Active Travel England Might Not Survive New Tory Government, Implies Boris Johnson’s Transport Advisor

Boris Johnson’s transport advisor Andrew Gilligan has voiced worries that the Liz Truss government could water down the commitment to walking and cycling from the previous administration. There are even fears that a “radical” Truss government could scrap the new arms-length government body Active Travel England.

Gilligan left his position as transport advisor to 10 Downing Street after Prime Minister Boris Johnson was ousted from office earlier in the summer. Active Travel England was primarily Gilligan’s work. The organization has a budget of $2.2 billion.

“We had a pretty substantial investment in buses and bikes,” Gilligan told a fringe meeting yesterday at the Tory party conference in Birmingham.

“All the evidence shows that is the only thing that actually gets people out of their cars and onto buses and bikes,” he said, claiming that this had been a “well thought through policy.”

“I really do hope it survives the arrival of a new government,” added Gilligan, “but I’m hearing slightly worrying things that it might not.”

Gilligan was one of the speakers at the Policy Exchange meeting. Another was Lucy Frazer, the South East Cambridgeshire MP and a Department for Transport minister.

Chair Josh Buckland, a senior fellow at Policy Exchange, asked Frazer whether “cycling is still alive and kicking now that Boris Johnson’s administration has gone?”

Frazer replied: “Absolutely, yes. We set up Active Travel England [and we are] committed to its [$2.2 billion] in terms of active travel.”

Despite the minister’s support for the new body, it risks being one of the casualties of the expected cuts to state spending due to be announced later this month by Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.

Yesterday morning the chancellor did a U-turn on scrapping the 45% tax rate, a policy widely understood to have led to a fall in the value of the pound compared to the dollar and also increased the interest rates for government borrowing.

In an attempt to balance the government’s books a real-terms cut in benefits payment is one of the other cost-saving measures expected to be announced by the Truss administration, a policy many Tory MPs oppose.

While Active Travel England might not be abolished it could have its budget slashed, fear campaigners.

In 2010 the then U.K. government—a Tory-LibDem coalition—curbed public spending through the abolition of many quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations, or quangos. This was styled in the national press as a “bonfire of the quangos”—one of the quangos abolished was Cycling England, a similar body to Active Travel England.

The government has announced that Baroness Vere of Norbiton takes on the responsibilities for active travel at the Department for Transport.