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Mr. Dismore: Perhaps another reason for Mr. Norris not signing the letter is that he is rather too busy with his part-time job with Jarvis, where he spends two days a week for an enormous sum of money engaging in matters of greater concern to Londoners.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Perhaps we can return to subject under discussion.

Mr. Martlew: I understand what my hon. Friend is saying, but I am not sure that that is the truth. To give credit where credit is due, I had a frank and full telephone conversation with Mr. Norris, so he obviously had time to phone me back.

To return to the point, it was the vice-chairman of the National Cycling Strategy who wrote to hon. Members. He is a senior executive of Raleigh Industries Ltd., and one of the arguments that he put forward against my Bill was that it would reduce cycling, and therefore, I suspect, the number of cycles, so perhaps the vice-chairman should have mentioned his other role in that letter. If hon. Members had written such a letter they would have had to declare some sort of interest.

Finally, I come to the Cyclists Touring Club. I am sure that most members of the CTC are normal, well-adjusted souls, but—

Shona McIsaac (Cleethorpes) (Lab): As a former member of that organisation, I wish to reassure my hon. Friend that I am a normal, well-adjusted soul, and I support the wearing of cycling helmets.
 
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Mr. Martlew: My hon. Friend is as well adjusted as the rest of us, I will give her that.

I am sure that the CTC has well-adjusted members, but it seems to attract its fair share of lunatics in lycra. The organisation campaigns actively to stop the Government promoting the benefits of helmet wearing. All those hon. Members who have received a leaflet from that organisation must realise that not only is it against compulsory wearing of helmets for children or anyone else, but it campaigns actively against the Government saying that wearing helmets is a good idea.

Ms Munn: Does my hon. Friend accept that some people are in favour of cycle helmet wearing, such as my constituent Simon Geller who is active in the local Pedals organisation and is a stalwart of cycling in Sheffield—but he is nevertheless very concerned about the Bill's enforceability? While he wears a helmet and encourages his children to do so as well, he is concerned that this measure would be difficult to enforce and that more needs to be done in terms of persuading people to wear helmets.       

Mr. Martlew: My hon. Friend could reassure her constituent by telling him that the Home Secretary sees no problem with enforcement. If the Home Secretary is happy with that, perhaps it will satisfy her constituent.

The CTC is anti-helmet to an extreme extent. I mentioned the £137,000 that the Government spent last year on advertisements in magazines. It is a pity that we did not spend more and put some of the advertisements on television, but the campaign was good. What did the CTC do? It took the Government to the Advertising Standards Authority to complain about the advertisement. That is the sort of people who have been sending leaflets. I accept that the vast majority of members are fine, and I know that a lot of them join because they get cheap insurance, but I suggest to the CTC that if it wants to be taken seriously, it should change its policies and also its leadership.

Before introducing the Bill, I thought that it was obvious that encouraging children to cycle should go hand in hand with measures to create a safe cycling environment.

Mr. Dismore: I get the impression that my hon. Friend is coming to his conclusion. I have received a lot of representations from a plethora of cycling organisations that are opposed to his proposals, or at best lukewarm or neutral about them. Which cycling organisations, representing the people whom the Bill would affect, have come out in favour of it?

Mr. Martlew: I think that the vast majority of cycling organisations are against the Bill, but I remind my hon. Friend that professional cyclists have to wear helmets by compulsion in this country. They accept that, and they are working with a major company—I think that it is a pharmaceutical company—to improve cycle training for children. It will be compulsory for the children to wear helmets during that training.

I had hoped to finish my speech by now, but I have been generous with interventions. As I said, I thought it obvious that encouraging children to cycle should go
 
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hand in hand with measures to create a safe cycling environment. Last June, the Minister said in a press release:

"by making cycling safer, more people will take to their bikes".

I am sure that he still holds that view. I thought that it was common sense to say that cycling is a healthy and beneficial activity, but that it should be conducted in a sensible manner. That was before I encountered some of the Bill's opponents, who seem to find a dangerous and alarming contradiction between the promotion of cycling and the introduction of basic provisions to improve the safety of child cyclists. I do not believe that such a contradiction exists, which is why I am promoting the Bill, and I do not believe that anything in the provisions will discourage children from cycling, as some opponents claim.

