pan wnaeth y gallu gweld i gael y sgamin yw'r unrhyw o'r awdd, nid i'r unrhyw o'r awdd. Felly mae'n cwestiynau gwybod i'r cwestiynau, ac mae gwybod i'r unrhyw o'r gwybod i'r unrhyw o'r busnes o'r debat o'r nu'r 11980 o'r ddaeth i'r defnyddio Derek Mackay o'r ffrindiau ffagorau. I invite members who wish to speak in the debate to press the request to speak mutins now or as soon as possible. I would like to inform members that we are extraordinarily tight for time today, so times will be adhered to please. I now call on the minister, Derek Mackay, to speak to and move the motion ministry of 14 minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I'm delighted to be here for the first government-led debate as Minister for Transport and Islands, and I'd like to particularly welcome David Stewart to his position within the Labour Party. We have worked very well, I think, in the past, including Government supporting David Stewart's legislation. We were that consensual and constructive approach as one that we can take forward in the transport and islands agenda as well. On a wider note of consensus and a constructive approach, that offer, of course, is made to all parties where there is a great deal of agreement consensus around the vision for the type of Scotland that we would like to have in terms of transport and active travel. The purpose of the motion is to celebrate and share the success of active travel projects in Scotland, since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament. To take stock and consider further action, I will be keen to hear all members' views on that note. I intend to accept that the Labour amendment is a reasonable contribution to the debate. I want to celebrate and build upon the projects that are making a difference in relation to participation in active travel. I know that, while we have some way to go in the general population, young people are leading the way. For example, a survey showed that over 50 per cent of schoolchildren travelled actively to school. It is fitting that, in this year, the 20th anniversary of the national cycle network, that we recognise the efforts of all partners and commit to working together to continue to promote active travel. I look forward to hearing from Sustrans about the celebrations that they are planning for the national cycle network anniversary and hope to take part in some of them. As today's motion says, we have made progress since 1999. We now have the second cycling action plan for Scotland, outlining the 19 actions that will help us to achieve our shared vision of 10 per cent of everyday journeys by bike by 2020. We have also our first-ever national walking strategy, Let's Get Scotland Walking. Pass for All is leading on the development of the action plan for this strategy, which will be launched in spring 2015. That will include actions aimed at improving walking environments to help to increase levels of functional walking. Most recently, we published our active travel vision, setting out what Scotland will look like in 2030 if more people choose walking and cycling as their everyday form of travel for shorter journeys. We have also had the national planning framework 3, which includes plans for a national long-distance walking and cycling network, and plans to implement the town centre action plan through the Sharet programme, which will complement the community links programme run by Sestrans. I am keen to ensure the planning system that I pursued when the planning minister makes all the right connections, if you will pardon the pun, and I intend to meet again with my former planning officials to continue with this work. I thank all the stakeholders who contributed to all the documents and strategies that provide us with the vision and action points, and I look forward to working with all stakeholders in future in delivering them. This year sees the largest-ever Scottish Government investment in cycling and walking, almost £48 million, and bear in mind that much of that investment is matched by partners, for example, through the community links programme of £19 million. Sestrans generated some £25 million in match funding in 2014-15. Of course. I am grateful for him outlining the very important investment that has been made in active travel. On behalf of one of my constituents, I want to help me to clear up a matter. One of my constituents is concerned that, in November, a £214 million additional cycling investment was announced in England by Nick Clegg. Was that new money at Barnett consequential, or was it just taken from other areas of the transport budget and re-announced? I found how complex the budget lines are within the transport portfolio, partly because there are different portfolios that contribute to active travel and cycling. It is one of the reasons that I will accept the Labour amendment to give further clarity to the spending on the area that I think is the right thing to do. In terms of funding announcements, new announcements have been additional money allocated to those tasks. I hope that that reassures the member. As constituents, in terms of an additional £10 million, there is an issue around financial transactions, which is not the first place at £5 million that you would want to go to fund capital improvements, but we have to be creative. Do we not with such drastic reductions to our capital budget from Westminster? If that £5 million financial transactions cannot be spent on cycling, here is the commitment that has already been made and will be delivered. We will find that resource from elsewhere in the transport budget to ensure that we meet the commitment that we have made publicly. However, we will find new ways of working to innovate and support active travel, so I hope that that answers the question. In that note, with that shared responsibility around cycling and active travel, we need to continue with that partnership approach. I will harness the energy that I know exists with my local government colleagues. In terms of further announcements on funding, there will be some in due course. I have written to Spokes, a Lothian cycle campaign group, confirming the 2015-16 budget for cycling and walking. The monies that have been announced will support both improved infrastructure and supporting behaviour change projects, because behaviour change is essential if we are to make the transformation that has been outlined. The message that cycling and walking benefits all of us is firmly out there and there is a raft of projects being delivered and a range of funding sources to support them. Our message is clear by choosing active travel, your cutting carbon emissions and pollution, caused by short journeys, by building high-quality cycle routes and paths. We are helping school children to walk, scoot and cycle safely to school, thereby cutting congestion caused by the school run. By supporting behaviour change projects, we are encouraging more people to cycle and walk to work, to college and university, to the shops and to appointments, which is good for our health and should be part of our daily routines. Today, I want to focus on those projects that have been supported by the Scottish Government that have made a difference. As I said, active travel should be part of our everyday life from the earliest years. I am going to start with children and schools since 1999. Cycle training at schools across Scotland has changed significantly. The cycle proficiency test is now Bike Ability Scotland. We now have 30 per cent of primary schools offering Bike Ability Scotland on-road cycle training. That is up from 32 per cent just three years ago. It is achieved, of course. Claudia Beamish For taking the short intervention. Just to clarify what plans there are, and I apologise if he was going to go on to raise that, about raising it much higher, the percentage of on-road cycling in Bike Ability Scotland for primary pupils, because I do believe that that is very important as an ex-primary teacher. Claudia Beamish Is absolutely right that that level is not to our satisfaction on this and many other action points we want to do more with our partners. I will be able to cover a great many of the points in the action plan in progress made and what else we want to do through the update report, the monitoring report. The next one that I understand will be published in terms of that committee for February. That will be able to flesh out more of the detail points around progress that is currently being made, and we can increase that number. So to schools where Sustrans, iBike officers, are helping schools to deliver cycling activities, we have seen there an average increase of 7 per cent in the number of pupils cycling, especially among young girls, which is particularly important for sustaining that practice when they go to secondary school as well. There are cycle-friendly schools and numerous safer routes to school projects, as well as a new project, a new pilot project called School Cycle Camps, which ran this autumn for the first time. Aimed at 16-year-olds, it is funded one week. Residential cycle courses were volunteers who learned basic bike mechanics and were accredited with cycle training assistant certificates, which will allow them now to go in turn and train their fellow students. Cycling Scotland received applications from a number of schools to promote cycling and will continue to support that work. That incidentally is one of the projects that is not necessarily funded by the transport budget but from the environment budget, further making the point that it cuts across portfolio. Cycling Scotland is also working with students in five further and higher education campuses to encourage more active travel in and around universities and colleges, and grants are available for events, signage, cycle hire and cycle parking. I look forward to their extension in the near future. Towns and cities across Scotland will see investment in both community-linked projects and cycle-friendly community wars as well. This year alone, there are 180 community-linked projects being administered by SysTrans in partnership with some 40 organisations, but mostly with local authorities and regional transport partnerships. Nearly £500,000 has been awarded to 66 grassroots community groups through the cycle-friendly and sustainable community scheme, which was set up during the last spending review. On a larger scale, in September last year, 10,000 people took part in Scotland's biggest cycle ride cycling from Glasgow to Edinburgh and Aberdeen, raising more than £100,000 for the STV appeal, and I am warm that an invite will be coming to all parliamentarians for the next event. Although many of those projects are mainly cycling-orientated walking and multimodal journeys, community-linked projects create mostly shared-use paths, benefiting walkers and those who depend on motorised wheelchairs as a means of getting around. In terms of road safety, we cannot talk about active travel without talking about safety. As ministers have said many times, one death on Scotland's road is one too many, and we will do all we can to reduce road casualty figures in line with the road safety framework and the targets in that document. With that in mind, we have developed and will publish imminently further guidance on 20-mile-per-hour limits and zones in partnership with the Society of Chief Officers for Transportation in Scotland. That will provide greater clarity for local authorities on the options that are available to them when they are considering introducing 20-mile-per-hour speed limits, which will help to protect pedestrians and cyclists. You will be aware of the term presumed or strict liability that some organisations are advocating at the moment. As the Scottish Government has already said, that is a continuing debate that I expect to be discussed at the next meeting of the cross-party group on cycling, which I hope to attend. The Scottish Government's position has not changed. If there is evidence that the introduction of some form of stricter liability makes active travel safer, we will of course look at that evidence. I am running out of time, Presiding Officer, but I think that we have made great progress in the Cabinet Secretary when the minister made great progress in promoting cycling as it relates to rail and, specifically, in ensuring that the new franchise opens up many of the opportunities for cycling, and that has been a real feature in the new contract going forward. Finally, it is appropriate to acknowledge the importance of the legacy of the 2014 games for active travel as part of an active Scotland. I am sure that we will all agree that the inspirational performances of Team Scotland's athletes during the Commonwealth Games last summer will be a fitting legacy to encourage more people throughout the country into more active lifestyles. Therefore, the local approach is essential. I am sure that we are all committed to ensuring that Scottish people, who might have been inspired to watch Team Scotland bring in a record-breaking hall of medals, have the opportunity to take the first steps towards a healthier way of living themselves. A great deal of projects I could have gone on about many more of them. I want to conclude by saying that I do not believe that the language is right that there is stagnation, but there is much, much more to do. Let us work together to do that to support active travel in Scotland. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I suspect, although I could be wrong, that consensus will rule supreme this afternoon. Opposition members from across the chamber will never to keep the minister on his toes. Nevertheless, I would like to thank the minister for his kind remarks at the start of his introduction. To continue on my consensus theme, Scottish Labour will support the Government motion today and the green amendment. However, we will be asking some searching questions around the budget for active travel. I want to focus on the why question in this debate. On a simplistic level, what are the benefits of active travel? What does the evidence say? I will touch, as the minister has, on road safety, which of course leads to questions about design in our cities and towns and finish with a section on budgetary issues. We on this side of the chamber are keen supporters of active travel. Labour wants to encourage walking and cycling. We want to promote a culture of active travel more generally. What are the benefits that the minister has touched on them? Of course, the wide-ranging personal health benefits, in fact, it is environmentally friendly, and the very low cost of free means of transport. King's College in London has recently completed a wide-ranging study on the health benefits of cycling. Professor Norman Lazarus was quoted in Tuesday's Pesson Journal and I quote, "...cycling not only keeps you mentally alert, but requires a vigorous use of many of the body's key systems such as muscles, hearts and lungs, which in need from detaining health and reducing the risks associated with numerous diseases." The study examined a 122-fit amateur cyclist aged between 55 and 79. The study concluded that many were physically and biologically younger than most people of the same age. There has also been some recent academic research into the health benefits of walking by collaborating for health. They argue that walking is clear benefits for physical and mental health. However, the number of children walking or cycling to school fell from 62 to 50 per cent between 1989 and 2004 in the UK as a whole. That, of course, could be contributed to parental fear of children being involved in road accidents or general child protection concerns. Physical barriers, of course, may be a greater problem for the elderly, for people with disabilities or for parents with young children. What helps? Well, of course, improvement of