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Mr. Chope: The hon. Gentleman cites many common-sense propositions, and I certainly advise my children to wear bicycle helmets, but why does he believe that the voluntary route has failed and is failing? Why does he not think that more should be invested in education about the propositions that he articulates?

Mr. Martlew: My understanding is that, overall, 25 per cent. of cyclists wear helmets, but in the most vulnerable group—teenage boys—that figure is only 12 per cent., because wearing a helmet is considered "not cool". Peer pressure is such that they will not wear them, and those are the people who are most vulnerable. There are people—

Mr. Chope rose—

Mr. Martlew: I assume that the hon. Gentleman has prepared a speech.

Mr. Chope: The hon. Gentleman seems to be suggesting that cyclists in the 12 to 16 age group would think it cool to obey the law.

Mr. Martlew: I am not suggesting that at all. I was talking to my right hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General, who told me in the Lobby that the Bill was excellent. As a mother, instead of telling her teenage children that they should wear a helmet, she will be able to say, "It's the law and you must wear a helmet." That is the advantage.

I said earlier that the Bill's aims are relatively modest, but that does not mean that it will not be effective. I said that the Bill was straightforward, but that does not mean that it oversimplifies the problem. While preparing it, I have been conscious of the need to frame legislation that will be practical and proportionate. The Bill makes it an offence to cause or permit a child under the age of 16 to ride a cycle on the road or in a public park or recreation ground unless the child is wearing protective headgear.

Ms Munn : Can my hon. Friend explain his thinking about including off-road cycling? Although I do indeed
 
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wear a helmet while cycling to and from the House of Commons, I might take a different view depending where else, off-road, I was cycling. I would take a view of the risks involved in that. Clearly, the impact of a road traffic accident is likely to be much more serious than the effect of falling off a bike in a park. If my hon. Friend could tell us his thinking about that and about including off-road cycling in the Bill, I should be grateful.

Mr. Martlew: Two thirds of accidents where children end up in hospital take place off the road. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) will speak later about the son of a constituent of his who died recently not on the road, but riding his bicycle in a skateboard park.

Mr. Lazarowicz: The all-embracing nature of the Bill concerns me and has led me from an initial position of general support to a much greater scepticism. Will my hon. Friend comment on the following circumstance? A couple of weeks ago I went with my five-year-old daughter to a neighbouring park. She met one of her friends, who lent her her bicycle to ride around the park. Am I right in believing that I would be committing a criminal offence by allowing her to do that? Is that not taking matters a little too far?

Mr. Martlew: I know that my hon. Friend is a sensible person, and I believe that common sense will prevail. If, for example, one let a three-year-old ride a tricycle along the pavement, one would be committing an offence because that would be against the law. In reality, however, no action would be taken, because common sense would come into it. I can give two further examples of laws that are sometimes not enforced. We see few prosecutions of adults or children for riding bicycles on the pavement. Some of my constituents say there are not enough prosecutions for that. As another example, my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Brown) told me that he was in Whitehall last night and watched the number of cyclists go by without lights on their bikes. Apparently, they were wearing helmets, but they had no lights on their bikes. If my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz) takes the measure to the extreme, yes, he would be prosecuted, but in reality common sense will prevail.

I have a letter from my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who says he has no objections to the Bill. In my discussions with him, he said that he thought that it was the law already. He understood the situation and he thought a long lead-in time might be needed to build up the rate of compliance before the Bill is introduced. There is no objection from the police.

Mr. Michael Foster (Worcester) (Lab): I take my children to Worcester Woods country park for rides on cycles. That is off-road, and one is not likely to come into contact with four-wheel-drive vehicles, but there are trees, branches and twigs that can easily get stuck in the spokes of a wheel and send the cyclist over the handlebars. That is why I insist that my three children wear helmets when they come on a cycle ride with me in Worcester Woods country park.
 
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Mr. Martlew: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for helping me out. He clears up the point that was made. I shall press on, as I do not want to be accused of talking out my own Bill.

The parent, guardian or employer of a child will be held responsible, as will the owner of a cycle if the owner is over the age of 15, or any person other than the cycle's owner who has custody or possession of the cycle immediately before the child rides it, if that person is over 15. The offence is liable to a level 1 fine, currently a maximum of £200. There is scope in the Bill to allow the Secretary of State to exempt certain groups and to prescribe the protective headgear that should be worn. The provisions of the Bill would cover all of the United Kingdom. For the purpose of the Bill, a cycle will mean a bicycle, tricycle or cycle with four or more wheels.

Hon. Members may think the Bill breaks new ground, but that is not the case. Those who were in the House before 1990 may remember the ten-minute Bill introduced by the then. Member for Ealing, North, Harry Greenway, and we know how difficult it is to get such a Bill on to the statute book. That Bill did almost exactly the same as my Bill would do, but for children riding horses. It is illegal for a child to ride a horse on a road unless the child is wearing a riding hat. That went through the House on a ten-minute Bill, so it must have been unopposed.

What my Bill will not do, as some of its more excitable opponents claim, is make every child cyclist and every parent of a child cyclist a potential criminal. The provision is an important mechanism to counteract persistent flouting of the law. I envisage that a friendly word of caution or a verbal instruction to provide a helmet for a child will suffice to make people comply with the legislation. The very fact that legislation is in place will encourage most people to ensure that children obey the law. It is one thing to tell teenagers they should wear a helmet, and another to be able to say, "You must wear a helmet because that is the law."

