The Mail on Sunday is wrong to portray eight MPs claiming for cycling expenses as freeloaders

The news that MPs are cycling is good for those of us committed to seeing a better, healthier country where more people use this cheap and practical way of getting from A to B.

However, it is not seen in some quarters as good news. The Mail on Sunday tells us this week MPs “are at the centre of a new expenses row” after it emerged eight of them are claiming 20p per mile to cycle to business meetings.

Were the claims illegitimate? No. Were they constructing moats around their own bike sheds? No.

Were they outlandish sums of money? Again, no.

You may do a double take when you looks at the actual costs. One claim was for, shock horror, £1.60. Says the Mail (read in your best faux outraged voice):

Shadow Transport Secretary Mary Creagh has made six cycling claims, totalling £11.60. One of her expenses, for which she claimed £1.60, was incurred when she ‘cycled from Westminster to Peckham for BBC filming and back’.

£11.60, people. It goes on:

Tory MP Robert Goodwill, who was appointed the cycling minister last year, has made three claims, totalling £7.20. One, for a four-mile journey in his constituency in Scaroborough [sic] on 20 April, 2012 was worth just 80p. Last night he said: ‘I just put in a few claims to demonstrate that I use my bicycle for work. I actually made 10 journeys last Thursday for votes between the Department for Transport offices and Parliament and I didn’t claim for those.’

The grand total (I hope you’re sitting down for this):

In total the cycling mileage claims have cost the taxpayer £417.48.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Labour MP Mary Creagh at Wakefield Cycle Forum Mary Creagh/Flickr

Sadly even the Times, whose leader earlier this month told people to get on their bikes to ease congestion, has joined in complaints about MPs’ claims for cycling business miles (pay wall).

To me, eight politicians seems a depressingly low amount to be cycling, though plausibly many simply don’t bother claiming.

One, according to the Mail, stopped claiming the allowance because it wasn’t costing him anything to ride his bike, while others defended their claims, adding they were justified costs.

Cycling may be cheap, one of its many benefits, but it’s not free. Like anything mechanical, you have to buy the thing first and, depending on the bike and its usage things can and will break, wear out, and/or get stolen.

That MPs claiming for cycling business miles are freeloaders is ludicrous. Those who ride bikes are worth £3bn to the economy every year; we take fewer sick days (2.4 days per year compared to the average worker’s 4.5 days) and are more productive at work than our less active counterparts.

What’s more, 20p is the standard rate HMRC places on cycling business miles (mileage done within the working day), compared to 45p per mile for each of the first 10,000 driving miles. That’s right – it’s less than half the amount taxpayers fork out per mile to MPs that drive but nowhere does either article mention that.

Plausibly it’s not about the money, rather about the bizarre and tired old point-scoring against those who happen to travel by bike, akin to the recent Top Gear episode, which produced cycling ‘safety’ ads, saying cycling was for kids and people should grow up, or work harder, and drive. This from a programme that peddles big boys toys week in, week out, that most of us couldn’t afford to buy, let alone run and insure.

A woman I met on a bike ride at the weekend told me with glee how she had started cycling to work two years ago to save money on bus fares and went on to fall in love with her daily ride, luckily for her a pleasant route through a park. She has since sold her car – even her weekly shop goes on the panniers. Her only regret was that she hadn’t done it sooner.

Those who do travel by bike, sadly, are still the lucky few: they are usually those who aren’t scared of the roads, or who put up with the at times bad conditions because not only is it more enjoyable than the alternative, it may be the only affordable alternative, and increasingly so.

Sustrans today says two-thirds of jobseekers now don’t have access to a car and 17% can’t access local jobs because there isn’t an affordable alternative to driving, and urges the chancellor to invest in affordable transport rather than fuel duty cuts ahead of this week’s budget.

In short, too many of us, including our national media, are calling for the status quo, at a time when petrol prices seem doomed to rise.

As Sustrans head of policy, Claire Francis, says: “It’s fantastic to see some members of parliament setting a good example by using their bikes instead of cars – ultimately this saves the taxpayer money.”

While London suffers dangerous air pollution levels and Paris has restricted car use to every other day, at no time is it more important we change the way we travel than now.

As a responsible society we need to stop looking at cycling as something reserved for an undercurrent of impish ‘freeloaders’. We should be focusing our efforts on making the UK a better place for people, where kids can cycle to school without fear.

These MPs should be applauded for using the cheapest, healthiest, most rational – and often quickest – means of getting around.