Furthermore, I do not believe, as some of the Bill's opponents do, that helmets increase the risk of accidents. I prefer to accept the overwhelming evidence provided by scientific research around the world. Neither do I believe, as some of the Bill's opponents do, that the mandatory wearing of cycle helmets will lead to such a downturn in cycling that we will breed a new generation of obese Britons. If that is the best argument that opponents can come up with, I feel rather sorry for them.

None the less, however exaggerated and alarmist such claims may be, I accept that there are concerns. That is why, after today's debate, we should take the Bill Upstairs and scrutinise it. The Minister can table amendments and any hon. Member who wishes come to the Committee may do so and make their points. As has been pointed out, what we are witnessing now is the same knee-jerk, unthinking reaction that we saw when we introduced similar measures relating to cars. It was said that measures on drink-driving would never work, and the same was said about wearing seat belts.

Ultimately, the argument that the provisions will never work, that nobody will agree with them and that there is no way to enforce them is not only defeatist, but plainly wrong. If the Minister needs to be convinced of the measure's popularity, he should study the results of an independent survey carried out by MyVoice, a polling organisation, in April this year. More than 9,000 people were polled, and 80 per cent. of them wanted helmets to be made mandatory for children. Indeed, almost 70 per cent. of the children themselves wanted helmets to be made mandatory.

Experience in other countries has demonstrated the effectiveness of cycle helmets. The Government accept the effectiveness of helmets, but will do nothing about the issue. Accidents and injuries have declined dramatically in each of the countries where mandatory helmet wearing has been introduced, including Australia, New Zealand, Spain, the Czech Republic, parts of the United States and Canada. Of course, some of those laws have been in place for a long time. If they had been found to be wrong, I am sure that they would have been repealed by now.

In conclusion—I had not intended to speak for an hour—I hope that the Bill will receive the scrutiny and consideration that it deserves. If it does not become law, that will not be the end of the line. It is my intention to set up with others an all-party group to build up strong support, with the assistance of hon. Members from
 
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across the House. This matter is not going to go away. I remind the House of what I said in opening my remarks: my two previous private Members' Bills failed, but they became law soon afterwards. I do not think that we can keep on going forward knowing that we are sacrificing 28 children a year and knowing that some of them could be saved. As I said earlier, the loss of a child's life is a tragedy, but if we can do something to avoid it, such a loss is a scandal.

10.27 am

Sir George Young (North-West Hampshire) (Con): I congratulate the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) on his good fortune in the ballot, and commend him for his wisdom and courage in choosing this subject. I also commend him on the way in which he introduced the Bill to the House.

On 19 April, I received a letter from the policy adviser to Sustrans expressing surprise that I was supporting the Bill and going on to say:

"All cycle world united against it."

Of course, that is nonsense. The cycle world is rarely united about anything. The cyclist is not a herd animal, but a loner who prefers to go his own way in his own time rather than get on a bus or a train. Most cyclists do not join an organisation, and those who do so have a love-hate relationship with it. I believe that I am an honorary vice-president of the Cyclists Touring Club, but I certainly do not share its view on the Bill.

As someone who has sought over the past 30 years to work with the many splendid organisations that are active in this field and to help mould them into an effective political force, I think I know what it must be like to be the Chief Whip of the Liberal Democrats. Cyclists are notoriously difficult to organise in a coherent way. Some oppose cycle lanes because they see them as the first step towards banning cyclists from the roads, while others want them. Some believe that the present road traffic laws should be observed and enforced, while others do not. So anyone who comes to this debate expecting to find a united view from the cyclist will be disappointed. I hope that the cyclists among us who end up on different sides of the argument do not let each other's tyres down at the Members' cycle rack.

I want to begin by putting the Bill in context. Of course, there is a general and legitimate debate about the respective role of the state on the one hand and of the individual and his family on the other. That is a relevant debate when it comes to lifestyle decisions, whether they relate to smoking, drugs or sexual preferences, and also in terms of activities that involve risk. I suspect that nothing that is said this morning will satisfy what I call the fundamental libertarians—those who believe that unless someone is directly doing harm to someone else, they should be free to take risks and injure themselves. Such hon. Members tend to sit on these Benches, and some of them may be here this morning—indeed, I shall give way to one of them.

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