I know that the Minister is deeply concerned about compliance rates. His Department is increasingly active in targeting young people with the message that safe cycling makes sense. Last year the Department devoted £137,000 to an advertising campaign showing the importance of wearing a helmet. I welcome the efforts of the Department, but the fact that I have introduced the Bill indicates that I do not believe it is doing enough. The Minister wants wearing rates to reach a critical mass before he contemplates making that compulsory. I understand his motivation but ask him to consider whether that goal will ever be reached. Surely matters should be the other way around. Rather than waiting for wearing practices to change, the Government should introduce enforcement. The Minister should act now to put enforcement measures in place to ensure that wearing practices change.

If the Government do not, they will continue to fall into the trap of the opponents of helmets, such as the Cyclists Touring Club, which not only does everything possible to stop helmet wearing becoming mandatory, but campaigns against the Government advocating the wearing of helmets. That is one reason for concern that the Government will never achieve their compliance rates.

Helmet wearing rates in the population as a whole have increased from 16 per cent. in 1994 to 25 per cent. in 2002, but the trend among teenage boys has been
 
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reversed and is down to 12 per cent. It is all right for hon. Members to talk about freedom, but they know that the children are at risk, and I hope that they will take note of that.

Teenage boys are the most vulnerable group and it is not good enough to shake one's head and shrug one's shoulders and say that boys will be boys or that kids will be kids. It is precisely because children are children, who take risks on their bike, who make errors of judgment, who do not have experience, and who have to use their bikes for practical journeys, that action needs to be taken to protect them.

The Minister's policy of persuasion is well intended, but it will never deliver the results that all hon. Members must surely want—a safer cycling environment for all young people. His efforts must be backed by enforcement measures, which will be acceptable to the vast majority of the population once the issue is decided. Otherwise, we will continue in a curious policy vacuum in which the Government fully accept the case for cycle helmets and argue that children are vulnerable without them, but do precious little to rectify that situation. The Government's March 2000 road strategy said that the wearing rate of helmets for the population as a whole was about 18 per cent. It went on to say:

"At this level, making helmets compulsory would cause enforcement difficulties and without greater public acceptance could have an effect on the levels of cycling. We will monitor wearing rates and review the option of compulsory wearing from time to time."

Three and a half years later, in an answer to the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock), who I understand supports my Bill, the Minister updated the wearing rates to 25 per cent. but his words sounded eerily familiar. He said:

"At these levels making helmets compulsory would cause enforcement difficulties and without greater public acceptance could have an effect on levels of cycling . . . We will continue to monitor wearing rates . . . and review the option of compulsory wearing from time to time."—[Official Report, 5 November 2003; Vol. 412, c. 639W.]

The time is now. To be frank, that does not inspire a great deal of confidence that the area of policy has been reviewed at all. In fact, it suggests to me that unthinkingly, and with a little complacency, the Government are doing their best to brush the matter under the carpet.

The issue will not go away, in part because helmet wearing is not increasing quickly enough, in part because young children continue to die or sustain serious injuries while cycling, and in part because people, including many hon. Members, are genuinely mystified by the Government's lack of activity in an area which, on the surface, they say is so important. We agree how effective helmets are, we agree on the vulnerability of child cyclists, and we agree on the importance of delivering a safer cycling environment. As the Prime Minister said to me on 3l March during Prime Minister's questions:

"The issue that my hon. Friend raises is a high priority for hon. Members and the Government."—[Official Report, 31 March 2004; Vol. 419, c. 1594.]

Is it not a pity that we cannot yet agree on an effective method for delivering the outcome? I hope that the issue can be explored in more detail today and during later stages of the Bill.
 
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I want to deal briefly with some of the opponents of the Bill. I do not include those hon. Members in the Chamber. I have been a Member of the House for quite a long time now and I have been involved in various campaigns, one of which was on the Hunting Bill with my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster). After a while one acquires a grudging respect for one's opponents, despite disagreeing with them, but I cannot say that with regard to this Bill.

The Association of Cycle Traders seems more interested in selling bicycles than in the safety of children. It argues that helmets will have only a small benefit for cycle safety, which is nonsense. Then we have the National Cycling Strategy. I was ignorant of that quango before I took up the Bill, but I was rather alarmed to see that it had written to hon. Members, although it did not write to me, and its address is the Department for Transport, Marsham street. Moreover, it gave a distorted version of my Bill, so I hope that the Minister will investigate that.

I received a letter signed by the vice-chairman, which made me wonder who the chairman of the strategy was. I did a bit of digging and discovered that the chairman at the time the letter went out was none other than Mr. Steven Norris, a former Member of the House and the Conservative candidate for the Mayor of London. I wondered why he did not sign the letter opposing my Bill. This Bill is popular; it has 80 per cent. support in the country. Perhaps it was because he did not want to put his name to the letter because he thought that it would affect his vote. He is a clever man and he may also have thought that a letter from him to Labour Members of Parliament would have been counter-productive, and it probably would have been. Then I did some more digging and the vice-chairman is a chap called—

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