Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)

Meeting date: Thursday, March 17, 2022

Official Report 1072KB pdf

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Active Travel

The next item of business is a debate on motion S6M-03650, in the name of Patrick Harvie, on delivering on active travel commitments.

15:25  

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.

Will the minister give way?

Will the minister take an intervention on that point?

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

I thank Patrick Harvie for taking the intervention, and my colleague Jeremy Balfour for letting me intervene.

The minister talked about budget. I want to highlight something that I have mentioned to him before. Over the past year, Cycle Station, which is a third sector organisation in my area, has recycled and sold 650 affordable bikes at a cost of nothing to the Scottish Government. Is that not showing us where our money should be, how we should invest, and how we should actually deliver on active travel?

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.

I am sure that the minister will acknowledge the point made by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities that local authority budgets have been cut by £100 million in the Government budget. How can they be expected to deliver on what we all want them to do?

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.

Will the minister take an intervention on that point?

I am afraid that I need to make some progress.

I was pleased to announce a further £825,000 to support 36 innovative e-bike projects across Scotland through the eBike grant fund, which includes support for non-standard and adapted bikes.

The third delivery arm that I want to pick out today is the work that we are doing with children and young people. The impact of the under-22 free bus travel policy that has been implemented this year will be even greater alongside the work that we are doing to make it easier for young people to walk, wheel and cycle. In the past year we have invested £1.3 million in bikeability training for schools in 31 local authorities, thus supporting 47 per cent of schools to deliver on-road training. Next year we will more than double our grant funding to Living Streets Scotland to more than £500,000 for programmes including walk once a week, involving more than 100,000 primary school children and their families in 26 local authority areas to encourage them to walk to school.

I know just how passionately young people care about the climate emergency and the future of our world. They challenge us to respond to that passion. Our job is to give them the choices over sustainable travel to rise to that challenge, and it is the full package that will make the difference.

Supporting active travel choices and delivering projects also come down to leadership, at every level. I do not doubt that over the next hour and a half we will hear sincere and powerful arguments in favour of active travel. All political parties in this chamber went into the last election with significant commitments on active travel in their manifestos. I hope that we will have a debate that echoes that sincerity and significance.

Sadly, however, too often that support, at both national and local levels, can disappear when it comes to projects on the ground. It is not enough to support active travel in principle and then to stand in the way of project after project happening. Too often, what we see is delay, dilution and disruption, and even sometimes the opportunism of those who complain about an imaginary war on motorists.

Clear and consistent leadership is so important. In order to ensure that people can choose to walk, wheel and cycle more often, we also have to choose. We make the choices on who gets priority for finite road space, choices on speed versus safety, choices about changing our car culture and achieving a sustained reduction in traffic levels, and choices about what we want our future places to look and feel like.

Will the minister take an intervention?

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 call Graham Simpson to speak to and move amendment S6M-03650.3.

15:36  

This is the first transport debate that Patrick Harvie has led since he was elevated to the heights of becoming a Government minister, so it was with eager anticipation that I prepared for it. I imagined that the de facto Deputy First Minister would be spelling out a list of his achievements and laying out specific actions to come, with delivery dates and costings. We would expect that the new kind of politics that was promised by Mr Harvie and Ms Slater would usher in a waffle-free era in which vagueness is banished to the dustbin—or the incinerator, for this is a Scottish National Party-Green Scotland where there is still no moratorium on those.

It is with some exasperation, therefore, that I discover that Mr Harvie has very quickly settled into his new role by reading the SNP ministerial rulebook. Rule 1 is “Turn up to photo calls for projects that you have had no hand in and take the credit anyway”—we had that at Bowline. Rule 2 is “Talk big, but don’t deliver”. Rule 3 is “Consultations and buzz words, please, but no promises—the electors won’t notice”. Then we have Mr Harvie’s own personal rules. Harvie rule 1 is “Don’t change how you act now you’re a minister”. Actually, that is it. We saw that when he refused to wear a helmet when turning up for a ministerial photo shoot for a bikeability event.

I have listened to the minister speak, and I have to say that I am disappointed. He and I share the same ambitions on active travel, but let us be clear: there is a huge gap between what the Government says is its ambition and the actual delivery on the ground, and that has been the case for years.

Mr Harvie might wish to take credit for getting the SNP to agree with our position that 10 per cent of the transport budget should be spent on active travel. However, he is now responsible for making sure that it happens. I wish him every success, and he might wish to work with other parties to achieve that. If he wants to reach out to me, I am all ears. I reach out to him now—let us work together on this one area of policy where we agree.

Travel of all forms—as you know, Presiding Officer—is interlinked, so I will not talk just about active travel. The Scottish Government wants to see a 20 per cent reduction in car miles by 2030. It wants to see us all, within eight years, using cars a fifth less than we do now. How that is going to happen we do not know. I do not think that anyone in Transport Scotland knows, and I suspect that the minister does not know either.

The minister said that his party is not responsible—although it is worth making the point that there is no one from his party here except him. He says that he is not conducting a war on motorists, but he has actively supported the Glasgow Greens who wish to ban all drive-throughs in Glasgow. Is that not a war on motorists?

I think that a war on motorists is going on and that the Government wants to make it so difficult to own and drive a car that people just give up.

What the Government does not have is a plan to make the alternatives to cars better. Councils will finally get the powers to run bus services, but the regulations will not be through until next year. It is not clear whether councils will get financial help—we must assume not—so it will be some years before anything worth while happens, if at all.

On active travel—walking, cycling and wheeling—we have to pin our hopes on speedy delivery. Where better to turn than the second strategic transport projects review, still in its draft stage. It talks about “active freeways”, which is an American word. Active freeways are described as segregated active travel routes on main travel corridors. It all sounds good, but no one I talked to seems to know what that means and where the first one, earmarked for 2025, will be.

By 2025, at least £320 million, or 10 per cent of the total transport budget, should be allocated to active travel, which is a major increase in a very short space of time. I welcome that, but it will be councils that deliver on it, and, apart from Glasgow and Edinburgh, councils do not have the resources to deliver at scale. This is a serious issue, and I ask the minister what he intends to do about it.

As the minister acknowledged, we can see good and bad schemes across the country. In my view, some of the infrastructure that has been put in in Glasgow is very good. Edinburgh, which Jeremy Balfour will talk about, has been less impressive. Edinburgh has steamrollered schemes through, bypassing troublesome councillors and communities, and making, frankly, a right pig’s ear of it on some things.

In my town of East Kilbride, I have seen spaces for people money spent on a particular short route that took months and is a confusing dog’s breakfast of weird lines and colours. Nobody can work out what it is about. We need sensible national standards that people can work to. Where councils do not have the staff, time or money, we should help them out. That is what needs to happen.

Our amendment talks about the need to train children how to ride bikes, which is where bikeability, which I mentioned earlier, comes in. There are still too many schools—more than half—that do not offer on-road training. We need to do better. As a former councillor who has taken part in bikeability sessions, I know that, sometimes, it is teachers who need the training to deliver the schemes.

Electric bikes are becoming more and more popular, but, just like electric cars, they need to be charged. There is currently no network for that, if someone is out and about and doing a longer journey. I suggest that the minister looks at that.

