The NHS could save more than £1 billion a year if the Government matched Dutch levels of spending on cycle provision, health experts have claimed.

In the Netherlands, authorities spend €470 million (£401 million) a year on cycle lanes and facilities, compared with about £139 million spent in the UK, often sporadically.

Senior transport officials from Manchester, London, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow and the Scottish parliament this week went on a fact-finding trip to the Netherlands, where 27 per cent of journeys are made by bicycle compared to just 2 per cent in Britain.

Reindert Augustijn, a Dutch transport director, said: “In the Netherlands, we used to invest in cycling to reduce the number of accidents, but now we do it for economic and health reasons.”