Marie Goldman

It is genuine pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) for securing this important debate. We are very short on time, so I just want to shout out a charity that has been doing excellent work for nearly 100 years. It is called Living Streets, although it used to be known by different names, and it has been encouraging walking, cycling and active travel for a really long time. I recently had the pleasure of walking around the streets of my constituency with people from the charity to see the challenges that people who are trying to walk, cycle and wheel are facing, which we have talked about, such as pavement parking and potholes not just in the roads, but on the pavements. There are pedestrian railings and barriers by pedestrian crossings that have been damaged. A car mounted and damaged a pedestrian barrier very close to where I live about two years ago, and Essex county council has failed to replace the barrier, despite being told about it many times. There is so much that we can do. We should take the example of Switzerland, where children as young as four walk to school by themselves every day. It can be done if we put the infrastructure in place.