STPR2 is a typically woolly document. We do not really know what it means, but it needs to align with other policies, for instance on planning.

The cross-party group on sustainable transport, which I chair, is doing a piece of work on what the Government needs to do to achieve its ambitions. Our conclusions, when they are made, could be challenging for us all. However, I will share them with the minister, and it would be good if I could bring them to the chamber. My conclusion is that we need less navel gazing and word spin, and more wheel spin. We need substance and we need it fast.

I move amendment S6M-03650.3, to leave out from “the Scottish” to end and insert:

“increased spending on active travel as called for by the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party and others; believes that cycling, walking and wheeling can contribute to people’s health and wellbeing; further believes that every schoolchild should have the opportunity to benefit from cycle training; welcomes moves to encourage people to travel, particularly short distances, without the use of a motor vehicle, but accepts that for many people the car is essential; believes that increasing rates of active travel can help to fight climate change, but calls on the Scottish Government to ensure that local authorities have the necessary resources to improve their active travel infrastructure, and further believes that failing to do so will run the risk that there will be a postcode lottery of exemplar projects in Scotland.”

15:43  

The phrase “war on motorists” has been used in the debate. There is a war happening at the moment in Ukraine, in mainland Europe, so members really need to reflect on the language that they are using.

All parties today agree on the principle that at least 10 per cent of the transport budget should be invested in active travel. That investment represents an opportunity to help more Scots to live active, healthier and longer lives. As Sustrans has told us, physical inactivity contributes to nearly 2,500 deaths a year in Scotland, while only 39 per cent of adults do 30 minutes of moderate activity five days a week.

It is barely six months since the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—COP26—and active travel must be a part of our move to net zero. On the principle of spending 10 per cent of the transport budget on active travel, the Government will find no disagreement on these benches.

However, there are serious questions about the best use of that money. We need to channel funds effectively and ensure that money is spent in a way that is joined up and thought through and that it is spent not on just any projects but on the right ones. Otherwise, we end up with situations such as the one in Johnstone, where a newly installed cycle lane has had to be removed due to serious safety concerns from the public.

Local authorities need time to plan sensibly. Short windows for funding do not contribute to the best decision making. It appears that, too often, rushed decisions are made so that time-limited funding can be accessed. That is an issue not only in Renfrewshire but in other parts of Scotland. I ask the minister to consider that going forward and help councils with long-term planning and funding.

Consultation is also vital to better decision making. Faraway planners cannot have a simplistic build-it-and-they-will-come mentality. We should ask people what would make the biggest difference to their communities and invest accordingly.

As Liam Kerr said, this takes place against the backdrop of long-term cuts to council budgets from the Government. The Accounts Commission confirmed last week that, once emergency Covid funding is accounted for, local authorities have faced a 4.2 per cent reduction in funding. Local government has been hit harder than any other devolved spending area. Even accounting for movement in the budget for the coming year, councils face £251 million of core funding cuts.

Cuts have consequences. Scottish Labour revealed at the weekend that there is a local roads repair backlog of at least £1.7 billion. That is of concern not only for motorists but for cyclists. In fact, potholes are likely of greater concern to a cyclist than to a driver and are unquestionably a factor in the levels of cycling.

There is also a serious issue of transport poverty. Not everyone can afford to buy and maintain a decent bicycle. Wonderful charities such as Own Yer Bike in Ferguslie Park in Paisley in my region do much to help. Own Yer Bike offers free classes to kids on bicycle maintenance and repair and a range of services for more mature cyclists, too.

Before the election, the SNP and Greens promised free bikes for all children of school age who cannot afford them. The question is: where are those bikes? Last month, only 1,000 had been given out as part of a pilot scheme. However, 145,000 families in Scotland are entitled to a school uniform grant.

Not only do we know how few bicycles have been given out, we know that they cost £1,000 each.

Only 1,000 bikes have been given so far and 145,000 families in Scotland are entitled to a school uniform grant, so there is clearly a big gap in provision. It is a big test for the Government. Is it still committed to that policy? If so, when will it be delivered or will it be another broken promise?

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 absolutely agree with the minister that it is right to evaluate the pilot projects. However, on the timescale, the Scottish Greens previously said that grants for schoolchildren’s bikes should have happened by August 2020. If they are truly committed to the policy, surely they will implement it by the end of the year after the pilot schemes come to an end.

There has been a lack of meaningful consultation with pedestrians and disability groups. Active travel is about walking and wheeling as much as it is about cycling. We must always ensure that we get the balance right. There should be good, safe, clean, well-lit and secure places where all people, especially women as well as young people, can feel safe to walk.

The £1.7 billion repair backlog that I referred to earlier does not include footways, many of which are a disgrace after years of council cuts. Our walkways, footpaths and pavements need serious investment to turn active travel into a reality, but that will not happen until we start to restore the funding that councils have lost in successive budgets.

Sustainable journeys are often multimodal journeys. Our active travel network should be integrated with our public transport network. I say again to the Scottish Government that it must stop the cuts to one in 10 ScotRail services. It cannot reduce car dependency in Scotland while simultaneously shrinking ScotRail timetables and cutting services.

We welcome investment in active travel. If we invest wisely, we can make Scotland greener and healthier. However, we cannot view active travel in isolation. Promoting sustainable and active travel requires co-ordination. It means following through on the commitments that have been given and investing in walking and wheeling—not just cycling. It means that multimodal journeys on our transport network should be easier to make.

For those reasons, I move amendment S6M-03650.1, to insert at end:

“; notes the cross-party support for 10% of the transport budget being allocated to active travel; recognises that wider cuts to local authority budgets hamper active travel, including safety concerns from a lack of adequate lighting; notes the important link between public transport and active travel and recognises that cutting train services will not encourage a reduction in car use; considers that improvements to roads and pavements are necessary to improve levels of active and sustainable travel, and further considers that, if the Scottish Government is serious about promoting active travel, it should fulfil its commitment to provide access to bikes for every child who cannot afford one by the end of 2022.”

15:50  

Had my amendment been picked this afternoon, the Scottish Government would have been asked for an update on how many schools currently offer cycle training. That would have followed up a Scottish Liberal Democrat amendment that was agreed to in the chamber in the previous session, which said:

“every schoolchild should have the opportunity to benefit from cycle training.”

When I asked for the recent figures on that in a written question, I was informed:

“The Scottish Government does not hold that information. Annual school cycle training performance figures for 2021-22, including delivery data from all participating local authorities, will be available in September 2022.”—[Written Answers, 15 November 2021; S6W-04051.]

I note that the bikeability Scotland briefing states that 37 per cent of primary schools were offered on-road training in 2020-21, despite national school closures, local restrictions on external instructors, and staff and pupil absences through illness or isolation. It would be good if the Scottish Government could confirm that figure. I also note that the latest Sustrans data for 2020 shows that 3.8 per cent of pupils cycle to school. That figure is down slightly from 2019.

Investing in cycle training for young people is an investment for all our futures. If we can get the conditions right, we will have a generation of cyclists who would sooner walk, wheel or cycle for short journeys than hop into a private car.

Our infrastructure needs to be upgraded to tackle the obstacles that breed a reluctance to cycle on roads alongside cars. Cyclists need to be safe on our roads and to feel as safe as possible. Research by Sustrans and the City of Edinburgh Council in 2015 found that just 62 per cent of city residents felt safe riding a bike during the day and that that figure fell to 34 per cent at night. The figures for driving a car were up towards 90 per cent.