infrastructure such as implementing of footpaths and seating areas, highlighting the social aspects of walking and tools such as smartphones and route planners to provide safe reliable information to those wishing to make healthy lifestyle choices. Collaborating for health concludes that active transport is associated with reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity and higher blood pressure. There is some excellent best practice, for example, the walking tube map in London, which shows the number of steps that it takes to walk between each station. I have a suggestion today in my first acting out as a transport representative for the Labour Party. Why do not we develop the same one for the Scottish Parliament? We can have a walking route from each member's offices to committees, which tells you how many steps it takes. Perhaps this could be a job for the corporate body. I am grateful. I wonder whether we might also make sure that the members get a choice as to which floor on the office block they get to their office, because some of us would choose to be on the top, others might not. If the members want me to nominate members who should be in the top floor, but I certainly have a look at that. I also think that we need to look very carefully at road safety. What does the evidence tell us about trends in road safety for pedestrians? Since 2008, pedestrian casualties have fallen by a quarter, but, very worryingly, fatalities have increased by a third. The majority of those casualties occur in built-up areas for the speed limits up to 40mph. The majority occur in the winter, and the majority were in the evening. At weekends, the casualty peak times were between for adults, between midnight and 2am. Very concerning for me, as a road safety campaigner, the number of pedestrian casualties were over a quarter for those aged under 16. Just as a snapshot in 2012, 60 per cent of the casualties were male. The UK Department for Transport figures show that the annual pedestrian KSI, killed or seriously injured in the UK, has been rising recently, and they conclude that, on that statistics, walking is more dangerous than travelling in a car. There are, of course, solutions. I do not have time, Presiding Officer, to talk about the graduated driving approach, which I have been very actively interested in. However, I think that we need to develop education schools on road safety, about safe walkway for schools and better design walkways in towns, cities and rural areas. And what are the environmental benefits? Well, my colleague Claudia Beamish will go into a lot more detail about that. Clearly, we need to have a modal shift if we are going to reach our 2020 targets on a mission. The Scottish Government included active travel as one of the means by which we could reach our 2020 target on lower emissions in Scotland. Of course, substituting short-car journeys, which are carbon polluting with walking or cycling, is a relatively easy early gain. It is also important to note that that would have a knock-on effect to air pollution, which attributed to over 2,000 deaths in Scotland per year. It is important, then, that we look much more in terms of numbers, but also the human stories of how bad air quality can have a detrimental effect on people's quality of life. Think of the small child with asthma walking to school and hailing emissions when the exhausts of their schoolmates' parents' cars. Safety at the school gate would be greatly improved if more people made the trip by foot or bike. I know that it is not possible for everyone to leave the car at home, especially for those who live in remote and rural areas. We do, however, need a change of culture and a change of mindset. Active travel is good for a healthier life balance and the environment. I might also briefly touch on how active travel can have positive effects on the economy and personal finance. It is interesting to note that, according to the national household survey, 22 per cent of households earning less than 10,000 a year use walking as the main method of transport, while only 8 per cent of households earning 40,000 a year do so. Car ownership has been steadily increasing. However, 30 per cent of households still do not have access to a car. Many, of course, are low-income households. Many of those without cars rely on active travel methods to get to work or school, but are faced with unnecessary obstacles and dangers, such as badly lit walkways and cycle paths. That means that not all spending on active travel benefits all members of society, but it particularly benefits those who do not have the option of travelling by car. The Scottish Government's vision for 2030 has an ambitious plan to increase active travel by 20 per cent and as a target for 10 per cent for all journeys made by bike by the year 2020. We share that ambition. Is the minister confident that those targets can be met? What obstacles need to be overcome? The figures in walking illustrate that little has changed since 1999, but it shows that we are slightly on a downward trajectory. There is clearly a bit of room for improvement here. The figures for cycling show a similar trend. We need to encourage people from all walks of life and ages to regard cycling as a reliable and safe means of transport. We have to ensure that young children get the opportunity to learn how to cycle in a safe and encouraging environment so that cycling becomes part of their lives. We have already heard from Claudia Beamish the importance of bikeability having on-road experience. I recall from 1965, when I was working in school in Inverness, I got the cycling proficiency certificate. I can reassure Alex Johnson—that was not my only certificate, but I am working on that. It is clear that we need to do a lot more work to be done to create a nation of walkers and cyclists. We need an investment to ensure that people feel confident and able to leave their car behind for a pair of shoes or a bike. However, we need to improve road safety, which is why I welcome the Scottish Government commitment to increase the active travel budget in 2015-16, and I welcome the cabinet secretary's commitment to an additional £10 million investment in cycling and walking infrastructures. There are good headline figures, and I welcome the version that is put forward by Government, but we need more than that. Currently, there is little information on where exactly his money will be spent and how much will go directly to improving infrastructure. I would be grateful if the minister and his wind-up would perhaps give us a bit more detail. The campaign group has highlighted its concerns that only half the £10 million investment funding will go on improving infrastructure. It is also concerned that the ring-fence budget, given to local authority for cycling and walking, has been cut from £8.2 million to £8 million in the current budget. That could have dramatic effects on local authorities' abilities to improve cycling and walking. We know that funding pressures are on local government, but I would also like to flag up best practice in my last few seconds. I think that Labour-led Edinburgh City Council is the prime example of that. In conclusion, Presiding Officer, I welcome this debate and I would stress that Scottish Labour has strong support of active travel. Will we believe that making walking cycling more accessible will make a substantial contribution to addressing the physical and mental health problems in Scotland? We welcome students of the minister that funding is available to meet the ambitions of the various strategy documents such as the cycling action plan, the active travel and the national walking strategy. In conclusion, as Lassau said, the journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. I move the amendment in my name. The beginning of a new year is a good time to have this important debate. On Twitter, someone wrote in a new year's resolution sort of a way that this year they would like to save money, lose weight, improve their health and fitness, get to work on time, enjoy the scenery and then they kind of scored that out and wrote, I'm going to get cycling and walking clearly offers similar benefits. A Government is serious about spending money wisely on outcomes like vastly improving national health and wellbeing, not to mention boosting the economy, should invest properly in walking and cycling. Since I led the Parliament's first debate on cycling in 2012, it's clear that there are an increasing number of positive local stories around infrastructure, increased training, lowering of speed limits in some areas and the introduction of 20-mile-per-hour zones in some of our towns and cities. However, I think that it is still too patchy. I'm pleased to be able to work on a cross-party basis with my colleagues in the cross-party group. Co-conveners Jim Eadie and Claudia Beamish always input very positively as the many external organisations who attend and make the group the success it is. I was pleased to attend a meeting in Parliament where we heard from Sauron Rasmussen, an architect from the Danish Cycle Embassy. He told us that, while investment in cycling in Copenhagen was initially driven by a need to address pollution and congestion, the number one reason people in Copenhagen gave for cycling was convenience and speed. It got them to where they wanted to get quickly. His slides of cycling in Copenhagen style were inspirational. 40 per cent of folk cycling to work in school, university and college, no lycra, no hives in sight. It's not needed because a critical mass of cyclists is highly visible. Who can miss that endless flow of bikes, peddling at a conversational speed arriving to start their day only slightly more rosy cheeked than if they'd walked? For now, those kinds of numbers remain a vision here, but it's essential that we have a really clear commitment to 10 per cent of all journeys by bike by 2020. Let's keep the language clear. If 10 per cent is a target, let's call it a target. As you've heard already in the debate, we're in the legacy period following last summer's very successful common wealth games. We know that research is showing meaningful legacy, real change following global games is really hard to find. That's because too often after the games of left town, after people have been inspired by watching the world's greatest athletes in action, after that initial boost in participation, there's been little or no sustained increase in physical activity among the general population. Investing properly in cycling and walking now would help ensure that Glasgow bucks that trend. As we know, physical activity can help to improve so many health problems, from dementia to diabetes, from fatigue to the risk of hip fractures. A Canadian academic has confirmed that the best-preserved 65-year-old may outperform a sedentary 25-year-old. However, becoming and remaining physically active is a quality of life issue, and as we begin to fully understand the economic health and societal impacts of our changing population demographic, that is important information. Our population is ageing, and we need to do that in an active, energising way, a way that helps to prevent and delay many of the chronic conditions that blight too many lives. It's really important that the Scottish Government sustains a clear upward trend in investing in active travel. Relying on consequentials welcome as they are doesn't demonstrate the leadership that we need on this issue. The increase in previous years got us up close to 2 per cent of spending, and I urge you to maintain that and surpass that. Don't cut investment. Edinburgh Council leads the local authority commuter cycle rates race, and they have done so with a clear commitment to increase spending on active travel by 1 per cent each year until they have reached 10 per cent. Governing is, of course, about choices. As yet, no Government in Parliament in Scotland has made walking and cycling a priority. The level of investment says it all—one in a bit per cent—of the transport budget, a transport budget that has increased massively in the past four years. The new transport minister could be the person to change that. Pass for all, briefly. Okay, just to make the point that we should accept it's not just about money, it's also changing attitudes. Absolutely, but we've spent a lot of money on changing attitudes. We need to have the infrastructure that allows parents and others to feel that they want their children walking and cycling on safe roads. Pass for all has called for a champion for this cause, and the minister could be the Government's cycling and walking champion. Spokes have rightly questioned the clarity of the financial transactions involved in investing in cycling and walking infrastructure, transformed Scotland to speak of the continued apaceness of the Scottish budget. Why is it so complicated? I ask the Government to make this as transparent as possible and to be really proud of the investment. Have a single budget line, have two lines that says walking infrastructure, cycling infrastructure, and at the end of the line, as advocated by the Scottish Green Party, and 110 transport medical and other professional bodies, including the Association of Public Health Directors, the Institute of Highway Engineers and the British Heart Foundation, have a figure that is 10 per cent of the transport budget. Pass for all is right to point out in their briefing that active travel schemes clearly deliver better value for money than most traditional transport schemes. They are right, too, when they say that it's time to put into practice to fund what the policies say, so why the on-going reluctance? I look forward to hearing colleagues' contributions in the debate. Many thanks and now call on the net mill up to six minutes, please. A few of this debate is going to be somewhat repetitive. We hear a great deal in this Parliament about the increasing levels of obesity in Scotland today, about the health demands of our rapidly growing elderly population, about the persistent health inequalities that are within our society, and about the serious health risks of an inactive lifestyle. The latter are indeed stark because statistics show that seven deaths occur every day in Scotland, many of them premature, which are due to inactivity. There is a huge benefit to be had from getting people out of their cars and on to their feet or their bikes, because all the problems that I have just mentioned can be helped by increasing the level of our activity as a nation. Walking has no personal financial cost, it is the most common physical activity, and it has many proven health benefits, as we have heard. It helps to maintain bone density, it can reduce the severity of dementia, it reduces cardiovascular diseases by up to 30 per cent, it reduces the risk of some cancers, and it helps to alleviate depression and high blood pressure. Indeed, it has been shown to cut overall mortality rates by up to 20 per cent, and given that obesity is currently estimated to cost the NHS over £300 million a year, we can judge the significant financial benefits to be gained from improving our national health by increasing our physical activity. In a country where over a third of women and nearly a quarter of men do not have a driving licence and where 22 per cent of households with an income of less than 10,000 a year use walking as their main mode of transport, policies to support walking will disproportionately support low-income households, which has to be a good thing. The more people use active travel, the more they are also likely to walk for pleasure and recreation. With fewer cars on local roads, routes to school and local facilities will become safer for all age groups, but especially for children, and older people will be able to feel more in touch with their communities. Active travel encourages