Road Safety and Active Travel to School
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mrs Hobhouse. I congratulate the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage—and possibly for the Netherlands—(Olly Glover) on securing this important debate. In just an hour of Westminster Hall, we have had many contributions, far more than normal, including from the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), who I served on the Transport Committee with in the last Parliament, and who of course now chairs that Committee, and from the hon. Members for Melksham and Devizes (Brian Mathew), for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley), for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae), for South Devon (Caroline Voaden), for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord), for Reading Central (Matt Rodda), for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), for Mansfield (Steve Yemm), for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone), for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer), for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman), for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper), for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and, of course, my constituency neighbour the hon. Member for Henley and Thame (Freddie van Mierlo). I saved that one for last because the hon. Member for Henley and Thame spoke of the Haddenham and Thame greenway, which I have always supported. A significant chunk of it falls in my Mid Buckinghamshire constituency, from the village of Haddenham through to the Oxfordshire border. I believe we have a meeting coming up to discuss how to progress that. It is a project that should go ahead, for many of the good reasons that have been outlined by others in this afternoon’s debate, but it has a potted history of falling over at various hurdles, most recently as we came out of the pandemic. I gently say that it was actually Oxfordshire that pulled the funding plug on the project at that point, but I am delighted that it is back on track and that we are making progress. The importance of road safety and how we improve it is something that we should all consider very carefully. There are always improvements that can be made to road safety, not least outside schools, and it is important that we reflect on those tragedies that some Members have spoken about that have occurred outside schools. Any death or injury of a child is one too many, and we must all take steps to prevent those. Indeed, nowhere is road safety more important than outside schools. To declare an interest of sorts, with three children—two at primary school and the youngest due to start primary school this coming September—it is something that I consider very carefully. It is through that rural lens that I will make my first comments. It is undoubtedly the case that in many rural communities, no matter how much parents, or indeed the children themselves, may want to cycle or walk, the practical realities of not having a school in every village, of 60 mph country lanes with no pavements connecting villages, often going some distance, mean that many parents simply have no choice but to insist that they drive their children to school or that their children get the bus—where such a thing is still available. Indeed, although I do not want to set off the grammar school debate, in counties such as Buckinghamshire that have grammar schools, there is some considerable distance for that age cohort of pupils to travel—going from the edge of the county to get to the grammars in Aylesbury or Amersham, for example—where cycling or walking simply would not be practical. While I want to encourage those who wish to cycle or walk to school, for some, driving is a necessity due to time. People have busy lives; all our constituents have busy lives; we have busy lives. To accompany a child, particularly of primary school age, on a walk or cycle to school may take significant time out of that parent’s, carer’s or guardian’s day—time that they may not have. It is therefore important for us not to judge those parents who make the choice to get their children to school by a different route.