Potholes add further safety concerns. Should a person swerve to avoid a pothole? Should they move toward the car or the pedestrians? Meanwhile, we have cuts to council budgets on their way and £1.7 billion of potholes to fix.

As many more of us return to work in office blocks, we should do what we can to make an active travel commute possible and comfortable, and a safe endeavour. We have called for funding to be made available to help businesses and others to install showers and changing rooms in workplaces and community facilities.

We need a new vision on cycleway planning. We need to ensure that routes take commuters where they need to go, keep up the maintenance of paths and provide signage along them. Further work is needed to join up existing cycle paths and ensure that they do not end abruptly.

There are significant challenges to improving active travel in rural, remote and island areas, where natural barriers, sheer distance and inclement weather make active journeys difficult. For those locations, the Scottish Government needs to do more to ensure that public transport is a realistic alternative to private cars. I hope that the Government will take on board our plan for buses, empower local communities to have a significant voice on routes and not allow routes to go only where profits lead.

For some in Scotland—particularly those in island and rural communities—cars are the only option for travelling. We need to support those people to transition to the most sustainable private cars available.

Active travel is, and should be, a key plank of plans to net zero targets. Like other plans, those plans require significant investment.

15:53  

I thank the minister for bringing forward the debate. Following the Scottish Government and Green Party co-operation agreement, I commend the Scottish Government for the record investment in active travel over the next year. As we have heard, the £320 million dedicated to active travel by 2024-25 will bring us even closer to reaching our net zero targets.

The near tripling of the active travel budget equates to £58 per head of population in Scotland. As the minister said, that compares with £10 in England, £20 in Wales and £30 in leading countries, including the Netherlands. As he said, we have a little bit of catching up to do with them.

That funding will help us to move towards the transformational shift that is needed to help to meet the 20 per cent car kilometre reduction target, while protecting our climate from damaging transport emissions. The key aim of providing free bus travel to under-22s has now been delivered. There were some teething problems, but it was a statement of intent.

The beautiful landscape of East Lothian in my constituency makes an incredible place to walk and cycle. We have the coastal towns of Dunbar and North Berwick, the Lammermuir hills and the surrounding villages and towns. The pandemic saw residents and visitors truly appreciating East Lothian’s hills and coast.

I want to talk about a specific project in East Lothian. In my constituency, discussions have been on-going for more than a decade on a pedestrian and cyclist-friendly route between Drem and Gullane. A survey that was conducted during lockdown by the Drem-Gullane path campaign reported that 40 per cent of residents were cycling more and 77 per cent were walking more, alongside a drop in car use. In addition, 89 per cent of respondents believed that East Lothian Council should significantly increase investment in cycling and walking infrastructure.

Recently, in the East Lothian Council budget round, it was confirmed that £30,000 would be ring fenced to help the creation of a path for locals. In partnership, Sustrans Scotland has awarded East Lothian Council £30,000 for the first section of the path, and that work is now under way. A spokesman for the Drem-Gullane path campaign—

Will the member give way?

If I can get the time back. I have only four minutes.

Yes, you can get the time back, Mr McLennan.

I am grateful to the member for giving way. Would he recognise that there is an inequality in people’s ability to access cycling between areas that are ranked higher and those that are ranked lower in the Scottish index of multiple deprivation, and that it is important that we tackle that inequality?

I thank the member for the intervention—I will touch on that in a second.

A spokesman for the Drem-Gullane path campaign was delighted with the increased investment, and said:

“Investing in active travel infrastructure is vital to keep pedestrians and cyclists safe and to encourage healthier and greener journeys.”

In East Lothian, the council is also looking to pilot active transport hubs in each of our main towns. I hope that, with the increased national investment, that will become the norm as part of the local planning processes.

Walking, cycling and bus and train links must be as interlinked as possible if we are to achieve our target of reducing car journeys by 20 per cent. Mr Whittle mentioned an important point in that regard. We also need to continue our investment in public transport, such as the new railway station that is currently being constructed in East Lothian in my constituency.

The Scottish Government commitment to investment in the Sustrans 30-year national cycle network plan and in a new cycling framework for active travel is also very welcome. Each local authority needs to do the same locally. East Lothian, like many other constituencies, is a mix of rural and urban towns and villages, so connectivity between villages and towns as well as within them must be considered.

Demand-responsive transport must be part of the solution for our towns and villages. We need that not only to reduce emissions but to help our local villages sustain their local schools, and to help villages thrive. Partnership between the Scottish Government, local authorities, Sustrans and other active transport groups is key in local delivery.

As a member of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, I believe that national planning framework 4 and local development plans must ensure that any new developments are an integral part of an existing settlement and that active transport links are a condition of any grant of consent. That must be part of any formal consultation processes and beyond. To come back to the point that Neil Bibby made, the designs for those links have to be co-produced with local groups.

The Scottish Government’s commitment to active travel is very welcome. In the future, I hope to see councils increase their commitments to active travel and support projects like the Drem-Gullane path campaign.

I advise members that we have a bit of time in hand, so if any member wants to take an intervention, they will be recompensed for the time.

15:58  

Active travel is a great thing. It is functional and healthy, and it allows us to experience the physical and mental benefits of exercise while going about our daily lives. One of the small benefits of the past two years was the opportunity that I had during lockdown to spend more time walking and enjoying the countryside around me.

Active travel should be promoted and prioritised. However, the Scottish Government’s record on it seems flimsy and slapdash at best. That record involves either not following through on policies or implementing policies that have often been counter-productive in respect of actually helping people to engage in active travel. A prime example is the spaces for people initiative and the way that it has been implemented in the capital city. It has wreaked havoc for those on whom it has been imposed.

This year, I sent out a survey with my annual report. It asked people to list the three biggest issues for them in the whole of Lothian. What came back as the number 1 issue, by miles, was the need to get rid of the spaces for people scheme. Not only had it affected cars and people, but, ultimately, and even worse, it had affected health.

The school that my daughters go to is on a main road. Normally, the traffic is heavy but it keeps moving. When the spaces for people scheme was put in, it took literally 10 minutes to go 20 yards. Buses, cars and everything came to a standstill because of the scheme. The pollution that occurred outside a major primary school, affecting children’s health, was a direct result of the implementation of that policy by the SNP-Labour administration in Edinburgh.

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.

Absolutely, and that is why we need to get rid of the SNP-Labour administration in the May elections and have a Conservative-led administration in the city that will implement the policy properly. Nevertheless, the minister makes a fair point. The policy that Labour and SNP councillors implemented in Edinburgh was a direct result of legislation that was passed in this Parliament. The two are not separated.

What has been worst about the spaces for people scheme is that it has caused massive problems for the most vulnerable people in our city. There was no consultation on the implementation of the scheme. When older people, disabled people and mums with prams pointed out the dangers of the scheme, they were ignored completely.

Will the member take an intervention?

I am going to carry on for the moment.

With fewer parking spaces in town for people who have low mobility, the scheme, in effect, excludes many disabled people from town centres and high streets. That is not to mention the barriers that have been erected, which create further obstacles to street crossing and other activities for people with visual impairment or other physical impairments.