access to shops and services in local centres, and so it helps to support local economies. As we know, it also serves to cut carbon emissions and other pollution from our communities, so surely an all-round win-win situation. I have so far just mentioned the benefits of walking because that is what I personally relate to most, but cycling too has enormous health and social benefits. What I have said so far is well known to policy makers, and during the existence of the Scottish Parliament, successive Governments and all parties have been committed to promoting active travel as a measure to develop a more active and healthier population. Various strategies have been put in place to try and achieve the ambition. As the motion states, the national cycling framework has been in place for 20 years. The first cycling action plan for Scotland was first published in 2010 and refreshed in 2013, and last year saw the launch of the first national walking strategy as part of the legacy of the Commonwealth Games. The act of travel vision for 2030 has been articulated, showing how Scotland will look by then if more people in Scotland are walking and cycling on a regular basis instead of using powered transport. How close are we to achieving that ambitious vision? Sadly, it will not vary if we look at current trends as laid out in the briefing centres by living streets and paths for all. The Government's national performance indicator to increase the proportion of journeys to work made by public or active transport has actually decreased from 31.2 to 30.7 per cent. In 2013, only 23 per cent of such journeys were made on foot, even though half of all those were less than three kilometres. The number of children walking to school is stuck at around 50 per cent, with 20 per cent of morning peak traffic still taking children to school, despite the fact that most primary school children live less than a mile and a half from their school. I can of course understand parents' fear of traffic when their children want to walk or cycle to school, but the more cars are used for school transport, the busier the traffic will be, especially in an area with a rapidly increasing housing development as there is where I live. Sadly too, commuter cycling rates remain very low in Scotland, with Aberdeen, for example, having increased only 1 per cent since 1999 to 3 per cent last year, nowhere near the Government's 10 per cent cycle share target for 2020. Edinburgh, as we know, is doing better at 6.6 per cent following specific financial investment, but it is still well behind target too. Funding is clearly an issue for both walking and cycling if the Government's vision is to come to near achievement. Local authorities receive Government funding for the development of pedestrian infrastructure, but details of how the money that is spent on this are not available, because it is generally counted as expenditure on roads. Government money is also used for a wide range of sustainable travel initiatives, such as car clubs and cycling infrastructure projects, so it is hard to establish what the Scottish Government actually spends on walking. Revenue and capital funding for cycling comes from the Scottish Government and local authorities, the former under a number of different budget headaches. Again, there is a lack of clarity as to where it is spent, which hinders efforts to deliver the Government's goals. The Cycling, Walking and Safer Streets Fund, which is a key source of finance for local authorities to implement active travel and infrastructure projects allocated to councils on a per capita basis, has been decreased from £8.2 million last year to £8 million, I believe. I ask the Conservatives what your funding position is in relation to the Sustainable Act of Travel and Cycling specifically, and as it relates to local government. I think that this is something that has to be sorted out between local authorities and the Government. Funding is an issue anyway, and it needs to be sorted out between national and local government, but it needs to be reliable and consistent if progress towards the 2030 vision is to be realistic. I will conclude by saying that much good work has been done in the lifetime of the Scottish Parliament, but a great deal more will be necessary to achieve the active nation, which is not only desirable but necessary. We totally support the Government's ambition, and we will continue to support sensible measures to help to realise its active travel vision for 2030. Many thanks. We now move to the open debate. We are very tight for time. I call Jim Edie to be followed by Sarah Boyer. Up to six minutes, please, Mr Edie. Presiding Officer, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate this afternoon, although I will confine my remarks if I may to the issue of cycling. I recall that, in April 2012, I had the privilege, along with Alison Johnstone and Sarah Boyack, of addressing 3,000 cyclists who came from all over Scotland to ride on mass from the meadows to the Scottish Parliament. That was a mass movement. People of all ages and from all backgrounds who came together to make their voice heard and to demand that our roads be made safer and more accessible for cyclists. They had set up their own campaign group, wrote a manifesto, used social media and called for action so that Scotland could become a cycle-friendly nation. That was the first ever peddle on Parliament and it has now become an annual fixture in both the political and cycling calendars. It has been addressed in subsequent years by the Minister for Climate Change, Paul Wheelhouse, and the then Minister for Transport, Keith Brown, as well as being supported by MSPs from across the chamber. I am delighted that cycling has moved from being the subject of protest outside this Parliament to being the subject of debate in Government time in this chamber this afternoon. There are many people who cycle to work or their place of study. They derive the health benefits from this form of active travel and end up saving the NHS money by living healthy, active lives, as we have heard this afternoon from both Dave Stewart and Annette Milne. The environment benefits too from lower carbon emissions. This is a genuine win-win, a win for the individual cyclist and a win for the wider community. Pound for pound investment in cycling provides huge gains compared to investment in other modes of transport. We need to raise the status of cycling and to promote the benefits for individuals and society as a whole. We need to build on the investment in cycling infrastructure in rural and urban Scotland and to sustain this year on year. We need to encourage consideration of cyclist needs in all aspects of transport planning and transport management. In Edinburgh, we have one of the highest rates of cycling in the country, and we have a council that is providing leadership. Edinburgh has responded to the demand from local people for more investment by committing 7 per cent of its transport budget to projects designed for pedestrians and cyclists. We have a local transport champion for cycling in Councillor Adam McVeigh, who has worked hard to make a real difference. We have seen a number of investments in cycling, such as the new bike corridor from the city centre to King's buildings at the University of Edinburgh in my constituency, although many people, including myself, would prefer that this was a properly segregated cycle route rather than being on-road. We have also seen the resurfacing of North Meadow Walk cycle path, made possible by the allocation of £4 million of funding for shovel-ready projects that followed the meeting that I secured with the then Cabinet Secretary for Finance, John Swinney. We also look forward to the dedicated cycle path on Meadow Walk, linking with the wider cycle network. Edinburgh Council has also piloted 20 miles per hour zones and has rolled these out in residential areas, so I welcome what the minister had to say on the guidance that is to come. There are many more people who would cycle and there are many more people who want to cycle for whom the roads are not yet safe enough, so the safer we make our roads and the more people we will then get out of their cars and onto their bikes, we need to make our roads safer, less congested and healthier for the next generation. I am also pleased to have played my part in moving cycling up the political and policy agenda as a co-convener of the cross-party group on cycling, along with my fellow co-conveners, Claudia Beamish and Alison Johnson. We have become our own version of the three amigos, whose sole reward is to ensure that justice is done for the cycling community before riding this time by bicycle into the sunset. To quote Steve Martin's character, Lucky Day, what we are talking about is money, real money and megal money. No dough, no show. That takes me neatly onto the subject of the Barnett consequentials. I called on the Deputy First Minister during questions on the local government finance statement before Christmas to match the City of Edinburgh Council's commitment to allocating 7 per cent of its transport budget to active travel and to allocate some of the funds that are coming to Scotland under the formula to cycling. I was pleased that the Deputy First Minister acknowledged the role that cycling can make in meeting the Government's own ambitious targets, and I very much look forward to that meeting in the near future. Many of my constituents have urged me to press the Government to do more, and I reiterate their calls today. One constituent, however, stands out. He said, I had a dream last night, and I hope that Jim Eadie can make it come true. He set out a vision of a greener, happier and healthier Scotland as a result of sustained investment in cycling infrastructure in his blog, Uncle Kempis's Edinburgh blog. It is one thing for politicians to be held to account for the promises that they make at election time, but I thought asking me to make his dream come true was perhaps too much even for the MSP for Edinburgh Southern. That was an awesome matter. A matter for the transport minister, Derek Mackay, then I thought, no, this must be an issue for the Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Capital Investment and Cities, Keith Brown. After all, my colleague Christina McKelvie tells me that he spends his days making her dreams come true. Finally, I decided that the only person though who can make my constituents' dream come true is the Deputy First Minister. So I say to the Deputy First Minister, put all other considerations to one side and make mine and my constituents' dreams come true by allocating some of the additional funding coming to Scotland through the Barnett formula to investment in cycling infrastructure. In conclusion, there are thousands of cyclists in Scotland, men, women and children, and they are looking to this Parliament for leadership. Cycling offers the people of Scotland so much improvements to health through exercise, less pollution and carbon emissions, and a sustainable mode of transport and recreation. I hope that this Parliament will take the opportunity today and in the months ahead to define the kind of Scotland that we want to see, a cycle-friendly nation of which we can all be proud. This is one of those follow-that-speech moments. I am going to choose not to do that for obvious reasons, but I think that this has been a good debate thus far. I want to welcome the transport minister to his new job. I want to focus on three things. I would like to focus on our overall approach. I would like to focus on the distinctive roles that central and local government can play and I would like to focus on the money. There is clearly cross-party support across the chamber for doing more on walking and cycling and on active travel. The bit we are not so good at is joining up the dots between walking and cycling, between walking and buses, walking and cycling and trains. I would also add in other types of transport as well. I think that the trunk road network has got to be linked into our cycling ambitions. Over time, as more and more people commute longer and longer distances, if you look at the cycle statistics in terms of accidents, there are clearly many, many accidents happening in our urban areas. Junctions are a key danger for cyclists. Being overtaken is a key danger. Being crossed by lorries or by buses is a key danger. However, if you look at our rural roads network, that is where many of our fatalities happen. It is on roads that drivers are not expecting to see cyclists and are narrow roads and are roads with lots of corners or lots of hills. I think that this is not just an issue, although local authorities are crucial. If we are going to have an overall approach to active travel, it has got to be every level of Government and everybody has signed up to that. As others have said, I thought that Dave Stewart's speech particularly on walking was fantastic. I thought that the netmillns' comments on health were absolutely right. The fact that the BMA has lobbied us today about this issue just makes the case that several colleagues have made about the importance of active travel for our long term. I was waking up to Radio Scotland this week and they used the statistic that people in their mid-fifties and upwards, who regularly cycle, have both a better biological and physical state than people who do not cycle. It is not just an issue for young people, it is actually an issue for every age category. I think that we quite often focus on young people that are right in terms of the start. If we do not get the right habit at the start, it is not going to lead on to good habits in the future, but we have really got to be taking a whole population, a whole country approach to that. The policy is absolutely crucial, there is cross-party support, there needs to be work at the central and local level and both levels of government playing their part. At the end of the day, the political will has got to translate into money. I was just looking at the first budget that the First Transport Minister had in this place. That was under £300 million, and we have now got a budget of £2 billion. If you track across walking and cycling, it obviously does not go up from £1.99, because the major investment did not happen in the first year that it happened in the years thereafter. However, the cycling and walking investment has in no way kept pace with trunk roads, it has not kept pace with railways and it has not kept pace with ferries, air or buses. There is an issue about, because cycling is a lot of small projects, it is much harder to get the big political hit and the big shift behind it. Across the chamber, we have got to agree that we are going to do that. That means, I am afraid to say, transport minister, it means all of us piling into you and saying that we need to do more, and then being prepared to support you when you start putting more money in. The First Minister accused opposition parties at the last FMQs before the recess of not being supportive enough on climate change when controversial issues are raised. Honestly, has walking and cycling got to be seen as controversial? It is relatively small amounts of money, it is incredibly local, it is very good for public health benefits and it is good for the economy. We do not say enough of that. Promoting cycling and walking is also good for the economy. For me, it has got to be about infrastructure. Exorting people is not enough. Sometimes there are a small number of people who might feel guilty, who might feel on that day that their public health will be better if they get on their bike. However, the truth is, for most people, they want safer environments. For people to be comfortable walking and cycling, we have got to make the built environment better. A challenge to Alex Neil is that he has just called