Bikes should be available for free on the NHS for overweight people, says Chris Boardman, and the government should do everything it can to "get everything out of the way" of allowing people to ride.
The Tour de France yellow jersey holder and 1992 Olympic gold medallist told The Sun that giving overweight people bikes would be more effective than paying for them to go to the gym.
He said: "The problem with those solutions is that they bolt on to your life so they’re a chore.
"If you can build an activity almost subconsciously into getting around then it happens organically. And that’s sustainable.
"If I want to go to the gym I come in some nights and I’m tired and I can’t be bothered. If when I come in I’ve just done three or four miles home, I’ve already done my exercise.
"The vast majority of journeys in this country are less than five miles. Thirty per cent are less than two miles and still the preference is to make them by car.
"So if it becomes part of the fabric of my life I’m going to do it.
"The Department of Health should be screaming at the top of its voice and banging on doors saying for God's sake if people want to ride bikes, get everything out of their way and we’re all going to benefit."
Boardman said last year that cycling is, "the answer to so many problems … Health, transport, pollution, all of those issues are solved with this simple machine."
In that interview he added: "If cycling isn't made the easiest possible option for people then they will choose the easiest option because that's what they do."
Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum, supported Boardman. He told the Daily Mail cycling would help overweight Brits keep their weight down.
Fry said: "Bicycling helps all the muscle groups. It is a brilliant exercise."
58 thoughts on “Chris Boardman calls for free bikes on the NHS”
As usual speaking sense, it
As usual speaking sense, it won’t win votes though.
Whereas the government does allocate police time to dealing with people driving in the middle lane, clearly in their eyes a massive cause of social ill.
He has a point, although I
He has a point, although I can just see the bikes being sold for a few quid instead.
There is certainly logic to
There is certainly logic to Boardman’s idea.
Give out the free bikes to all – but stipulate they can only be ridden in the new Forest…….
Instead of free, how about a
Instead of free, how about a bike rental for the price of an NHS subscription?
For a more sensible response
For a more sensible response – I don’t think that the price of bikes is a barrier to getting people cycling.
Getting the infrastructure in place so people can fee safe IS a barrier – and perhaps cycling lessons from the NHS might be do-able.
One point I would like to make – my wife would like to cycle, but doesn’t have the sense of balance/fitness for a bicycle just yet. However she would love to have a tricycle to get about on – but when we look for options, adult tricycles seem difficult to get hold of and prohibitively expensive…
Agree with ‘must be mad’.
Agree with ‘must be mad’. Remove some extreme exceptions and most people are prepared to buy a bike, what is putting people off is the lack of infrastructure, the bias towards cars, the attitude of some drivers (and some cyclists). I suspect most of these people he is trying to target are going to be motorists so if you can afford to run a car, the savings introduced by replacing some journeys offset some of the running costs.
There are plenty of other exercise alternatives for the overweight. walking, taking the stairs, it all helps.
I think Chris is doing a great job but I think this is taking things too far and is adding extra burden to NHS costs. People need to take responsibility for themselves more, the nanny state is ruining this country.
Would this mean I could get a
Would this mean I could get a Pinarello Dogma on prescription <:P
Or maybe a De Rosa King RS 😉
How morbidly obese would I need to be do you think?
SideBurn wrote:How morbidly
Obese enough to benefit from regular cycling, but not so obese the bike collapses underneath you…
Chris is right of course that barriers to mass cycling need to be removed, but the cost of a bike is not really a barrier. The lack of infrastructure is.
Free bikes on the NHS won’t
Free bikes on the NHS won’t get any more people riding – there are millions of unused bikes in sheds/garages all over the country – it is the attitude of many that cycling is something you do when you are young and can’t afford to run a car. If people really want to lose weight they will do so (barring the few who have real medical conditions that prevent them doing so), they just have to believe that they will benefit from it and that the benefit will outweigh the effort. We need to stop saying ‘do what you like through your life and the free NHS service will pick up the tab to try and put you right when you get sick’.
I’m sorry but I fail to see
I’m sorry but I fail to see why my taxes should pay for someone to have a bike,
It’s simple get off your arse and walk.
It costs nothing and will over time produce benefits, then when you can go for a run and lo and behold you are exercising and losing weight.
The Nhs should not be for this or sex changes or gastric band ops.
This crap has to stop.
When are people going to take responsibilities for their own life choices?