Spaces for people was supposed to create room for more active travel, but for disabled people in Edinburgh it has served to do nothing more than alienate them and cause stress. Once again, ideologically and dogmatically driven policies from the Government have come at the cost of detriment to the disabled community in Edinburgh and other parts of Scotland.

I thank the member for giving way. I would like to point out, and hear his comments on, the fact that the Labour-Tory administration in Aberdeen City Council has equally made what I can only describe as a bit of a mess of the spaces for people interventions in the city centre. The people of Aberdeen are still living with those interventions because the administration will not remove part of them. That has excluded people with disabilities, who have been strongly represented by the local disability partnership.

I am sure that Liam Kerr will address that point in his closing statement, but I absolutely agree that, where disabled people are affected, proper consultation is needed before the schemes are brought in, rather than afterwards. That has not happened in Edinburgh. I have no doubt that the scheme was started with noble intentions, but the reality is that it has failed. It needs to be scrapped and started again.

Even worse than that, cycle lanes have been imposed where there is one already in place. A few weeks ago, Mr Harvie turned up at Roseburn Terrace to look at the new cycle lane that has been put in there. That cycle lane has been hotly contested—I know that because I was a local councillor for the area for many years—but they have now decided to close down the shops and we are seeing the economic impact of that.

There was a cycle path 20 yards away that was already being used. That cycle path may have needed slight upgrading, and there may have needed to be a slightly better way to reach it, but the path was already there and being used by cyclists. The City of Edinburgh Council’s dogma was, “Let’s make it more difficult for shop owners. Let’s make it more difficult for local people to shop. Let’s stop older and disabled people from getting to nearby shops by putting up more barriers, having more road works and causing more problems.” That is a ridiculous policy.

When the minister sums up, I would be interested in hearing him clarify two points. First, how many disabled charities has he met to discuss active travel? Secondly, can he confirm that the access bikes scheme, which was launched in September 2021 to provide loans to allow people to purchase their own bike, has not had anyone sign up for it yet?

I welcome the fact that members have embraced the invitation to intervene. However, I would encourage the interventions to be slightly briefer. I call Stephanie Callaghan, to be followed by Carol Mochan. Ms Callaghan joins us remotely.

16:06  

Thank you, Presiding Officer. You will not need to worry about interventions, as I am contributing remotely.

I thank Patrick Harvie for bringing the motion to the chamber. Simply put, active travel involves using your body to make the journey. It is an important part of leading a healthier lifestyle, and it will potentially help to decarbonise transport systems in our towns and cities, too. As we recover and build back from Covid-19, implement plans to achieve net zero and face an accelerating cost of living crisis, we are at a critical juncture for transport and travel. There is a great opportunity to reprioritise and put communities and families, health and wellbeing and our environment right at the forefront. With crisis comes opportunity.

Transform Scotland highlighted that walking, wheeling and cycling infrastructure across Scotland remains unacceptably poor and often dangerous, which we must turn the tide on. It was great to hear the minister highlighting young people. Earlier this week, I hosted my first sustainability forum with four schools across the Uddingston and Bellshill constituency, to listen to students’ views and priorities. Travel was right at the top of all of their lists. Students wanted to see fewer vehicles in the school car parks and expressed concerns about the negative impact of the school run on the environment and their health. Pupils suggested limiting parking capacity, encouraging drop-off zones and a walk to school week. They were keen to raise awareness about school-run emissions and to encourage both students and their parents to embrace the benefits of active travel.

We must learn from our young people. Their appetite for reducing emissions and living a healthier lifestyle through active travel is clear. It is now our job to deliver by making active travel routes safe, practical and widespread across our towns and cities.

In Scotland, it is paramount that we place communities at the heart of active travel policy. Young people, parents, the elderly, those living in rural Scotland and commuters all have distinct needs and concerns. Although there is much to be learned from cities such as Amsterdam, Seville and Copenhagen, Scotland has its own unique needs. We can use knowledge from elsewhere to build policies that deliver for everyone across Scotland.

Active travel is also a question of equality. If our kids are walking or cycling to school, they need to have the right waterproofs and safety equipment, as well as opportunities to learn to cycle safely. Those things will be needed to ensure a cultural shift in Scotland that has equality at its core. I warmly welcome the 12-month pilot project to deliver free bikes to school-age children who cannot afford them, and I would like to see that rolled out more widely.

As is highlighted in the motion and as has already been said, the commitment to invest at least £320 million—10 per cent of the transport budget—in active travel by 2024-25 will be transformational. Equity must be at the core of distributing that funding. New funding for footpaths, significantly increased funding for local authorities and a doubling of the funding for the national cycle network should all be warmly welcomed in the chamber. The Scottish Government’s funding initiatives are encouraging, and I am keen to see local plans for new cycling facilities at Strathclyde park in my constituency become a reality. North Lanarkshire Council will involve community groups in planning the learn to ride areas, and there will be excellent links to the surrounding area by foot and by wheels. That is a great example of the joined-up and participative community partnerships that we need to see if we are to become a more active nation.

The long-term vision is in place and I am confident that, by focusing on strategic investment, listening to communities and placing equality and accessibility at the core of the policy, we can deliver an active travel commitment, boost health and propel ourselves towards net zero.

Let us all go forward with ambition and determination to level the route map and make a successful journey to Scotland’s active travel destination.

16:10  

We all know that the benefits of active travel are wide ranging, from its environmental benefits to those for the health and wellbeing of the population. We should place significant focus on encouraging and facilitating active travel, which is why I reiterate that the Scottish Labour’s amendment calls for 10 per cent of the transport budget to be allocated to it.

We do not make that request without reason. Today’s debate has recognised the progress that we have made, but we must focus on what more there is still to do. Isolation, poor housing, health inequalities and poor transport links impact the poorest and most vulnerable in our society more than anyone else. It is therefore crucial that any active travel plan has the livelihood and opportunities of those in our most-deprived areas at its core.

Yes, we can welcome investments in e-bikes, cycling and walking paths, and more. However, those investments do little to improve the health outcomes for those who are most in need if we do not bring them closer to our communities and make it as feasible as possible for people to use active travel routes.

Equitable access to active travel is a factor in tackling health inequalities, which must be a priority for Parliament. We know that health inequalities create some of the biggest challenges that Scottish society faces. As my colleague Neil Bibby mentioned, for active travel to become a successful reality, it is crucial that the Scottish Government improves its performance in two areas where it has failed recently.

First, the SNP must stop cutting local government services. With political will and pressure from SNP back benchers, the Government could create high-quality, well-funded, accessible and affordable services, including active travel services, up and down the country. To cut the budgets of councils—thus cutting their ability to provide solid travel infrastructure—and then come to the chamber today with a self-congratulatory motion should shame SNP and Green MSPs, who stood on a manifesto of investment but have presided over horrific cuts to the services on which our communities rely.

Further, cutting train services and increasing the costs of train travel amid a cost-of-living crisis puts a strain on the pockets of millions and will not encourage people to choose active travel. It is vital that more people choose to walk, cycle or use public transport instead of a car, for the sake of future generations and our planet. However, we must make that choice a clear and easy one to make. The Scottish Government has failed in that regard.