in 1,200 houses in Edinburgh to determine them by the Scottish Government. I want to know what those planning applications are all approved in detail. They have excellent cycling and walking routes that link back into the rest of the city. We need to make sure that every new developer that is housing, business or education has the right level of cycling investment and active travel investment. That means networking into the rest of the town, the city or the village. It was absolutely right for Jim Eadie to praise what Edinburgh is doing, the radical roll-out of 20mph zones. Some streets should be doing well to get up to 20mph, but that as a principle will help to promote the ambition for many people to cycle. It needs to be followed up by dedicated cycle routes. That is something that the Parliament needs to turn its mind to. If we have cycle markings on the road and cars can park in the cycle markings, then it is part-time cycle routes and it is not full-time cycle routes. That is a challenge across the country. We need sustained investment and higher investment. Edinburgh's commitment of 7 per cent of its city's transport budget is excellent, but we need that ambition shared across the country. I have to say that the Scottish Government needs to be doing more to lead the way, more clarity, what spokes have asked for, more clarity so that we can track the money. That is absolutely essential. When the minister comes back next time, I hope that the motion is less in terms of our self-congratulation and a bit more in terms of what we can all do to meet the challenge. Thank you very much. Let me start by congratulating the minister on his appointment to the most exciting in the Chinese sense portfolio in government. I shall continue to get my prayer mat out on a weekly basis to pray that all snow that falls over the winter will be at no lower level than 1,500 feet, thus ensuring the satisfaction of skiers and the clear roads that will enable the transport minister to sleep at night. Looking at the motion and the amendments is quite interesting and revealing. Government motion makes three references to cycling and two references to walking. The Labour Party has achieved a perfect balance—it is 50-50. The Greens seem to be a bit obsessed about the strange cycling thing. There are five references to cycling and only one to walking. I am here to redress the balance a little bit because I am perhaps not the committed cyclist that some of the rest of you are. I can tell you that today I have so far done seven and a half thousand steps. My walk from here to the railway station tonight will complete the 10,000 steps target, and yesterday I did 15,000 steps. That adds up to about 15 miles a week. That sounds quite decent. However, I have to say who used to be a world-class orientator. His training schedule used to be 160 miles a week, so I can go a bit further. However, if I may suggest that the risk of being characterised as a grumpy old man is entirely the wrong thing, I want the debate to be focused on—if I may suggest that the risk of being characterised as a grumpy old man is entirely the wrong thing. That is the investment in infrastructure. There is nothing to do with that. What is there about that? Ministers love investment in infrastructure. They will do it every pound that they can give them. They will go off and spend it in infrastructure because they will love to go and open things by photographing beside a new bit of cycle track, by photographing at a new bike hire station, by photographing to putting a new name on a train. The reality is that we have got to change what goes on inside people's minds. If you were to think about, for example, buying shoes that were suitable for walking for a million people in Scotland, how much would that cost? Actually, less than the annual active travel budget. Would that deliver, in health terms and in improving people's engagement in active travel, a greater benefit than spending any money at all on cycling? However, I say that to provoke, not because I realistically propose in any sense that we de-commit on cycling. I just say that let's think about what a pound spent on something actually buys in public policy terms. A pound spent on walking buys a heck of a lot more than a pound spent on almost anything else in the active travel area, and I'd like to see us do something about that. However, walking can be a rather flexible thing. There's a guy, and I keep meaning to somehow get him to stop so that I can find out who he is and what he does. He's both in my constituency, but I more normally see him outside my constituency, who, on the main road, rollerskates. He actually uses it as a means of transport, because I've actually seen him do 10 miles on rollerskates. It's not just shoes. We've maybe equipped people with rollerskates, and that's good healthy exercise as well. I've heard no mention up until now in the active travel budget of rollerskates for the population of Scotland, but perhaps we should have a little think about that. The bottom line is that in those debates we've kind of got to challenge the norms, so maybe let's look in the mirror as members here. How many of us today came to this Parliament in a taxi? Rollerskates? If you know more about rollerskates than I do, that will not be hard, most certainly. Mary Fee? It may be a point to help to illustrate the debate. In a previous life, when I worked for one of our largest retailers, when they were rolling out the opening of their massive big super stores, they gave some of their staff at the checkout's rollerskates so that they could manoeuvre their way around the store a bit easier. That might be something that we should be talking to our retail friends about a bit more. Stuart Stevenson, can I remind the chamber that we're very short of time this afternoon? I'm keeping a very close eye on the watch and your steely gaze, Presiding Officer, simultaneously. I must say that Nanette Milne gave us great heart that if we get engaged in this exercise thing, everything we do will improve our life. I sort of have the feeling that I might have the grave misfortune if I continue my present exercise, because I don't use the taxi to live to 150. That's okay. The other thing that I may say on cycling, which I genuinely looked at—I was actually on the point of going ahead about it until my wife saw what I was looking at on the internet—I was looking at monocycles, because they're quite easy to carry around. They're quite cheap and they're easy to maintain. I thought that it would scare the heck out of people here if they saw me on my monocycle. We've got a clear choice here when we spend money. I genuinely say to the minister, yes, we've got to invest in infrastructure and we should continue to do that, but what we've actually got to invest is in changing the hearts and minds of the people of Scotland, because almost everybody's got the equipment to engage in walking, and they've got it right now. It's going to be raining heavily when this Parliament finishes its day's business, but I still want to see you all walking to Waverly, if that's where you're going. Many thanks. Before I call Tavish Scott, before I join McAlpine, can I just indicate that we are incredibly tight for time? If members could take less than six minutes, that would be helpful. Can I also welcome down at McAlpine to his new position as transport minister, but also as islands minister? I might try to bring more of a rural and islands perspective to this thoughtful debate this afternoon, because that may be an issue that hasn't been quite brought to the fore as yet. It does strike me that there's a number of ex-transport ministers in here tonight, and I think we'd all say to the new one that this is about the most powerful lobby out there. You know, you think the rose lobby is hard, you think the rail lobby has a lot to say, but actually, I think Alison Johnson might know this as well, that the cycling lobby actually is both vigorous and determined, but it actually provides an intellectually coherent argument, which sometimes doesn't always come there, I say it, from some of the other lobbying organisations. Alison Johnson also challenged the new minister to be a champion for cycling. I recall Sarah Boyack cycling to cabinet minute meetings in Bute House back in that first term, so maybe I can encourage Derek Mackay to get on his bike in the nicest possible way, of course, not in that tebit way that we might remember from a previous political life as well, but to get on his bike and cycle, and indeed as Stuart Stevenson encouraged him to walk everywhere as well. There is quite a lot about leadership in this area that the minister, all ministers, but this minister, in terms of this portfolio, probably can show more than anywhere else. The timing of the debate has been mentioned by others, and it's a bit intriguing to discuss cycling and walking. There won't be many school kids cycling home in Shetland tonight, I can tell him, because the forecast next couple of days, as he will well know from his resilience responsibilities, is absolutely terrible, which will allow me to escape on a plane tomorrow night, otherwise I won't get home until Sunday. However, the point about that is, as I think members from Edinburgh and Germany particularly made this point, that I think it's easier to devise some of this policy agenda where it logically fits into cities and urban areas than it is in rural areas, and that's why the councils in rural areas who have achieved so much in terms of the teaching of what we used to call cycle proficiency in schools are to be commended. Some of the numbers that are in the briefing papers that we've had for this debate I think are particularly to be supported where rural local authorities have invested considerable time and effort into making sure that teaching of cycling skills is available in primary schools and at a young age. Annette Mill mentioned the obesity figures. I found today that they were published, I think, by the Parliament's research centre. You can probably bandy around the figures, but the number that I was given today suggests that obesity costs the economy something like in excess of £4 billion a year, which is an enormous number. I mean, it would be quite interesting to see quite how the economists get to that kind of scale of number, but whatever it is, that is the challenge for any Government. It's certainly the challenge for the incoming Minister with one in three of our children at risk of being overweight or obese, and one in three adults thought to be obese. So, that does, if nothing else, and the economic number that others have mentioned support the contention that the economy benefits too from a realistic and sustained investment in active travel appoints that, in fairness to the Minister, he made in his opening remarks. The other aspect I do think that the Minister might do in those, no doubt they still have those cross-portfolio meetings I used to so beloved when I was in government. Many a day was wasted and those I never thought I'd get those days back either or never did, but I'm sure they're much better now, but I could encourage the Minister maybe to take on, in those kind of meetings, the challenge of PE in schools as well, because there's a big role for our education Ministers in taking out forward. I'm going to stop banding around all the statistics around PE in school, but there's a healthy debate on that in itself, but it strikes me that that is very much a linked factor in terms of the active nation that the Minister rightly is trying to create. He encouraged all of us to mention projects that work, and let me bring to his attention. The first is the Shetland community bike project, which is a really great initiative because it takes people who are having a tough time in life and in society and encourages them and has them working on very basic things such as maintaining bikes and putting bikes back together and then making them available for sale in Shetland. They work with such organisations as Skills Development Scotland's Young Employer of a Month programme to ensure and ensure there is employment and volunteering opportunities for young people who do face those barriers to work, and that seems to me the kind of social enterprise that is not only a great resource for my constituency but is actually the kind of project that I'm sure exists in many other parts of the country as well and links to so many positive outcomes, not just for the people who are involved in a project, but obviously for many others I have personally donated a bunch of my kids' bikes to that project and they did a great job patching their decrepit machines up and selling them on, and I'm not the only dad in Shetland who's done exactly exactly that. The other one I wanted to bring to Parliament's attention is the Shetland on Wheels project, which just simply aims to promote active travel and ensure that there are opportunities for children and young people in bike handling, bike maintenance and road safety skills, which I think was the point that Stuart Stevenson made about, oh maybe not Stuart, but one of my colleagues was making about road safety and the wider arguments there. Now there are in winding up, Presiding Officer, many campaign organisations, as I mentioned the outset, who lobby hard on this and the Minister will have read all the briefings as much as the rest of us have, and I thought the one figure that did seem to me out of all the briefings that we had for this debate that did seem to me quite important to bear in mind was actually from the Rambler Scotland, who simply observed that since 50 per cent of all journeys in Scotland are under five kilometres or undertaken by driving, there is much scope for improving that into cycling and walking. My daughter recently moved to the Netherlands and I visited her there in October, and it was a complete revelation, as we know from briefings that 27 per cent of journeys are made by bike in the Netherlands. I have to say that when I was there, it felt like a lot more, because I was in Delft, which is a town that pioneered Holland's active travel culture. You immediately notice that it is much quieter and that there are more people out and about, because cycling means more walking, there are less cars to put you off. One of the most extraordinary sites was getting off the train at The Hague, one of the biggest cities, and there was a football-sized pitch space for bikes, thousands upon thousands of bikes. My daughter lives in a block of modern flats in the suburbs of Delft, and there are no parking spaces reserved for residents, but there is a huge communal shed for bikes. On the first day, I know that this is hard to believe, looking at maybe, we took a 20 kilometre round trip to the neighbouring town by bike, and for most of the journey, which is through the green belt, we were on a two-way cycle path that was nothing to do with the roads. Sarah Boyack mentioned rural roads and the dangerous cyclists. You do not see cyclists on those kind of roads in the Netherlands because there are dedicated bike routes between towns. In Holland, every major road has a two-way cycle lane with a barrier and crossing places for bikes just like pedestrians, but you do not need to stay in those segregated lanes for long because there is a massive complex of urban cycle routes that get you from A to B far more pleasantly. When you need to share the roads with cars, like in the narrow streets of historic town centres, they creep along and are few and far between, and I later discovered that those are designated home zones with a 7 kilometre or hour speed limit, where cars have to yield to bikes and pedestrians. When I came back from Holland and wrote about my experience with the zeal of the converted, I had two reactions. One from the cycling lobby demanding that we introduce presumed