DAVID Cameron wants his to be the Greenest Government ever, but the coalition will never achieve this by hugging cars. Last year, the Government tossed Cycling England on to the bonfire of the quangos while announcing a £300m investment in low-carbon cars, and has just announced (another) end to the so-called war on the motorist.

Cycling England cost only £200m a year and was responsible for funding BikeAbility, the new national standard for cycle training. Cycling England also set up and funded the Cycling Demonstration Towns (CDTs), of which Aylesbury is the nearest.

The standard amount of funding for cycling initiatives in English local authorities is about £1 per citizen, per year. In contrast, Dutch towns such as Amsterdam are currently spending about £10-20 per year.

The investment meant that the CDTs had a total budget of about £16 per citizen per year. The 17 CDTs managed to increase by 27 per cent the number of trips made by bike in an extremely cost effective way.

BikeAbility offers children and adults professional on-road training to give them the skills to ride in today’s traffic conditions.

Half of England’s local authorities are registered to deliver the scheme, giving families and individuals the confidence to get back in the saddle.

Although Cycling England will stop operating this spring, BikeAbility will be taken over by the DfT and survive the cuts.

The Conservative chairman of a House of Commons committee last week described the bonfire of the quangos as “botched” and unlikely to provide any of the promised £1bn savings.

There won’t be any new CDTs for a while, I don’t suppose, unless this spells a reprieve for Cycling England.

The only real hope for cycling is the DfT’s Local Sustainable Transport Fund. This will provide £560m over four years and will be shared between walking, cycling, and buses.

Bidding for LSTF funding starts this spring, so let’s hope the county council is on the ball and gets all it can for cycling – and not buses, of which we are amply served in Oxford.

Meanwhile, since January 4, Government grants of up to £5,000 have been made available to offset against the purchase of cars like the Toyota Prius.

This initiative will benefit wealthy consumers who want a second or a third car, but the range of electric cars is too limited for them to replace petrol yet.

Encouraging 60,000 electric cars on to the roads – even if non-polluting at source – will make scant difference to the UK’s transport CO2 output. Electric cars won’t reduce congestion, accidents or obesity, either.

In the light of this massive subsidy, you’d expect any right-minded government to at least match if not better this offer when it comes to bikes.

Guess what the subsidy is for electric bicycles? £0 (zero). And for regular bicycles? £0 (nada), of course.

Even the popular Cycle Scheme which helps people to buy bikes more cheaply via their employers has recently been made more expensive to use because it was deemed an unfair tax advantage.

This hogwash about ending the war on the motorist must stop. The cost of driving is not just petrol and parking.

The cost of driving is paid by all of us in terms of convenience (congestion) and health (pollution).