Active travel is a worthwhile cause to pursue, so I am glad that we are having this debate. I had the privilege of joining Paths for All at Kilmarnock train station in my constituency. I walked through one of the newly installed active travel routes there, and it was clear to me how beneficial those routes could be if they were rolled out properly and more widely.

However, we have to get the basics right. We have to take a gendered approach to those routes, to ensure that they are accessible to women and that women feel safe on them, and they must be accessible to other vulnerable groups, such as the young, the elderly and the disabled. We have to invest in rail and bus services to keep them frequent and close to communities, with low fares. We have to ensure that active travel routes serve those whom health inequalities impact the most.

In doing so, we will take steps towards improving the health and lifestyle outcomes of those who have been worst impacted by the cuts of the Scottish and UK Governments in recent years, and we will give the active travel plan for Scotland the best chance of being successful. Therefore, I urge colleagues to back the Scottish Labour amendment this evening.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. Earlier in the debate, I intervened on Neil Bibby about the cost of the free bicycles that have been made available to children who cannot afford one. I might have inadvertently misled the Parliament, so I put on record the fact that the number of bicycles that were distributed under the scheme by February is 988, at a total cost of £935,797. I said that the bicycles cost £1,000 each; in fact, they cost £947.16 each. It is important to be straight about the cost.

Thank you, Mr Kerr. Detail is always important, and I appreciate the point of order.

I call Stuart McMillan, who joins us remotely.

16:15  

I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate. Active travel is a topic that I have been discussing at local level for some time, and I have highlighted my support for active travel in my submissions to the—[Inaudible.]—consultation—[Inaudible.]

My constituency, Greenock and Inverclyde, has some of the most stunning scenery anywhere in the country. Before the pandemic, I had the opportunity to visit the Greenock cut and go for a cycle along the then newly installed cycle trails with David Hill of the Clyde Muirshiel regional park. The historic Greenock cut is an outstanding location to visit, which John Mason will support, as he has visited it in the past. Crucially, the cut links up parts of the constituency.

We all have a decision to make about how we get from A to B. Often, we choose the easiest and quickest option and, as the Tories indicated in their amendment to the motion, for some communities, there is sometimes only one option: the car. However, we must all consider our travel arrangements if we are serious about the climate emergency.

The end of the Tory amendment speaks about resources for local authorities and a “postcode lottery”. I will touch on three points in that regard. First, the postcode lottery will always happen, because each community engages in active travel investment from a different starting point. Secondly, the topography of our communities is different. As anyone who has had the pleasure of campaigning in Inverclyde will acknowledge, it is nowhere near as flat as Amsterdam or Copenhagen. Thirdly, decisions on local investment are taken by local councillors, who will have a wide range of opinions.

Last year, right outside my constituency office, Inverclyde Council installed a cycle lane that runs from Battery park to Greenock town centre. Views on it have been mixed. It was advertised by the council before installation, but I believe that many local people were a bit too focused on the pandemic and its impact to fully pick up on what was being proposed.

I support cycle lanes and have no issue with them being installed where there is room, if the design is sound. I want people to be able to hop on a bike and cycle from A to B if they so desire, and installing cycle lanes makes that a safer option.

I will contrast two approaches that were taken by local councillors to the cycle lanes that are outside my constituency office: one from a Tory and the other from an SNP councillor. Local Tory councillor Graeme Brooks recently lodged a motion in Inverclyde Council to remove the cycle lanes. Thankfully, it was rejected. In the Greenock Telegraph, he said that he had seen only four cyclists use the lanes since they were installed last year. He said:

“It’s very clear from constituents that the cycle lane was never requested, it’s not wanted and it’s not needed.”

That certainly contradicts a lot of the comments that we have heard from Tory MSPs in the debate.

Contrast that with the view of SNP councillor Chris Curley, who uses a bike and is a local champion of active travel. He said:

“If you want to try and encourage people to use things, you need to have them there for a period of time. Are we really thinking that the future of travel in Inverclyde is everybody in a car? It isn’t—you’ve got to give people options.”

I whole-heartedly agree with Councillor Curley. We must be bold in our aspirations. I am confident that, over time, the cycle lanes will be used more and more by locals, and they will open up Inverclyde to more tourists.

In effect, the Scottish Tories in the chamber are calling for something that their council colleagues are voting against. The rank hypocrisy of the Scottish Tories on the issue is there for everyone to see.

Active travel benefits our country in many ways. The reduction in our carbon footprint and the obvious health benefits that are associated with being active make active travel something that we should all be supporting and improving. So much positive work is happening, so let us reject the Tory negativity and hypocrisy and support active travel.

16:19  

I am pleased to take part in today’s Scottish Government debate on delivering on active travel commitments and recognising the important investment that our Government is making in our communities and the benefit that it will have to our constituents.

It is the Scottish Government’s aspiration to reduce car kilometres by 20 per cent by 2030, so as we move towards net zero, we need to get people out of their cars and considering other forms of transport. That will need a number of folk to consider active travel for the first time as a serious option for getting around. Increased active travel will also improve people’s wellbeing, and it will contribute to safer, cleaner and healthier communities.

Active travel helps to build healthy habits, which helps to improve the health of our population and reduce the burden on our NHS. Physical inactivity contributes to almost 2,500 deaths in Scotland each year, as Mr Bibby said earlier.

With that in mind, as we move forward, we need to increase the number of adults who follow physical activity guidelines and do 30 minutes of moderate activity five times a week. If we can get more folk to cycle or walk regularly, it will potentially reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes, improve mental health, and tackle asthma.

Achieving our ambitious carbon reduction targets will require serious investment. It is therefore welcome that the Scottish Government is committed to investing in public transport by spending 10 per cent of the transport budget on active travel by the end of 2024-25.

Recently, I was pleased to attend a walkabout with Sustrans in my constituency of Aberdeen Donside, where we discussed the active travel networks in the city and the difficulties that face local authorities while they are challenging the behaviours of drivers and getting people out of their cars.

It is key that we change habits, and the best way to do that is by ensuring that our young people participate in active travel, as it is then more likely that they will continue to do so into their adult life. The Scottish Government’s commitment to providing free bikes for all children of school age who cannot afford them will make such a difference to so many of my constituents. The benefit of increasing access to bikes for children are obvious. It ensures equality of opportunity in building life skills, confidence and independence, and it can embed healthy and sustainable travel choices into everyday life. Affordable travel will also increase their options in education, work or further training, and ensure that they continue on a journey to a positive destination.

At this point, I want to give a shout-out to a project that is local to me—the Middlefield Community Project. It gives out bikes on long-term loans and it helps the children with the servicing and fixing of those bikes. The project does an awful lot more in my community, but I just want to give it a wee shout-out for that.

We have a long way to go to reach our net zero emissions targets, but if we continue to invest in active travel and in our young people, we can change habits for the better and ensure a sustainable future for generations to come.

Thank you, Ms Dunbar. I now call Maggie Chapman, to be followed by Fiona Hyslop.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I always look forward to Ms Chapman’s speeches, but my understanding is that members are meant to be in the chamber for opening speeches if they are taking part in the debate, and I do not think that Maggie Chapman was here for any of the opening speeches. I wonder whether that is a problem with regard to hearing her today.