liability right away and we become like Holland, and the other was from petrolheads who argued that the Dutch cycle is more because it is flat and it would just never work here and that they were historically more inclined to do so. On presumed liability, after much thought, I believe that until we have segregated cycle areas and a more comprehensive system of cyclonly routes, I cannot see it working here. In Holland, a motorist needs to be pretty reckless to hit a cyclist because the twins seldom meet and drivers in Holland's big roads do not need to worry about cyclists weaving in and out of traffic as motorists do often in this country. Cyclists are policed more in Holland, they get on the spot fines if they do not have lights or bells and if they are on a road which is reserved for cars. As the petrolhead argument does not hold any water either, the idea that the Dutch are somehow genetically programmed to cycle more is completely untrue. Holland is flat, but it has other topographical challenges such as the water that is everywhere. You have to design the infrastructure around all the waterways. Looking back at the history of this topic in Holland, before World War 1, the bicycle was the main mode of transport in both the UK and Holland, you just need to think back to pictures of district nurses and postmen cycling around our country. After the war, both countries saw rapid development of urban areas, new housing and indeed the rise of the motor car. It was worse in Holland than it was here because they had quite a lot of wealth after the war from their natural gas. They had twice the number of children killed on the roads in the UK and that was the trigger for change there. The 1960s saw the rise of a mass movement called Stop the Kingdom Mood, which translates as stop child murder. It got its name from the headline of an article written by a journalist whose child had been killed. The movement immediately caught the imagination of government who, for 50 years, designed their towns and infrastructure around cycling and walking. We have a huge amount of catching up to do. It has left us with huge challenges. I agree with Alison Johnstone that my experience of Holland tells me that we need to invest in infrastructure, but we have the reality of 26 per cent cut to Scotland's infrastructure budget. Of course, we could reallocate from the road's budget, but for politicians we have to face up to the reality of that. How would our constituents react to us telling them that we are going to stop filling in potholes and we are going to build segregated cycle lanes? I think that it would be a brave politician who did that, but I think that we are at least... It really just allows me to make the point that cyclists use roads as well, so spending in roads is not necessarily a bad thing for cycling generally. I have miraculously found a little bit of time, so I can reimburse you slightly. Oh, thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I agree with that, but I think that we haven't invested in the kind of infrastructure, the segregated infrastructure that would make me feel safe cycling in this country or that would encourage me to send my children to cycle to school if I still had children of school age. I just wouldn't do it unless they were completely segregated from traffic, I'm afraid. That's where I perhaps park company with the idea that if we just train people to cycle more and get more cyclists on the road that somehow there will be a magical transformation, there won't be a... I believe we need infrastructure investment and perhaps it will take a brave politician to get on his or her bike and ensure that Scotland goes dutch, but perhaps we have one in front of us. I certainly hope so. Thank you very much. Many thanks and I now call Claudia Beamish to be followed by Mike Mackenzie. Thank you Presiding Officer. I want to start with a call to ensure that active travel is a robust part of contributing to our climate change targets. The step change to a low-carbon economy is a challenge for all political parties involving long-term planning beyond each political cycle, and the second RPP focuses our minds on the longer term, and we must all work, in my belief, to ensure that proposals become policies to meet the future annual and long-term targets. With transport contributing a heavy bulk of our greenhouse gases emissions at 21 per cent in 2012, active travel must make a significant difference in future years, while also meeting the 10 per cent active travel target by 2020. That is partly about political support for behaviours that we've heard from others, but this change cannot happen unless the right circumstances are created by a robust range of initiatives, building on what Scottish Government, local government, NGOs and other voluntary groups have already done. We have already heard about many of those in today's debate and from the range of excellent briefings, but the point that I would make is that, in order to move forward in a significant way, it is not about the development of on-road primary school cycling education through Bikeability Scotland, nor about on-road segregated cycle lanes, nor about changes to civil law to better protect cyclists. It is about all those things in tandem, if I may say. I will focus particularly on cycling, as I am a co-convener with Alison Johnson and Jamedie of the Cross Party group for cycling. I am starting to feel that, despite the large number of CPGs, there maybe should be one for walking as well. However, active travel does offer significant opportunities for trans-departmental financial commitments. I do believe that that is vital, as we have heard from some today. The complexities of this opportunity are better known to those in government than to a shadow minister. However, who would pass up the chance to enable people of all ages to cycle in reasonable safety, helping them to get fit or keep fit, helping with their sense of wellbeing through being out in fresher air and helping them to get home or to work or to school or for leisure with no car cues and air pollution on their journey, or perhaps none of it, but at least much less. Of course, transport, environment, health, education, local government, justice and planning have something to contribute, and I am pleased to hear that the new minister will be liaising with the planning department in this spirit. As a rural dweller, I want to say something specific about rural cycling. Three years ago, I went along to a Lothian cycling breakfast walking at that point at the city chambers here in Edinburgh. As I was the only member of my party there, I was asked to say something and feeling slightly panicked as I had walked rather than cycled, and feeling myself outnumbered by urban cyclists by hundreds to one as a rural cyclist, I said that I thought that rural cycling was important too and somebody clapped. Sarah Boyack has called for a whole country approach, and this is vital. Since then, I have heard a lot about good rural cycling initiatives, not least the joining up of the national walking and cycling network, one of the 13 infrastructure projects in NPP3. To give two quick examples, South Lanarkshire's local transport strategy has committed funding on a phased basis year by year to add links into the network and other cycling commitments, and Clack Manager Council has created its first cycle friendly road with 40 mile an hour limits and signed saying cycle friendly road, please drive with care. Can the minister say more about rural cycling commitments in his closing remarks? As a rural dweller, I had never cycled in any city until about a year ago and was very trepidatious. My cycling buddy, which I would highly recommend, helped me to make a start, and I did still get off, and I still do get off when I come to Tall Cross to walk, but do cycle along the Union Canal and haven't yet fallen in under the bridges and across the meadows. While I have moaned about how unsafe and unprotected I still feel despite my helmet a new yellow cycling rain gear, so many people have said to me, it's a different cycling culture in other European countries, but it had to start somehow in Holland to reach the critical masses that we've heard from German Calpine and others. So many people cycle there, at least some of the time, that they might well also understand, have some understanding as car users and respect cyclists as well. In my office, I have a photo of a mass lyin by cyclists in the mid-70s in Amsterdam Square. Of course I'm not advocating stopping car traffic and having a mass lyin. Pedal on Parliament is sending a clear message here, but I would say that cyclists do need to feel safer, especially in a family setting, if they are going to really take to the roads and make us a cycling nation. I have noted the efforts of ScotRail in their briefing in relation to cycles on trains, but I do hope that the new Abelio contract will include far more bikes on trains to aid tourism and commuting in the borders and that this will be a shining example. Finally, I want to say something about the roadshare campaign for presumed liability. Strict liability has actually existed in France since the 1960s. At Pedal on Parliament last year, I made a commitment to raise this issue with Scottish Labour and have done so with vigor. I will continue to do so and look forward to roadshare's European research results, which I hope will build on what some regard as the incomplete Scottish Government findings. I do believe that this could be a way forward, which everyone could look at across the chamber, but only as part of a range of cycling initiatives that will make us a cycle nation as much to celebrate for active travel already. Without the funding for this range, right across the country, we will not be able to all cycle safely. Many thanks and I now call on Mike McKenzie to be followed by Ikara Hilton. Presiding Officer, I am pleased to speak in this debate, not least because its importance is reinforced by the number of organisations that have sent us briefings. The briefings all seem to have one thing in common. They will support and indeed commend the Scottish Government's Cycling Action Plan. They will support the first national walking strategy and they will support the Government's aims of improving health, wellbeing and reducing carbon emissions through increasing active travel. The second Cycling Action Plan introduces a target of 10 per cent of everyday journeys to be made by a bicycle by 2020. It is a fact that is perhaps inconvenient for all position parties that this Government has a habit of delivering on its targets. I am pleased to see the proportion of adults who meet the recommended physical activity levels increasing from 62 per cent in 2012 to 64 per cent in 2013 and the proportion of children meeting the recommendation of at least 60 minutes of exercise per day rising from 71 per cent in 2008 to 75 per cent in 2013. Those are real achievements and it is also an impressive achievement that the Government is able to commit significant funding for active travel initiatives in infrastructure against the terrible austerity background that we face with a 26 per cent cut to our capital budget. I know that there are some arguments that more should be spent in infrastructure and less in promotional initiatives. However, active travel is at least as much about changing our sedentary culture and attitudes as it is about providing infrastructure, as my colleague Stuart Stevenson noted. Alison Johnstone Surely the member recognises that, although promoting the benefits of active travel is clearly very important, if you have a campaign like give me cycle space but parents do not feel the cycle space exists for their children to cycle safely on the road or indeed to walk safely to school, that money is going to be wasted. It is not going to have the impact that we would wish. Mike McKenzie, I can reimburse you. I would invite the member to get out to some of the wonderful cycling routes across the Highlands and Islands that I will speak about later. I note that there are some arguments that just suggest that much more should be spent on all aspects of active travel, but, as always, those who suggest this never ever say where the corresponding cuts ought to be made. I note that, as we approach the UK general election, both the main UK parties are promising even more austerity and even deeper cuts. In all of our debates here in this Parliament, it is impossible to ignore that fact. Presiding Officer, I agree, however, that more can and should be done to facilitate active travel. I am pleased that the national planning framework 3 commits to a national walking and cycling network, and I am delighted at the success of walking routes, such as the West Highland way and the Contire way. I am also enormously impressed at the Sustrans network stretching in the Highlands all the way from Contire to Inverness and beyond. I suggest that Alison come and visit the Highlands and bring your bike. Active travel in the recreational sense is especially important in the Highlands and Islands. All the more so, as distances involved in travelling to work or school and rural areas are often too great for active travel to form such an important part of everyday travel as it does in urban areas. Indeed, in the area that I live in, active travel was often in the not too distant past about getting off the bus when it came to a very steep hill and sometimes helping to push the bus up the hill. Active travel was sometimes about helping to roll our ferry boat when the engine broke down as it used to do quite frequently. Active travel in the Highlands and Islands is often quite a different thing from in urban areas. On the subject of planning, I do feel that much more can be done at the local level. I was glad to hear Sarah Boyack touching that. Local planning authorities need to consider active travel carefully as they work in local development plans. That requires a fundamental change in mindset and culture. For many years, we have followed a model of development that is highly dependent on the car. Within a couple of generations, we have gone from a walk to work, walk to the shops, walk to the pub, walk nearly everywhere in society to one that now demands that we all have to travel longer distances. In the course of that, we have lost much of the dynamic of our local communities, our town centres and our cohesiveness as a society. We must take a long-term view of that and see whether we can put right some of the mistakes of the past. I am suggesting an evolution rather than a revolution, because I do believe that that is the only realistic way that we can do that. In terms of the outcomes of active travel, we are making real progress in terms of health outcomes, in terms of wellbeing and in terms of environmental targets. Some of those targets will not be met in a linear fashion with steady progress year on year. Often progress happens in leaps and jumps. Electric vehicles, for example, are about to breach the technological threshold that will revolutionise and decarbonise much of our transport. I expect that, when that happens, it will happen much more quickly than we might imagine. There is no magic bullet in achieving the many desirable outcomes of active travel. In fact, it is the multi-faceted approach that the Government is following across a range of portfolios that is paying off and will continue to do so. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in today's debate on the active nation, increasing our rates of walking and cycling is not only good for our health and good for our wellbeing. It should also help Scotland to meet ambitious targets on both air pollution and carbon emissions. However, there are still a lot of barriers to the coming and active nation, which colleagues have discussed, in which we need to address. The reality is that most journeys are still made by car. Many families have got busier lives and simply do not have the time to walk from A to B. As a society, we work the longest hours in Europe. Many families have got complicated childcare arrangements to juggle and to be fair. I think that our weather can be a factor in putting some people off from active travel. It can often seem too complicated and, indeed, too dangerous an option. Simply in some areas, there is just not the safe path or cycle routes. Scotland is still a long way from becoming an active nation, lagging way behind our colleagues across Europe in terms of active travel. If we are going to achieve the 2030 vision that we all aspire to, then it will take a lot more than warm words. I know that we are all united across the chamber in wanting to make the active nation a reality, but active travel has to be given greater priority. It has got to be properly funded. We need a lot more action to encourage behaviour change and healthier lifestyles if we are going to make walking and cycling a realistic and attractive option for everyone. The same question to the Conservatives of the position is that active travel is not properly funded. At what level does Labour think that it should be funded at? My constituents are raising that the Scottish Government has got the power to fund active travel now. You should be using that power to make a difference now. When we all aspire to be an active nation, Scotland faces an ever-growing obesity problem. It is an epidemic that is costing our NHS £300 million a year, the cost to society and the rest of the economy in terms of sickness absence, much, much more. According to NHS 5, 1 in 5 primary 1 children in my constituency in Dumfremont is overweight or obese, and a staggering 1 in 3 adults in West Fife is obese. You only a third of adults do 30 minutes of physical exercise a day, and, increasingly, we have a generation of children who spend more time playing on the Xbox or in playstations than they do out on their bikes—a screen-based lifestyle in which the average child spends two and a half hours a day watching TV, and apparently according to one briefing that I received, 20 hours a week online. Living Streets in their excellent briefing highlight the loss of freedom that this is produced for our children, who have within three generations gone from being able to roam freely for one and a half kilometres around their homes to be limited to just 0.25 kilometres, often not getting out of the sight of their parents, being driven elsewhere by their parents to ride their bikes, rather than riding around the estate where they live. I am sure that I am not alone and remember that, when I was a child, I used to go out all day on my bike with my friends and you would only come back when you were hungry or when it got dark. On the train today, I read a report by the national trust called Natural Childhood, which I would urge colleagues to have a look at. The report warns of the social, medical and environmental problems that we are storing up for the future if we do not take action now to reverse the inactive indoor lifestyles to many children lead. Walking or cycling to school, work or for shopping is one of the easiest way that we can achieve the recommended physical activity levels at any age. We are making progress, but more steps need to be taken to make walking and cycling a safer and easier option for all. Many schools in my constituency are playing a brilliant role in promoting active travel. I would like to pay a particular mention to Carnegie primary, who launched their active travel plan in June and are doing a brilliant job in encouraging mum's dads and children to walk, cycle or scoot to school. Across Scotland, local authorities, too, are taking a positive step forward despite the budget challenges that they face. Investing in active travel to make it not just a vision but a reality, Fife Council, for example, is making huge steps forward to create a cycling kingdom with major programmes already planned across the region to increase the number of cyclists and achieve the 2020 target. In Dunfermlyn, Fife Council are investing £2.2 million on new and improved cycle routes, including a proper traffic-free route to link Recythe train station with Dunfermlyn city centre. The Lindburn corridor project will see a new cycle way in foot bath connecting the eastern expansion to the city centre and improvements to Dunfermlyn's existing miles of cycle ways, making cycling to work, to school and to sport and for leisure an easier, safer and more attractive option. That will be combined with free cycle training for both children and adults of all ages, cycle instructors in every school in Dunfermlyn, even free bike repair and maintenance courses. Dunfermlyn's ambition is to become a cycling city, and I look forward to that being realised. More still needs to be done. Many of my constituents raised with me the fact that they commute to Edinburgh every day for work, and one of the big concerns that they have is that the new flagship Halbyth Park and Ride facility is very difficult for either pedestrians or cyclists to access safely. Unless you arrive by car or by bus, there is simply no way for local residents to get there, so more action is needed to make our transport hubs accessible and to make leaving the car at home a real option for commuters. In conclusion, I look forward to the Scottish Government taking further action to improve cycling and walking infrastructure, but the constituents who have contacted me in advance of this debate are looking for genuine investment, not for warm words. The Scottish Government has got the power and resources to act, and my constituents want to see concrete steps to make the active nation vision a reality. In their briefing for today's debate, Living Streets estimates that delivering active travel provides £8 of benefit for every £1 spent, and investment that delivers real rewards for our nation's future health, for our quality of life, for the very air that we breathe. It might even help us to achieve our missed climate change targets too, so it is time to be more ambitious, time to give active travel the priority. Scottish Labour will continue to hold the Government to account and make sure that that vision becomes a reality and that we become the active nation that we all want Scotland to be. Many thanks, and I now call on John Mason to be followed by Alex Rowley. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I have to say that this is one of the subjects where I do feel very committed to the concept, but where I do feel a few feelings of guilt along the way. Maybe I should start off with the latter and confess that I do have a car and I do not enjoy cycling. However, I do like walking and I will mainly focus on that. Today's debate is not about public transport, as sitting in a bus or train is no more active than sitting in a car. However, I suggest that almost inevitably public transport does encourage a more active lifestyle. If I travel to Parliament by train each day, that involves for myself around 45 minutes of walking, in contrast to coming by car, which involves no minutes. As well as being better for the environment, public transport is generally also better for our health. However, that requires that public transport is available within walking distance of our homes, and I fear that that has not always been the case with new housing developments. However, there are good examples, and I think that we should note them, such as Broome House, in my constituency, where the First Minister lives. She is within walking distance of Bailison station on the newly electrified whifflet line, and I certainly know that she has travelled that way in the past. I am not sure how much she manages to do that at the moment. The suggestion has been made that a key to more active travel is spending more of the total budget and more of the transport budget on infrastructure for walking and cycling. I suggest that that is partly true, but only partly. It is encouraging to see more cycle racks at railway stations and elsewhere. The cycle rental scheme in Glasgow seems to have a very positive effect in the early days. I fully support dedicated cycle lanes and other ways of helping cyclists to get priority or at least some protection compared to other road users. Similarly, pedestrians can be helped in various ways—for example, to feel safer with more white street lighting as Glasgow was introducing, but which seems to have stalled recently. A particular bugbear of mine is how long pedestrians have to wait to get a shot at crossing the road at traffic lights, when the road vehicles seem to get repeated turns first. Yet the fact remains that many of us could be walking on perfectly good pavements in well-lit areas, but we are not doing so. Clearly, there is more to this than the physical infrastructure. We also need a change in attitudes. I have neighbours who see me leaving the car at home and seem puzzled why I prefer to use the train or bus. There seems to be an assumption, at least among some people, that it is a sign of your success to use a car rather than walking or using public transport. We have all heard of people walking several miles to get to a food bank, and that is a separate issue that needs to be dealt with. However, it tends to link walking with failure in some people's minds, whereas driving to a supermarket is seen as a sign of success. I have forgotten the name of a film that I saw a few years ago, but one of the scenes is stuck in my mind. Two guys were travelling on a bus with huge windows, and one says to the other, the reason they make the windows so big is so that they can see us poor people using the bus and laugh at us. Again, the suggestion was that public transport means failure, car means success. I am not sure how we change such deeply rooted attitudes like this, but we must change them even if it does take time. Just at today's evening times, Members may have seen a report about the Go Well research programme, which has produced an 88-page report focusing on the east end of Glasgow. It also suggests that walking is one of the best ways of increasing activity levels. Some of the points that it makes include walking costs nothing, it can be part of a daily routine, it requires little extra time and can be accomplished even by people in quite poor health. Only 52 per cent in the east end felt safe walking alone in their local area after dark, as opposed to 61 per cent in Glasgow overall or 68 per cent across Scotland. Vacant and derelict land puts people off walking. On cycling, there was a positive note, five per cent of folk in the east end use cycling as their main transport to work, which is better than the two per cent across the rest of the city. However, they do consider the focus on cycling as less applicable than walking, appealing more to men than to women, and a bike being a considerable expense for a low-income household. They mention that less glamorous day-to-day matters are important and contribute to a safer and attractive environment, including street cleaning, lighting and ensuring that cycle paths and pavements are unobstructed and safe to cycle on. In their schools survey, quite encouragingly, they find that walking or hiking for exercise was commonly listed as a weekend activity by S1 pupils. However, that was more the case for pupils in affluent areas and much less so, especially for boys in more disadvantaged areas. My personal view on that would be that we still have a problem with territorialism, especially in the east end of Glasgow, and a fair number of boys are unwilling to leave their own immediate area, especially on foot, for fear of being set upon if they try to walk through someone else's territory. I just mentioned at stage 2 a pay tribute to Tom Weir. He made walking in Scotland's hills and countryside popular for many of us, and perhaps especially for those from a working-class background. I think that it was fitting that a statue was recently erected to his memory. I know that I benefit hugely from walking not just physically. In fact, the physical mental division is somewhat artificial, as Richard Simpson mentioned yesterday. If he asked me to sit down and relax, I basically cannot do that, but if I go out walking for the day, I can relax. I can also think about things through, I can reflect as I walk. Add to that, I feel more part of a place when I walk rather than being cooned in a car, bus or train. I highly recommend active travel and especially walking, and perhaps I myself am challenged to be a bit more active by today's debate. I congratulate the minister on his new role, and I look forward to working with him. This has been an interesting debate today. I was thinking to myself that if we could get fit by simply having strategies, we would be a fairly fit nation given that there are quite a lot of strategies here for cycling and walking, and if we then took local authorities, I am sure that there are lots of strategies sitting out there within local authorities. That should tell us that it is not just as easy as having strategies and that we need to do a lot more. The minister highlighted a number of projects, and I did want to highlight a project or a business, and my own constituency, Dave's Bike Shed. I was reading through the website, and I quote it, saying, I do not see bikes just as toys or leisure sport equipment, I see cycling as a way ahead from where we are now with expensive transport costs, chaos and congestion. I would pick that up because I also read a five council paper that recently went before their council, and they say that the case for being physically active is strong with a direct correlation between physical activity and the risk of heart disease and stroke. Physical inactivity is the fourth leading cause of death worldwide. That highlights why we need to take a more cohesive approach in terms of how we move forward with the cycling and walking. Alison Johnstone highlighted the point about infrastructure. Joan McAlpine said at the same point that she would be concerned for her family going cycling and that we need to have more investment. That is right. Sarah Boyack highlighted that in terms of the actual transportation budget, in terms of the infrastructure and investment in cycling and walkways, that has not kept up with the levy investment more generally. That needs to be looked at because if we are serious about having more people being physically active and if we are serious about coming any place near to delivering some of the strategies that we have, we certainly need to have more investment. Five council make the point that physical activity impacts positively on our mental health and wellbeing, promotes community cohesion, sustainability and sustainable development through active travel such as cycling and walking. They are going to say that more needs to be done, and they highlight ensuring that there is a focus across all organisations and services on achieving increases in physical activity. I would suggest that that type of partnership also has to be a partnership between Government and local Government, and then taking that out into communities. The council has gone on to say that enabling local communities, organisations and services to better understand what makes a difference in terms of increasing physical activities is really important. Supporting services and organisations to work together within communities to do things differently in order to increase physical activity. At a time when we see major cuts taking place in local authority budgets, and at a time when we see the Scottish Government budget being reduced, we need to look at all the resources that are available out there. Some of the projects that I have seen have been, as the minister mentioned, been able to