Hackney North MP Diane Abbott has tabled an Early Day Motion before Parliament calling on London Mayor Boris Johnson to reinstate for the Commercial Vehicle Education Unit following the deaths of ten cyclists on London’s roads this year, eight of them killed in accidents involving heavy goods vehicles.
Ms Abbott’s initiative came just days after the Mayor had announced that he was disbanding the CVEU, which is staffed and run by the Metropolitan Police and is the only such unit on the country, as part of a cost-cutting drive, as reported on road.cc last week.
Early Day Motions are used by MPs as a means of raising awareness of a specific issue on subjects ranging from the trivial to the serious, but they are seldom actually debated in Parliament. Instead, MPs can add their signature to show their support, with the motion remaining open for signature for the remainder of the current parliamentary session.
The motion currently has the backing of 25 other MPs from across the political spectrum, but only seven of those – eight including Abott – represent voters in the capital, which has a total of 74 MPs. Even allowing for the influence of party politics, once the city’s 21 Tory MPs are excluded, that leaves 45 London MPs who are yet to show their support for it.
A list of the MPs who have thus far signed the motion, together with the full text, can be found here. If your MP isn’t on the list, irrespective of whether you live in London or not, you can urge them to do so through following this link and ask them if they could spare five minutes from filling out their expenses forms to sign “EDM 2144 (Cyclist’s safety in London).”
Inexcusable. Allows people like Iain Duncan-Smith and other Daily Telegraph buffers to tar all cyclists with the same brush...
Strange comment. Many bikes today look similar, the new Addict and the Aethos definitely don't. (eg dropped versus traditional seatstays).
Note that only one of them was actually used by him as a race bike (the 2010 Madone) and that not in his "glory" years, I'm sure one of his Tour...
Will they, though? Would there be any kind of retroactive analysis at all? Who would know about the previous NFA incident? I'm afraid I have low...
You have to wonder how many drivers are merrily writing-off their cars this way. Nearly all the coverage is flooding related - Chippenham and...
Prudhomme is the worst thing in pro cycling - even worse than the green washing and red washing.
Where did you read the minimum tariff is 5 years? Sentencing Guidelines says it's 2 years (minimum disqualification is 5 years)....
Won't you think of the residents rodents?...
That is some rustic sashimi there...
I bought the excellent Edge 1040 last year with a good, but not sensational, reduction, and this year I have bought a couple of expensive academic...