Thank you, Mr Balfour. Your understanding of standing orders is correct. Ms Chapman had advised the Presiding Officers that she had prior commitments that she was bound to attend, and she had permission from the Presiding Officers to be absent at the start of the debate. However, your point about standing orders is well made, and I take the opportunity to reinforce it.

With that, Maggie Chapman, you have a generous four minutes.

16:24  

I welcome the Scottish Government debate on active travel. I also offer my apologies to members for arriving late and my thanks to the Presiding Officer for giving me dispensation to do so. I am standing in for my colleague Mark Ruskell, who is absent from the Parliament for a while.

With Greens in the Government, Scotland’s world-leading commitments to radically transform our transport system in line with our net zero ambitions have finally been backed up by significant long-term investment in active travel. Our vision for integrated, safe and inclusive local active travel infrastructure that prioritises walking, cycling and wheeling for everyone can finally become a reality.

For far too long, our transport systems have been cast in the image of car users. Our cities and towns have been designed for cars first and people second. People who rely on public or active transport have often been ignored, leaving too many of us—often women, children, disabled people and marginalised communities—poorly served by transport networks.

As a woman who cycles, I have spent many hours planning out the safest routes ahead of commuting, balancing safety and condition of the route—I hate cobbles—with time, distance and hills. I have experienced at first hand the feeling of terror when passed closely or overrun by reckless drivers on vehicle-heavy roads, and at times I have been discouraged from commuting altogether.

Sadly, I am not alone. That is the experience of many women and girls. A recent Sustrans survey found 79 per cent of women and girls to be in favour of more protected cycle routes. The scale of the challenge of providing safe, green and accessible local infrastructure is significant, but the prize of safer roads, reduced air pollution, increased physical and mental health, and tighter-knit neighbourhoods is worth the blood, sweat and tears that such a modal shift will require.

Our communities already know that, which is why they have been coming together to collectively showcase the safe and accessible environment for walking, cycling and wheeling that Scotland can lead the way on. In Edinburgh, the #OurStreetsOurNights campaign that is led by the InfraSisters is advocating for safe and inclusive night-time infrastructure for women and girls. In Glasgow, the Hijabi riders group has been working hard to tackle the common barriers that prevent Muslim women from cycling, which include safety concerns, lack of confidence and the costs associated with buying a bike, as well as religious barriers, by organising group cycling events across the city and teaching members how to carry out their own bike repairs.

In my region, in addition to the activity that Jackie Dunbar mentioned, cycling groups such as Belles on Bikes are promoting a community of care. By creating a welcoming and safe environment in cycling for women, those groups are proving the point that active travel, rather than being only for able-bodied men in Lycra, is for everyone.

The need for safety for women and girls is echoed across our transport system, with Transport Focus discovering that 85 per cent of women and girls forward plan their journeys in an effort to identify the safest possible public transport routes. I welcome the new Minister for Transport’s efforts to address the gender gap in transport through the upcoming consultation and to embed the element of safety in the Scottish Government’s plans for an all-inclusive national conversation.

After May, our newly elected councils will have an opportunity to utilise their new powers under the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 and recent investments in public transport, such as the community bus fund, to deliver truly integrated local transport networks that link public transport with active travel. In order to ensure that active travel networks are designed with safety in mind, they must be delivered in tandem with national ambitions for a 20 per cent reduction in car kilometres and 20mph by default.

The time has come to finally take back our streets and transition away from a driver-heavy culture towards integrated, safe and inclusive local infrastructure that prioritises walking, cycling and wheeling for all of Scotland.

I call Fiona Hyslop, who will be the final speaker in the open debate.

16:28  

I will shape my remarks around the local, the hyperlocal, the national, the global and the international.

It is striking that the Scottish Government has committed to spending at least £320 million, or 10 per cent of the total transport budget, on active travel by 2024-25. That represents an increase of £39 million since 2017-18. That means that the active travel budget will equate to £58 per head of the population in Scotland, as compared with £10 per head in England, £20 per head in Wales and £30 per head in leading European countries. They, too, may choose to spend money on active travel and those figures may change, but that paints a very striking picture.

The debate has shown that everyone’s circumstances are different. There are city, rural and town experiences. I will reflect on the town experience in West Lothian. We have had some very positive developments and I commend Sustrans for its work in helping to develop our networks. The Armadale to Whitburn cycle path has made a difference and also provides access to trains. We should encourage people to make active travel part of commuting by enabling them to walk, wheel or cycle to a bus or a train. That will have an impact on wider transport issues such as affordability, accessibility and the provision of public transport and will be key to the step change towards people making less use of their cars.

We are beginning to see that prospect. That will lead to a hub and—dare I use the term—spoke approach to active travel in my constituency and many others across the central belt. We have many former mining towns and villages. They are very long, with lots of pavement and road space and have interesting routes by which people could travel to transport hubs or to work. Winchburgh, a growing town in my community, has worked with Scottish Canals to ensure a cycle network and a fantastic link into Edinburgh. I am not sure how many people cycle commute to Edinburgh from West Lothian—that might take a while—but we already see people using our canals as walkways to work in my constituency.

E-bike provision will be hugely important. If we want more people to take part—not just men in Lycra; I will come back to men in Lycra—then e-bike provision will be really important.

We also need practical, commonsense steps.

Will the member take an intervention?

I am not sure whether the member is a man in Lycra, but I am happy to take his intervention.

I am a man who long ago left Lycra behind. Does Fiona Hyslop agree that it is important to increase the number of bike racks on trains to create connectivity between cycling and getting to work?

Yes. In a former capacity I encouraged the provision of bike racks for tourism, but we also need them for commuting. It is also important for cyclists to know that their bicycles are safe, so we need lighting and cameras around stations and those are important for women walking to work or to a transport hub. Some of the issues will be very practical.

That brings me to the hyperlocal. It should not have taken an MSP—me—to sort a tiny piece of road in Linlithgow called Capstan Walk. It is actually a path, not even a road, and the ownership is in question. We managed to work with Sustrans and fix the potholes. I pulled everyone together, we got it sorted and that has allowed people to use walking, cycling or wheeling to get from one part of town to another by linking up provision.

Sometimes, common sense is needed. I spoke yesterday to Network Rail about how we can get more people walking or cycling from the massive site at Wester Inch to Bathgate station.

I will finish with a global point. In 2023, Scotland will see a historic moment in cycling. The 2023 UCI cycling world championships are coming to Scotland. I helped to secure that when I was a minister. The various cycling world championship events usually happen in different countries and in different months of the year. In August 2023, all the events are coming here. We want to ensure that that is not just about elite sports people. That year should give us all the ambition to show that cycling is for everyone. That is why the Linlithgow cycling circuit, which will be built in my constituency, is hugely important. It is about people learning or relearning how to ride a bike. It will create accessibility and ensure cycling for all.

Let us be ambitious with our budget and with our vision of what we can do. I encourage everyone to get excited about the 2023 UCI cycling world championships in Glasgow and Scotland. I have enjoyed the debate. Let us be ambitious and exciting. We need less grumbling and more action.

Thank you, Ms Hyslop. I was finding the full-frontal assault on men in Lycra deeply uncomfortable.

We move to the closing speeches.