Cavmem1 – Don’t your taxes
Cavmem1 – Don’t your taxes already help to pay for the cycle to work scheme? Why not VAT free bikes ‘on prescription’ – it won’t cost the NHS anything. Why not VAT free bikes for the over 65s, the obese, those with type2 diabetes, heart disease (etc. etc.)?
cavmem1 wrote:I’m sorry but I
Ah, the zeal of the new convert 😉
It should be blindingly obvious that most people are not voluntarily making sensible life choices. It has been like this for centuries, it’s hard wired into our evolution.
How can we persuade them to “get off their arses”? How would you react if I told you that you have to walk to the shops to lose weight? What were your life choices like before you started cycling regularly?
People believe they have a right to drive everywhere, all the time. They moan about queues and congestion but each one is part of the problem. Royal Shrewsbury Hospital’s parking charges are demonised as robbing innocent victims yet every driver expects a rectangle of marked tarmac to be available when they choose to arrive. None of the tightarses who complain about paying £2.50 ever think to ride a bike or take the bus that stops outside the door.
There is HUGE vested interest in keeping us spending – buying cars and filling them with fuel at every opportunity. The food & drink industry is inventing new products and slick marketing schemes to appeal to our instincts every day. They want us to buy more and more processed junk food, fags and booze, not fruit and veg, so billionaires can get even richer. I see it every week in The Grocer.
Until the government takes the health and environmental issues we face more seriously then nothing will change. But they are far keener to spend our taxes on killing more people in the Middle East and £3.5 bn for new armoured vehicles.
I think Boardman is saying this mainly to get people talking, to bring attention to the issue. I don’t think free bikes are the answer – giving stuff away rarely works – but just telling people to make better life choices is definitely NOT going to work. If you don’t believe me then try it on the people who live in your street.
I’ve seen a study that put
I’ve seen a study that put the savings on NHS budgets as £1 per new mile walked or cycled. While there is a moral issue with “assistance” for things that people can do for themselves, the purely financial side could come out with NHS money for bikes (or infrastructure) being value for money.
I am generally a big
I am generally a big supporter of Chris Boardman and his arguments and policies BUT I agree with Cavmem1. We need to stop this nonsense, why should an already stretched NHS pay for bikes? If these people (the target audience) had any motivation at all would they not just grab themselves a cheap but working secondhand bike (maybe £30?). Personal responsibility people, I’d almost go so far to say that the better route is to withdraw free NHS entitlement for certain people if they’re not helping themselves and putting in effort to remedy their situation. An example is an otherwise healthy person who has eaten themselves into obesity and can’t be arsed to do exercise or change diet. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t offer reasonable help/support/advice for people who want to help themselves and are taking responsibility. As a nation we seem obsessed with mothering lazy people and not always helping those that deserve it. Just my personal opinion.
james123 wrote:I am generally
Why should the NHS pay?
Because inactivity and obesity related conditions cost at least £2 BILLION a year.
Do you say the same about smoking which costs about £4-5 billion? Look at how much treatment costs and how much effort is poured into preventing & stopping smoking?
Actually, cycling as a mode of transport and especially as an active mode is often ignored or missed by many areas within the health service from health promotion, though GP & community services to acute services from hospitals, as well as the general public. I work in the health service & as a vocal advocate of cycling I take note of the various promotions I see and I see very little reference to cycling with the exception of the odd short leisure ride.
Obesity and inactivity is a massive public health time bomb, and something needs to be done.
LAs & health orgs already push exercise with free or reduced gym and leisure centre passes. Giving out free or subsidised bikes alongside or as replacements makes more sense as the patient can use the bike as transport or for short leisure rides, and integrate into their life rather than having to find time for something else.
james123 wrote:I am generally
If you read Chris Boardman’s comments under the headline, you’ll see he isn’t advocating that the NHS buy bikes for anyone.
I read it that he is
I read it that he is suggesting exactly that
james123 wrote:I read it that
How is he “suggesting exactly that”? Can you copy and paste from the article the quote where he suggests free bikes on the NHS?
Helpful hint here for you, the headline is not a quote.
maybe he is trying to flog
maybe he is trying to flog more of his bikes 😉
I have some sympathy with the
I have some sympathy with the people arguing that the NHS shouldn’t pay for bikes. However, Boardman’s broader argument – that obesity is very expensive for the NHS – is surely correct.
Whilst we can argue over the details, Boardman is the best cycling advocate we have, and I hope he keeps making his points, and more politicians start listening.
So CB wants the overstretched
So CB wants the overstretched NHS to give away free bikes when their staff are over worked and under paid and their health is suffering… I usually have respect for CB but he is wrong on this.
This would help the staff be
This would help the staff be less overstretched if a policy of prevention was put in place, rather than the reactive treatment we have now.
