Kirith Entwistle

My hon. Friend makes the important point, which I will come on to, that well-lit spaces would make a world of difference for so many women and girls. The safety gap that I mentioned earlier is also written into our transport patterns. In Greater Manchester, women make less than a third of all cycling trips. When women are asked why that is, they talk about traffic danger, harassment and intimidation. One Bolton resident told me that routes can feel pleasant by day but unusable after dark, and that one incident can be enough to stop women from cycling altogether. Women’s participation in outdoor exercise is already lower than men’s, but the safety gap widens again for women from ethnic minority backgrounds, who face higher levels of harassment on the streets. Black, Asian and minority ethnic women are nearly 20% less likely than white women to exercise outdoors regularly, and half as likely to cycle to work. If we bear in mind both the ethnicity and gender pay gaps, we are also less likely to be able to afford a gym membership. In Bolton, I am proud of the grassroots work that is making a difference, including Horwich Ride Social’s women-only rides, Krimmz girls youth club’s glow rides and the United We Run campaign, which gives thousands of Bolton women access to the Her Spirit fitness app. These initiatives, while brilliant, are also a warning sign. Women should not need safety in numbers. It is time that we address women’s safety properly, as we should have done for decades. That starts by building routes that we can actually use—the well-lit, connected routes that were mentioned earlier—and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft said, treating harassment as public safety, making it easier to report and making it clear that it will be taken seriously. Finally, we must put women’s safety into transport planning from day one, and ensure that progress is measured so that we can check whether the gender gap in cycling and walking is closing.