sure who I heard first. It was possibly Mr Whittle.

I am quite sure that the member was actively advocating for better active travel rather than simply reacting against it as some people do. However, he said that he was criticising Scottish Government policy, but he is giving an example of a local implementation by a council, which he objects to. Does he recognise that that is one of the tensions that we need to openly and honestly debate? Do we allow local decision making and fund it from central Government, or do we take control and have a top-down approach? Surely the Conservatives want to achieve the kind of fostered local leadership that will get active travel infrastructure right, instead of merely reacting against it.

I will continue to engage with the Labour arguments for the time being.

Not only because of that support from the Scottish Government but because of political leadership at a local level, Glasgow City Council has invested in specific infrastructure and has a long-term plan to continue to do so. As she is not standing again in the coming election, I pay tribute to Anna Richardson for the work that she has done on that.

There is a huge amount of community leadership right across Scotland, and we will get the greatest benefit from supporting that community leadership through Scottish Government policies and spending.

I want to maximise the role of active travel in the wider transition to a sustainable transport system, with fewer unnecessary journeys. There is no time to wait. I am pleased to announce more than £300,000 to develop a national dashcam safety portal with Police Scotland. With more of us using cameras, not just on dashboards but on handlebars and even on our clothing, it will be easier to report crimes that put people, particularly cyclists and pedestrians, in danger. That is why we are also sustaining our headline places for everyone programme and more than doubling investment in the national cycle network next year. Those programmes will deliver the connected network that is so important, so that we can talk just as meaningfully about a path and cycleway network as we do about the road or rail network.

Much of that delivery will happen in partnership with local authorities, which is why we are increasing the capital funding programme for cycling, walking and safer routes, which goes directly to local authorities, from £24 million to £35 million next year. That means that, over a period of four years, direct local authority funding will have increased fourfold. I look forward to working with the newly mandated councils from May onwards on turning those pounds into projects.

The member knows that we will always continue to debate local authority funding, and I do not agree with the way in which the Conservatives interpret the figures. However, we are now seeing examples across the country—albeit not everywhere—of local authorities giving real leadership. They are clearly capable of doing so, and our increased funding to them will support them.

I want to pick out a few specific strands of our programme. The first, which I am announcing today, is the new Ian Findlay paths fund, managed by Paths for All and named in memory of the Paths for All chief officer, who very sadly passed away suddenly last year and who was a passionate and hugely respected advocate for active travel. The new £1.5 million fund will support small, local projects to make improvements to existing path infrastructure and make connections where there are gaps in the network. It will demonstrate that transformation is not just about big city or town centre changes; it is as much about connecting remote communities and making our neighbourhoods better places to live in, move around and relax in. I hope that Ian, who would have turned 61 today, would have approved.

Turning to the second aspect of the programme that I want to pick out, I highlight the point that active travel is inclusive travel. Walking, wheeling and cycling should be choices for the maximum number of people. Through our development and roll-out of street design guidance and through the projects that we fund, I want to see active travel being a choice for everyone.

I hope that Neil Bibby welcomes the fact that the Scottish Government is continuing with the policy. It would have been wrong just to crash ahead without designing it properly. That is why we have a pilot phase. Many different approaches are being taken, including those that do not necessarily lead to ownership of a bike but provide access to one and the ability to change bikes. That range of pilots will be evaluated by the autumn and we will continue to roll out the national programme as a result of what we learn from conducting them.

I will do so in a moment.

On one of Jeremy Balfour’s points, I have met the Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland, which was one of the Government’s main advisers on these issues. I know that other organisations such as The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association work very constructively with the Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland and other organisations to try to ensure that our guidance and advice to local authorities respects the need to be inclusive.

However, the challenge must be that disability access and disability equality issues do not conflict with our approach to active travel. I know, from sadly-growing personal experience, because I have grudgingly come to know arthritis over the past few years—members will have seen me walking with a stick sometimes—that there are many people who are disabled for whom active travel, and using a bike, is a mobility aid. I have days when cycling is much easier than walking.

We also need to ensure that there is access to adaptive bikes and the wide range of bikes that can enable a great many people with different kinds of disabilities to travel actively. This must be about how we do both; we should not see the two issues as being in conflict with each other.

I have given an example of how The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, MACS and SCOTS work together with Sustrans to produce guidance. I value that kind of constructive contribution more than some of the wholly negative comments that have been made.

That brings me to the Conservative opening and closing speeches, some of which wholly lived down to my expectations. Graham Simpson clearly wrote his opening paragraphs bemoaning the lack of detail about funding and specific projects. Therefore, he must have been disappointed that my opening speech mentioned so many clear, specific examples—specific figures for funding increases and specific projects that we are working with. He said that he wanted us to develop national standards. He must not have been listening to my opening speech when I talked about the cycling by design guidance that has been updated. He wanted us to provide more money at local level. He must not have been listening when I talked about the additional funding, including the funding that is going directly to local councils to deliver the work.

Mr Simpson fully lived down to my expectations when he used part of his speech to yell “Wear a helmet!” at me. Like every other Government in the United Kingdom, the Scottish Government does not make wearing helmets mandatory because the evidence would not support that. Like every cyclist, I make a decision for myself about whether I wish to wear a helmet and, like every other cyclist, I have angry drivers yelling “Wear a helmet!” at me out of their windows when they should be paying attention to their responsibilities on the road. I deeply regret that Mr Simpson thinks that it is appropriate to bring that same energy into the chamber.

The Labour amendment brought some much more credible and substantive arguments into the debate. Mr Bibby knows that there are aspects of it that we cannot support, but he raised some significant issues, particularly on the motivation for what is being done. The climate and public health imperative was acknowledged and, indeed, Mr Bibby criticised some specific local projects but did so more constructively. However, one of the fundamental arguments that Labour is making is that none of the work can be done properly because we have an honest disagreement about wider local government funding.

The reality is that the leadership that is being shown on active travel at local level around the country is patchy. There are some great examples now. Glasgow is one. I would not have said that 10 years ago and might not have said it five years ago. I might well have been scathing about the level of respect that is given to active travel in Glasgow all those years ago but, now, very clearly and not only because of the support and funding that the Scottish Government gives but because the political will exists there at a local level, Glasgow not only has—