16:34  

The debate has shown that there is a real cross-party recognition of—or, indeed, a consensus on—the importance of active travel. That is not surprising, as most parties, including Labour, made commitments in their manifestos last year to increase investment in active travel to at least 10 per cent of the overall transport budget. I hope that we will reach at least the promised level of dedicated funding—£320 million per year—sooner rather than later.

However, it is disappointing that, in this debate, there has been a failure by SNP and Green MSPs to acknowledge that, for every £1 that is allocated to active travel in this year’s Scottish budget, Scotland’s local authorities will have to find more than £10 just to tackle the backlog of repairs to the roads. In my home region of Dumfries and Galloway, the current bill to deal with the plague of potholes that is carpeting our roads and making life miserable for cyclists is £217 million. That is more than £50 million higher than the Government’s entire active transport budget for the forthcoming year.

As Neil Bibby highlighted, the backlog bill across Scotland is at least £1.7 billion. If Mr Harvie and his Green Party colleagues continue to back the type of budgets that they have backed over the past six years, which have seen real-terms cuts to council funding year on year, that bill will get higher and higher and the potholes, to be frank, will soon become canyons. As we increase investment in active travel interventions, there is an opportunity to have, for example, more dedicated cycle routes, but the increasingly crumbling footpaths and public roads will continue to be a barrier for those who want to walk, wheel or cycle, unless we have a change of direction from the Government.

When we invest in active travel interventions, we must do so wisely. A number of members rightly highlighted concerns about that. I understand why, during the pandemic, the Government moved its focus from the places for everyone initiative to the spaces for people initiative in order to enable people to travel safely. There were a lot of good interventions as a result of that. However, we must recognise that the Government’s spaces for people initiative led to a number of projects that alienated local communities. The redirection of almost all the funding away from the permanent schemes that we had towards the temporary measures has in many ways set back the move towards permanent schemes. Crucially, it also led to a lack of consultation with communities because of the real drive to deliver in a short time.

The allocation of more than half of the funding to our two biggest cities also highlighted the disproportionate way that Government invests in active travel. Carol Mochan rightly raised the very real fear that we do not have equitable access to active travel in many of our communities. We know the communities that lobby the loudest. I wonder whether the Government has carried out a proper mapping exercise to see exactly where investment is being made in active travel interventions. I suspect that, once again, deprived communities are missing out.

Communities must be at the heart of all our investment. I spent a great deal of time as a local councillor and chair of Dumfries and Galloway Council’s economy, environment and infrastructure committee pressing the case for investment in active travel, and the most successful projects that I was involved in were those that involved the community and were part of wider regeneration. For example, the partnership in the Queen Street area of Dumfries town centre between Sustrans, Dumfries and Galloway Council, local housing associations and most importantly—

Will the member take an intervention?

I certainly will.

During the debate, we heard about some excellent projects around the country. Does Colin Smyth agree that the best projects are the ones where councils bring communities with them rather than imposing on communities projects that do not particularly work because they have not been thought out properly?

I entirely agree with that point. We have all seen that. As a councillor and committee chair, I saw that there was not always 100 per cent support for active travel. The best projects are the ones where we take the community with us.

I highlight as an example the project that I started talking about, which is in the Queen Street area of Dumfries and Galloway. It is a partnership between agencies but, crucially, it is also a partnership with local residents. It is an example of how we can really lift a community and not only make our streets safer for walkers, wheelers and cyclists, but actually regenerate the community. We need to understand that active travel is about more than just investment in cycle paths for commuters that bypass communities. It is about investment in communities.

That project included the redesign of roads that had in effect become rat runs for motorists, but it also included new housing, regenerated housing and investment in street art, and all of that was actively and extensively shaped by community engagement. It is a fantastic project. It was a very intensive one and it took a lot of work and a lot of discussion with communities. Sadly, there are simply not enough of those projects across Scotland.

We might be forgiven for thinking, from today’s SNP-Green motion, that the solution is simply to lecture local government about its responsibilities, rather than taking a step back, with the Scottish Government also taking its responsibilities seriously. I will give one quick example. Today of all days, with the devastating news about ferry job losses at Cairnryan as a result of the shameful decision by P&O Ferries, we are again drawn to the lack of investment in infrastructure in the south-west. That includes active travel. For someone who arrives at Cairnryan by ferry with their cycle, their route to the nearest town, Stranraer, is along the A77 trunk road, together with 40-tonne lorries coming off the ferry. The utter failure of the Government to extend the national cycle route to Scotland’s largest ferry terminal presents a danger for people who want to cycle when they arrive in Scotland. Welcome to active travel Scotland. If Mr Harvie wants to discuss a lack of leadership, he need look no further than that example and his own Government’s transport agency, Transport Scotland, which has shown no leadership in tackling that problem.

If the Government believes, as its motion says, that public transport should be a priority, as well as active travel, Mr Harvie will hopefully agree, in his closing comments, with my colleague Neil Bibby and will say that he now opposes the cuts to train services, the cuts to ticket offices, the massive hike in rail fares and the dismantling of our bus routes that we are seeing right across Scotland.

Let us all get behind the need to grow our investment in active travel to at least 10 per cent of the transport budget, but let us also unite behind ending the cuts to local councils, ending the cuts to rail and bus services and ensuring that we have an equitable share of infrastructure investment in active travel for every community, including the most deprived and rural communities.

Liam Kerr has a generous eight minutes.

16:41  

The key point in the debate was made right at the outset by Graham Simpson, when he said, in reference to the Minister for Zero Carbon Buildings, Active Travel and Tenants’ Rights:

“He and I share the same ambitions on active travel”.

It is clear from the Labour amendment—which we can support—that there is a broad consensus in this area.

A number of members talked about the benefits of active travel. Neil Bibby reminded us that physical inactivity contributes to nearly 2,500 deaths in Scotland each year. Sustrans says that regular walking or cycling can reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes, and it can improve mental health and tackle asthma. Living Streets Scotland suggests—crucially, as we come out of the pandemic—that walking and cycling projects can increase retail sales by up to 30 per cent.

If we are all persuaded of the case, people will wonder why, as Stephanie Callaghan put it, Scotland’s walking, wheeling and cycling infrastructure remains so poor and often dangerous. This is where I will diverge from the consensus. The Government’s motion gives us the answer. As Carol Mochan said, the Government shows an incredible capacity for self-congratulation. Self-awareness and an acknowledgement of reality? Not so much.

While the minister and his motion proudly trumpet the investment in active travel, the motion fails to remind the Parliament that the Scottish Conservatives were the first to call for 10 per cent of the travel budget to go to active travel. It was in our manifesto. Paul McLennan spoke about the use of public transport and active travel, but he failed to point out that, between 2015 and 2019, the proportion of commuters using public transport or participating in active travel in Scotland actually fell. Jackie Dunbar described the drive to cut car kilometres by 20 per cent by 2030, but she omitted to mention that the distance travelled by motor vehicles increased by 8 per cent between 2015 and 2020.

We have heard a great deal about cycling but strangely less about the promise that, by 2020, 10 per cent of everyday journeys would be made by bike—which, I guess, is not surprising when we consider that, at the current rate of progress, it will take nearly 300 years for the SNP to meet its target. Beatrice Wishart even suggested that there are fewer children cycling to school at the moment. We should remember that the minister lauded electric bikes. As Graham Simpson pointed out, however, there is no recharging network.