pull down money's fairs where to march fund the money that is available. We need to look at how we can focus and do that better. We also need to look right across the public sector, the community partnerships, community planning partnerships. We need to look at how they focus on that. For example, NHS staff should be able to highlight, and I know that in many cases NHS staff will be highlighting the importance of physical activity for patients both in hospitals and primary care. Community-wide physical activity programmes involve multiple settings and sectors, ensuring that communities are involved in the design and delivery of a range of programmes and activities. There are walking clubs and cycling clubs out there, so as part of the community planning partnership in terms of health and well-being, those strategies need to be understood and at the core along with the local authorities. We also need to ensure that there is effective consultation taking place where individuals in groups and developing programmes and physical activity working programmes to address health inequalities in areas of deprivation as a priority. John Mason mentions the Highlands, and Tom Weare rightly so, but it is very difficult if you are on low incomes to go and stay in the Highlands and enjoy the scenery, enjoy the walking, because it can be quite expensive and quite costly. We need to look at how we access the bike shed, for example, that I mentioned earlier in my constituency, is able to build bikes, is able to support, there are other projects, I am aware of in Fife, where people can go and get sick in hand bikes. In terms of overcoming inequality and poverty, it can cost you to be active, it might not cost you to go out walking, but it certainly can cost you to be active. We have to be able to evaluate what is going on, evaluate the strategies that are there. If we are spending a lot of resources to try and drive us forward, do we know what is successful? Are we evaluating what is successful and what we can do? The minister said that we need to do much more, and I appreciate that honesty. He is, after all, the minister who can bring forward further investment, and it is clear that we need to have further investment. I must ask you to close, please. You can jump up and down and ask what other parties will do, but you are the party that is in government. If we are going to deliver those investments through partnership and by spending the money that we have, we will need further investment to make this work. Over the past year, Scotland has hosted two of the great sporting events that were watched by billions across the globe. Those events showcased the best of Scotland and what we had to offer, but more than that, we as a nation must ensure that there is a positive, long-lasting legacy from those events. Part of that legacy must be that people of Scotland become more active in order to tackle the various problems that affect the country. Physical inactivity results in 2,500 premature deaths in Scotland each year. That amounts to seven deaths a day, costing the NHS around £91 million annually. Being physically active can prevent and treat more than 20 chronic diseases, which in turn helps to alleviate some of the pressures on our NHS. It has been estimated that by getting Scotland more active, we will increase life expectancy by more than a year, based on our current level of activity. We need to take advantage of that, once in a generation opportunity from the Commonwealth Games and the Ryder Cup to hear now and beyond. Together, we can achieve lasting change by increasing the number of people who choose to travel actively across all our communities as part of our everyday lives, whether that means getting to work, picking up shopping or visiting friends. By creating communities where active travel is popular, we will produce many favourable outcomes for the people of Scotland, including better health, having safer communities and increased economic activity. Unfortunately, we cannot achieve that overnight, and it will require many sectors to work together, such as planning, regeneration, economic development, transport and education. As well as that, I am sure that this Government is aiming to increase investment in active travel, despite an overall capital budget decrease by 26 per cent. Meaning that partnership will be even more important, so working together with a wide range of partners from local authorities, NHS, local businesses and volunteers working together in order to achieve the lasting positive legacy of active travel in Scotland. One way in which this Government, in partnership with other bodies, is helping with the promotion of active travel is its vision in a document called A More Active Scotland, building a legacy from the Commonwealth Games. It outlined the fact that, five years on from the 2014 Commonwealth Games, there will be more workplaces with active travel plans established. Furthermore, in 10 years' time, it is hoped that active travel will be the norm for all short journeys to and from work. With those partners working together, a long-term vision for Scotland will see communities shaped around people, with walking and cycling, the most popular choice for shorter, everyday journeys. There are more people taking up active cycling. Travelling by foot or cycle or with a personal mobility aid should be a realistic option for all local journeys. I found it very surprising to learn that one in every three car journeys made in Scotland is under two miles. Almost a quarter were a mile or less. Is that because we are nipping down to a local shop? Why don't we just walk? The facts are that short journeys cause more pollution. Active travel must be seen as a healthier and safer alternative. Increased support for active travel will lead to a reduction in carbon emissions and other pollution across Scotland, resulting directly from more people choosing to walk and cycle in their everyday lives. I am sure that the Government is committed to promoting low-carbon transport as part of its climate change agenda. That is one way that we can all help. In my central Scotland region, we have lots of great outdoor spaces and parks. The point that was made by Mr Rowley a minute ago in regards to how much it costs to go somewhere does not cost you to go and walk out in your local park. That was the very starkly part that hosted not only the Commonwealth Games triathlon event but the first event of the entire Games. Rightly so, that part is a fantastic place for leisure, from cycling to running, jogging or walking. The park is a perfectly example of Scotland's many outdoor spaces and one in which we should be encouraging people to enjoy. If you take a leisurely walk along the circumference of Strachry Park, I found it astounding to find out that it is nearly six miles in length. On the Loch you can see swans, geese and also watch sailboats on the waterfront. With various excellent facilities in the park provided by NL Leisure and Scotland's national theme park, MNDs, which is located by the Loch. There are also many play and picnic areas that are provided for families and their children to enjoy. If we can promote the concept of active travel, then we will be well on our way down the road to the objectives of this Government, such as a better health, safer travel for everyone, this in turn will promote healthier lives, change choices, treat and prevent disease and reduce health inequalities. Scotland is a country that is well provided for its natural beauty and activity. Many beautiful sites, many beautiful places to walk and cycle, West Highland Way to Clyde Walkway, there is no shortage of places to go. We do need to get off our couches and enjoy all that Scotland has to offer, and in finishing I will say, so what are you waiting for? As Sir Chris Hoy said in a recent advert, get on your bike and enjoy Scotland's rich outdoor. Many thanks. We now turn to the closing speeches, and I would expect all members who have participated in the debate to be back in the chamber for closing speeches. I call on Alison Johnstone, six minutes please. I thoroughly enjoyed this afternoon's debate. It has been a good start to the new year that we are debating this important subject in Government time 2. I would probably like to focus first of all on Jim Eadie's contribution, although parts of it I will leave for Jim Eadie. I think that Jim Eadie eloquently described pedal on Parliament, and I hope that the new transport minister can attend this year's pedal on Parliament. It will take place just outside this building on the grass on April 25. I know that all the cyclists and pedestrians who attend that event calling on the Government to show leadership an investment in active travel would warmly welcome him there. People attending pedal on Parliament are all ags from all walks of life, and they clearly demonstrate that cycling and walking is not a minority recreational issue but that it is a sensible and supportable means of transport, but means of transport that remain overlooked and underfunded. Nanette Milne pointed out that some 40 per cent almost of women do not have a driving licence in Scotland and that one in four men do not have a driving licence. Many Scots cannot afford to run a car. Many Scots do not want to have to run a car, so investing in walking and cycling is investing in a just transport system. We have a motion before us to date that paints a very rosy picture, because the percentage of active travel journeys has stagnated, too many pedestrians and cyclists have lost their lives or been injured on our roads, and progress towards the cap's target of 10 per cent of journeys cycled by 2020 is practically non-existent. Transform Scotland demonstrates that walking rates in Scotland have flatlined, with the rate at 13.2 per cent in both 2001 to 2002 and 2012 to 2013, so a decade on and not much progress, though things are better in some of the cities. But Dundee and Glasgow have particular challenges there to catch up. Cycling rates in this country remain very low, with the exception of Edinburgh. Transform Scotland says that we welcome the Scottish Government's decision in this debate to draw attention to recent advances in active travel policy. Paths for all say that their principle call is to put into practice what policies already say. I think that there is a consensus around this chamber, there is consensus among NGOs and among all those campaigning organisations and individuals that we want to get on with investing in active travel in this country. Sarah Boyack was right to note that small projects often have greater benefits for the local economy than large. Cycle routes can really boost profits for small local building companies who might not have the means to deal with procurement at that national or international level. We have spent a great deal of money on behaviour change, and I can assure you that those who attend perl on Parliament are well aware of the campaign and of the advertising message. They want to get on their bikes, on their feet and use safe cycle paths and roads. We need to start looking at exemplar, segregated projects in this country. When we hosted Mr Rasmussen from the Danish Cycle Embassy, we asked him what the one thing he would do if he came to Scotland and said, invest in one exemplar project, the impact that that will have will be notable and local governments will then be convinced that this is a sensible thing to do. I am not sure that I agree entirely with Stewart Stevenson's contribution. I think that ministers in particular like investing in some infrastructure more than others. Expenditure on motorways and trunk roads has increased by 36 per cent. The transport budget has increased, but we see no similar increase in investment in active travel budgets for infrastructure. I recognise that, for about £3 million a year, you could put one member of staff in each council to encourage conversion to active travel. Murray has one member of staff exemplar achievement. It is much more about people than it is about projects. I think that it is about people, but I think that we need to have the infrastructure on the ground to make it safe for people to walk and travel by bike and on foot safely to work and education. Cycling too, let us not forget the economic benefits of cycling in parts of the world where cycle paths have been introduced, Dunedin in Florida, a stagnating little town, 35 per cent, shopfront vacancies. They invested in the Pinellus Trail, shopfront vacancy, non-existent now, 100 per cent occupancy. It has had a massive impact on the local economy because there is an understanding that plenty of research done cyclists spend more in the local economy than those who are driving by. I think that it is fair to say that, if local authorities follow the Government's lead, we are not going to reach that 10 per cent by 2020, and we need to do that. I welcome the minister's openness to research and to look again at research into presumed or stricter liability. I support Cycle Law Scotland's call for a commitment to this as part of a package of measures to boost cycle safety. Joan McAlpine was quite right that safety is frequently measured when people explain why they do not cycle. As a politician, I would be more than happy to call for a redirection of spending from trunk roads to active travel projects. We have to get to grips with our roads maintenance backlog. Our roads are unsafe for drivers and cyclists. Potholes are a problem regardless of the vehicle that you are in. I believe that we can achieve transformational change with political will. I would like to work on a cross-party basis with all who are serious about grasping the many opportunities that investing in cycling and walking brings. Many thanks before I call Alex Johnson. I note that a previous member mentioned Sarah Boyack, who unfortunately does not appear to be in the chamber. Therefore, I take the opportunity to remind members that they must be in the chamber for closing speeches if they have participated in a debate. Alex Johnson, six minutes please. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. This has been an excellent debate in which we have worked our way through a great deal of policy, and I think that it has much to commend it. Of course, the Conservatives are committed to active travel as a principle, and it has already been mentioned by Tavish Scott that it was a 1980s Conservative Minister, Norman Tebbitt, who first encouraged people to get on their bikes. However, when we consider the situation that we have in Scotland today, many of us walk and many more should, because we have wonderful countryside, but nevertheless the topography and the climate of Scotland are perhaps less conducive to cycling in some areas. While cycling up a steep hill and the pouring rain into the teeth of a gail might be an excellent metaphor for my job as promoting Conservative policy in the Scottish Parliament, it is perhaps not the way that most of us would like to arrive at work in the morning. However, there is a serious matter to be discussed here, and we have heard a number of people talk about issues that are key to cycling and walking. Of course, the health benefits are one that has been highlighted by many people, including my colleague the net milm. The fact is that those of us who can take a more active part in transporting ourselves around the country, even for relatively short periods in the day, do benefit in health terms from that little bit of extraactivity. In fact, those who are less able, some who are perhaps leading a less fit lifestyle, will be much healthier if they can spend half an hour a day taking some active exercise, whether on fruit or on a bicycle. There is, of course, an issue of education here, and I think that it is important that many of us understand that there are people out there—my experience perhaps is with cyclists but not always—who use the roads in such a way as to antagonise other road users. As a pedestrian, I was once almost knocked on my back by a cyclist on the road outside this very Parliament. As a driver, I am entertained by some of the antics that some rather irresponsible cyclists are willing to become involved in when they are out there on our roads, particularly in denser traffic. I think that it is important that we emphasise the need to educate cyclists and have them behave more responsibly. In that vein, I congratulate Aberdeenshire Council for the exceptional effort that they are making in schools to promote the education of young cyclists to make them more responsible on the roads. Does the member agree with me that it would be good to educate the odd motorist as well? I would argue that we have a training and testing system in place for motorists, and that should take into account the issues that we discussed there. Many of our cyclists have received little or no training. However, even those who have had training, there is the safety issue, and that is something that we need to take very seriously indeed. I am fully supportive of moves to increase the number of 20mph zones in our towns and cities. It is, however, concerning that I believe that there may have been a vote in Edinburgh today in favour of bringing in a blanket 20mph limit across the city. I am not convinced that that kind of action puts suitable emphasis on the key areas where we must maintain lower speed limits and that complacency itself may result in less safety in some important areas. However, the one area that we have discussed through this whole debate, in which I must address specifically, is that of budget. I am fully aware that budgets are tight. However, I would commend the Scottish Government for the work that it has done to ensure that funding has been made available for active travel. In fact, I can give a guarantee here that should I find myself voting against the budget this year, it could be for many things, but it will not be for what the Scottish Government has done in relation to active travel, which I support. Of course, there are those in the chamber who would like to see much more money spent. One of the reasons why I will be unable to vote in favour of the Green Amendment tonight and one of the few reasons why I will be abstaining is that it does not give a timescale for some of the commitments that it gives. I support the demands that are made there to see funds returned to the active travel budget and increased over the years, but the lack of a timescale means that I cannot support that concept. I cannot make that demand in this current budget period. As we also look at the priorities that the Government has identified, I think that it is important that local government take their share of responsibility. Therefore, as many have said, it is important that local government accept that responsibility and ensure that money allocated from the Scottish Government for that purpose is used for that purpose and that local government itself makes contributions where it can to improve the infrastructure and the support that walking and cycling receives. In specific terms, I have heard many people in this debate talk about the need for separate infrastructure so that cyclists can be kept away from busy traffic. I think that that would be a vital step forward if the budget can be found in subsequent years to achieve that. It is interesting that the suggestion that there should be some exemplar project brought forward to demonstrate that. However, in closing, I can give a commitment that Conservative Party remains committed to active travel, is supportive of the Government's position, will support the Labour Party's amendment tonight and will abstain on the Green amendment believing that it has much to commend it, but that perhaps it is not quite what we are able to support tonight. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I start by welcoming Derek Mackay in his new role as Transport Minister and I look forward to working with him in the future. Scottish Labour supports Scotland becoming an active nation. We want to see a healthier population, a healthier climate and a healthier country overall. The Scottish Government's motion today is a non-contentious motion that we support, although some questions remain over the funding of walking and cycling, which is why we lodged our very small amendment, which I am very happy to hear that the Government will be supporting. I am happy to work with the Government further to get a bit more clarity on budgeting and funding. We also support the amendment by the Green Party, which reiterates our call for clearer funding, and we note the reference made in its amendment to the debate on presumed liability, which we would be happy to further engage in. I also take this opportunity to thank the organisations who submitted the briefings for today's debate. While all encourage and give support to active travel, they raise some concerns around funding, planning and leadership, and actions speak louder than words. For active travel to become a realistic prospect and a priority of the Scottish Government, it must be supported by the funding that is required, and that funding must be presented in a clear and open manner. Is the member aware in relation to the road network in which the Government is actually responsible for 6 per cent of the road network in local government and the rest? Therefore, there is an equal question of the agenda of shared responsibility that Labour-led councils and other councils contribute substantially to the shared agenda. I absolutely agree with the minister that it is a shared agenda. I follow on with my contribution and with the honest critique that I have given, and as the new Scottish Labour shadow cabinet secretary for infrastructure, can I make the Government benches this promise? When our paths do align and that pun is intended, Scottish Labour will commit to working with the Scottish Government and other parties in this chamber on infrastructure areas such as active travel. However, neither I nor my colleagues in these benches will hold back when questions must be asked and decisions need to be challenged. I thank the transport minister for his opening remarks. In closing, I hope that either he or the cabinet secretary for infrastructure can respond in kind to the remarks made by our members this afternoon. My colleague Dave Stewart in opening predicted that this would be a consensual debate and indeed it has been a consensual debate. Going back to the theme of funding, we recognise that the current funding pressures on local authorities, as already highlighted by the minister, will impact on active travel decisions at a local level. Speaking with many colleagues in local government, I acknowledge and have concerns about the pressures placed on them to protect the most vital public services, such as social work and schools, above the interests of the active travel programme and agenda. That does not mean that councils are not focusing on active travel, as the Labour-led Edinburgh City Council has shown. It has committed 7 per cent of its transport budget to cycling for this financial year, as the local authority area, which has the highest level of cycling and walking rates than any other local authority area in Scotland. I particularly at this moment sink out the contribution by Jim Eadie this afternoon. I always enjoy Mr Eadie's contributions. I am not going to comment on his remark about dreams coming true, because I am not doing that today, but he is commenting about the three amigos. You will be happy to know, Mr Eadie. I now have a mental image of the three amigos cycling off into the distance. Sarah Boyack spoke about finances and budget, and Annette Millan rightly raised the issues of health benefits. To Stuart Stevenson and John Mason, I too am a walker. I have always been a walker. My father was a walker. I regularly, at least once twice a week, went walking with my father, and he has two favourite expressions to me where it is only another couple of miles, and his other expression was, you have not broken sweat, you are not walking fast enough, because my father's walks were roughly about 15 miles, so there was no gentle stroll for me. Contributions from across the chamber today have been positive, supportive, and it is rare where we have a debate where, across the chamber, every single member agrees with the Government's vision. The long-term vision for active travel in Scotland is an ambitious one, and I would however like to see more direction on how we achieve the goal. In its written submission to the ICI Committee's 2015-16 budget scrutiny, Sustran Scotland warned that the cycle action plan for Scotland's vision of 10 per cent of everyday trips by bike by 2020 is challenging but not impossible, with will at all levels underpinned by financial commitment, and of that quote the last two words are the most important financial commitment. Sustrans also point out that the positive policies such as the CAPS and the national walking strategy provide limited success in increasing active travel. Research shows that the number of people participating in active travel has remained stagnant over a number of years, with the average number of walking trips in total distances showing a downward trend since 2001 and 2002. That may have something to do with perceptions around safety, and it is something that we should be looking further to. David Stewart rightly picked up in road safety as a key barrier to encouraging more walking, and the Government rightly recognises road safety as a barrier through the Designing Streets document that puts pedestrians at the heart of street planning. One deaf in our roads is one too many, and we will work with the Government to tackle fatalities on Scotland's streets and roads. I also welcome any measure to get more children cycling in schools, as we know that they have a major role to play. I ask the minister what assistance is provided for schools in some of Scotland's poorest communities, where the luxury of purchasing bikes may not be at the top of a parent's wish list. Cycling Scotland reports that 38 per cent of primary schools are now offering bikeability Scotland on-road cycle training up from 32 per cent three years ago, which is to be welcome. Going back to affordability, we know that the best-performing councils such as East Renfrewshire, Aberdeenshire and Shetland do not experience the same levels of child poverty as other local authorities, especially in the central belt.  Sitting at 21 per cent in 2012, active travel can make a significant difference. However, as Claudia Beamish also points out, we need a robust range of initiatives to make change happen. The national walking strategy acknowledges the barriers to increased walking activity, as polling by Ipsos Murray last year revealed that there are four perceived barriers—weather, health, time and distance. However, I would point out that, if you are going for a stroll, a strut, a saunter or a run, you are doing more to Scotland's performance than you may think. I repeat my earlier promise to the Government that, where Scottish Labour can support the Scottish Government, we will. Where we disagree, we will put forward our arguments to explain them. I look forward to working with and both debating with the Cabinet Secretary and the Minister for Future Debates. I now call on Jenny Mackay to wind up the debate minister. You have 10 minutes. I think that this has been an incredibly constructive debate, where a number of valid points have been raised. I would also like to welcome Mary Fee to her post as Cabinet Secretary, as well as Dave Stewart. On the first point around budgets, I have agreed to the amendment that the Parliament will vote on it. If successful, we will publish that information. I hope that that will be helpful. However, I would again make the point that there are many more budget contributions to active travel than the Scottish Government is responsible for. It only tells one part of the story, but it is a story that I am more than happy to tell so that it can further challenge what we are doing in partnership to realise the vision in which there is great consensus that we have moved beyond in this Parliament, debating why we have a vision or why active travel is important to what we are actually doing. That is a critical issue that we have been debating this afternoon. I was looking for James' new ideas, and some have actually come from the debate that I will take forward and question-posed. I will not be able to cover them all substantially. Alison Johnstone's key point about the expert. Forgive me, I did not get the name around what you would do if you could do one thing in Scotland and it would have one project as an exemplar that shows what can be done. That is something I will certainly be very sympathetic to because I think that that will help us with this critical mass point about showing the difference that can be made and use that to encourage other parts of the country. However, I would say in credit and fairness to Edinburgh City Council that there are great projects in the Labour-led authority, by the way, the SNP's part of that administration, too. As I understand it, it is an SNP councillor whose recycling are or champion I just throw in. In terms of that, there is an exemplar project that the Scottish Government is supporting, but I absolutely agree that some exemplar projects will showcase what we can do in terms of active travel. It is partly about budgets, partly about investment, and partly about culture change. Many members are right that it is about all of them. Together, announcements have been made by the Government in terms of first trans investment, cycling Scotland, smarter choices, smarter places and the financial transactions that will try to make work. If it does not, it will supplement it, as we have committed to do in money for cycling, walking and safer streets, as well as the settlement to local government, and funds out with the transport portfolio as well, such as the climate change fund. There are a range of funds that can support the kind of projects that you would want to support. Alison Johnstone, to return to the point about it, has been too patchy. Will it be if we believe in localism, which will allow local partnerships and local councils to come up with schemes that are right for them, but making sure that we have the connections across the country, hence national planning policy, national planning framework 3, the cycling strategy of course? Where some local authorities spend none of their own finance on such projects. When a Government is spending less than 2 per cent on active travel, it perhaps does not send the kind of positive optimistic message to local authorities that this is an important issue for investment. Alison Johnstone knows that we are not a centralising Government, so why won't tell local authorities how to run their budgets? I will absolutely, at the ministerial summit, created by my predecessor that I'll attend, and long before it and all the engagement that I have, challenge local authorities on how they are supporting this agenda because it's a shared vision and a shared approach to how we take it forward. Rhodes maintenance is another example that you mentioned. We are maintaining the road that is important to cyclists and other forms of active travel. The funding regime is complicated, but I will put energy into realising the vision rather than accountancy exercises. However, if we want further transparency, that is something that the Government will welcome, because the headline manifesto commitment will be met. In that, in 1112, 1.8 per cent of the total transport budget was spent on sustainable and active travel, and that will