Only if we recognise the challenges and stop the spin can we seek solutions. Graham Simpson pointed out that the Government’s motion wants to see a 20 per cent reduction in car kilometres by 2030 but that it made that announcement without having the faintest idea of how to deliver it.

It is a Government that chases positive headlines. For example, it announced an access to bikes scheme but failed to hand out a single loan in the first three months of its operation, despite the scheme costing nearly £500,000. It promised free bikes to children, but, as Stephen Kerr a couple of times reminded us, it had given out fewer than 1,000 by the end of last month, at a cost of around £1 million, while failing to learn from the truly circular economy scheme that Brian Whittle flagged in his intervention. The motion talks about public transport and reducing private car trips being essential to cutting emissions, yet the Government fails to acknowledge that cutting 250 rail services and having a £640 million black hole in funding for decarbonising buses is not going to get us there.

A crucial point is made by Transform Scotland in its briefing, when it picks up on the motion’s expression of hope that local authorities will deliver active travel. Transform Scotland says that that “is entirely inadequate”, and on that point it is unquestionably correct. Look at the context in which the Government “hopes” that local authorities will achieve that. The motion lauds

“significantly increased funding for local authorities”,

yet COSLA says that £100 million was cut from local authorities’ budgets this year. What was the minister’s response to my intervention on that point? “COSLA is wrong.”

It is a Government that hopes that local authorities can do that, and the minister’s earlier intervention suggests that he wants to see local leadership; yet, as Sustrans puts it,

“Local authorities have been under significant budgetary pressure for two decades, leading to significant shortfalls in the numbers of council officers available to coordinate and deliver measures to support active travel.”

Cycling UK agrees.

I can hear the minister chuntering where he is seated. Does Liam Kerr agree with me that the challenge is not so much about giving councils large amounts of money as about whether those councils have the resources to deliver once they have that money? A lot of councils have been hollowed out in terms of their staffing and they do not have specialists in this area.

I agree, and very strongly. That is exactly the point that Sustrans was seeking to make.

Cycling UK takes that point forward. In the submissions that it provided to us, it said that councils need to be able to see the direction of travel and to be able to plan their budgets over a long period of time—which, of course, they cannot do with the funding settlements that are coming from this Government.

It is not acceptable for the Government to just hope. The minister said that we need leadership. Well, it is long past time that this Government showed some, starting, perhaps, with the mapping exercise that Colin Smyth rightly called for in his contribution.

The final, crucial points that I want to pick up were made by Jeremy Balfour and, especially, Maggie Chapman. It is hugely important that we ensure, as our manifesto calls for, that active travel schemes are suitable for all, including buggy users, wheelchair users, older people and so on. I thought that Maggie Chapman laid out the issues particularly well. It was such a complete analysis that, instead of trying to summarise it, I will simply commend the Official Report of her contribution to members who did not hear it—it was a very good summary. Yes, Maggie—you will not hear me say that too often, I am sure, but I will on this point, certainly.

Jeremy Balfour said that schemes that are brought in must not exclude disabled people and those with visual impairments. He posed a question for the minister in his closing speech, which I will remind the minister of, just to make sure that he picks it up. Jeremy Balfour asked how many disabled charities the minister has met to discuss active travel. I hope that the minister will cover that in his closing speech.

To sum up, I would like to return to comments that were made by Graham Simpson in opening the debate. He said:

“let us work together on this one area of policy where we agree.”

He is right. That means working also with the likes of Sustrans, Transform Scotland and Cycling UK, among others who submitted several excellent suggestions to guide us in the debate, as well as local organisations of the sort mentioned by Jackie Dunbar and Brian Whittle. However, it also means less of the spin, more acknowledgement of reality and more substance in the proposals and action—as Fiona Hyslop put it, “less grumbling and more action”. All of that is called for in the amendment in Mr Simpson’s name, which is why I shall vote for it at decision time tonight.

I call the minister to wind up the debate. If you could take us to just before 5 o’clock, minister, I would be very grateful.

16:50  

I was very much hoping for a wholly positive debate, which was perhaps setting my expectations just a fraction too high. However, many members made very positive contributions. There were speeches that focused on the public health and climate imperative—our combined imperative to achieve a sustainable transport system, and the role of active travel within it. Paul McLennan and Carol Mochan placed great emphasis on that.

A number of members, including Stephanie Callaghan and Beatrice Wishart, commented on partnership with the third sector. In response to Beatrice Wishart’s comments, I would say that more than a third of a million children have been trained via bikeability since 2010, and we are committed to continuing to build on that positive track record.

The role of local leadership—not just by local authorities but at community level—was touched on by a number of members, including Brian Whittle, Paul McLennan and Jackie Dunbar. Fiona Hyslop set herself the aspiration of covering everything from the global to the hyper local in her speech. It was clear in everything that she said that her intention was to ask, “How can we make this better?” I wish that everybody had taken the same constructive approach to the issue.

I would contrast, as Liam Kerr did a moment ago, two speeches in particular. Those speeches focused on the issue of inclusion and trying to ensure that our approach to active travel is inclusive, and respectful of the diversity of our society. Maggie Chapman’s speech and Jeremy Balfour’s speech both focused very clearly and, I am sure, equally sincerely on inclusion, but the contrast in tone between them was really clear to me. Maggie Chapman’s speech celebrated examples where inclusion is done well and constructively challenged us to do better, whereas Jeremy Balfour seemed to want policies, and indeed projects, to be scrapped. That was very much the tone that came across.

Will the minister give way?

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.

Does the minister understand that there is genuine anger in the disability community when things are imposed without any consultation, as has happened here in Edinburgh? How can the disability community be heard? It wants to play a constructive role, but it is simply not being listened to, or being asked its opinion. Can he suggest to me and other disabled people why councils do not engage before schemes are imposed?

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—

Will the minister take an intervention on that point?

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.

Will the minister give way?

Will the minister gave way?

Will the minister gave way?

I have less than a minute left.

Over the coming year, we will engage in a transformation project in relation to the delivery model. There are substantive issues that we all need to grapple with, particularly on the role of local leadership.

Some members used the debate to unleash their inner Nigel Farage and call for cycle lanes to be ripped up or to condemn particular councils for not ripping them up or for building them in the first place. If we wanted to, the Scottish Government could simply allocate that £320 million by 2024-25 purely according to where we think the maximum benefit would be for transforming modal shift. That would not give a fair crack at the whip to every part of Scotland. We could simply split that funding up by local authority and we would not foster the kind of local leadership that we see from some local authorities but not others.

We need to respond to some of the constructive challenges that have been put by the Transform Scotland briefing. It is clear that Transform Scotland welcomes what we are doing and is constructively challenging us to go further. Rather than simply complaining that there are specific examples that people do not like in their own neighbourhood, that is the kind of engagement that will make the Scottish Government’s programme on delivering active travel better.

If we want to get it right and be a nation in which everybody, inclusively, can choose to travel actively and sees that as a first natural choice, we need to change a great deal about how we deliver active travel, and not just spend money. Every political party across the chamber has a responsibility to foster local leadership and ensure that we are advocating for making it better rather than railing against projects, as, I am afraid, too many have done in this debate.