Plenty of sceptics on the
Plenty of sceptics on the Daily Mail website with this same press release, people moaning about their taxes being misspent as per usual, overlooking the fact that people getting heart bypass surgeries and diabetes medicines etc. on the NHS costs many times more than chucking a few cheapo £300 bikes at them in some effort to tackle the obesity crisis in this country. Unless we’re going to just let people die from their life choices, saying fat people shouldn’t get rewarded with freebies for being fat is a false economy.
Also frankly I’d rather some British bike manufacturers got this contract to provide NHS bikes than tax dodging big pharmas like Pfizer continuing to profit off their semi-toxic pills.
Bikes are considerably
Bikes are considerably cheaper than the drugs and the treatment that the NHS has to provide to obese people.
Overall cost of obesity to the NHS is around £4bn, estimated to rise next year to over £6bn.
Bariatric surgery alone costs £32 million pa. Diabetes treatment costs around £700 million pa. There is the increase in knee and hip surgery, provision of mobility scooters and the every increasing number of prescriptions for high blood pressure.
The wider cost to the UK economy is around £27bn (Foresight Report).
Not to mention the 30,000 people that die prematurely each year of obesity-related conditions.
Bikes are one thing, decent infrastructure is another. We need both.
Don’t forget to add the cost
Don’t forget to add the cost of getting those obese patients to and from their doctors appointments. In the UK the NHS pays for taxi’s.
Bikes are considerably
Bikes are considerably cheaper than the drugs and the treatment that the NHS has to provide to obese people.
Overall cost of obesity to the NHS is around £4bn, estimated to rise next year to over £6bn.
Bariatric surgery alone costs £32 million pa. Diabetes treatment costs around £700 million pa. There is the increase in knee and hip surgery, provision of mobility scooters and the every increasing number of prescriptions for high blood pressure.
The wider cost to the UK economy is around £27bn (Foresight Report).
Not to mention the 30,000 people that die prematurely each year of obesity-related conditions.
Bikes are one thing, decent infrastructure is another. We need both.
Bikes are considerably
Bikes are considerably cheaper than the drugs and the treatment that the NHS has to provide to obese people.
Overall cost of obesity to the NHS is around £4bn, estimated to rise next year to over £6bn.
Bariatric surgery alone costs £32 million pa. Diabetes treatment costs around £700 million pa. There is the increase in knee and hip surgery, provision of mobility scooters and the every increasing number of prescriptions for high blood pressure.
The wider cost to the UK economy is around £27bn (Foresight Report).
Not to mention the 30,000 people that die prematurely each year of obesity-related conditions.
Bikes are one thing, decent infrastructure is another. We need both.
The saving made would far
The saving made would far outweigh the initial cost and I also agree with the sentiment make cycling so easy and so safe as to benefit society
Guys I understand the ticking
Guys I understand the ticking time bomb thing and that the bikes side may be cheaper in the long run than later treatment but why should this responsibility fall onto tax payers. The next stage will be to buy smokers games consoles to distract them from smoking. There has to be a line.
james123 wrote:Guys I
No, bikes would not be the equivalent of consoles, they would be equal to (but much more useful than) smoking patches.
We fund & treat obesity & inactivity now, even with free gym or exercise sessions. This though would be about earlier intervention & integration of exercise INTO an existing daily routine though replacing cars for shopping & school runs etc rather than as an add-on.
Driving while lardy should be
Driving while lardy should be an offence that carries a ban, much like DD but the offender would not get their licence back until they lost weight. Traffic police could carry bathroom scales etc as well as a breathalyser – and call them a fatalyser.
That way they would have to walk or cycle to get about until they lost weight. That really would focus the mind if they wanted their licences back.
Driving while lardy should be
Driving while lardy should be an offence that carries a ban, much like DD but the offender would not get their licence back until they lost weight. Traffic police could carry bathroom scales etc as well as a breathalyser – and call them a fatalyser.
That way they would have to walk or cycle to get about until they lost weight. That really would focus the mind if they wanted their licences back.
Funnily enough my wife has
Funnily enough my wife has just started riding to lose weight. On the turbo and road . Still hates it. And therein lies the problem. To get fit from when unfit is very difficult. The first few weeks of any return or start to exercise is the hardest thing for anyone. Anything to make that easier should be applauded. The gym is great as is swimming etc but they require more than getting on a bike so is sometimes more difficult. I think it is a great idea but it still requires the motivation etc of the individual. Still worth a try.
ambrosio2 wrote:Funnily
The real problem is trying to introduce exercise into a sedentary lifestyle that has languished for so long without it. Initially it’s a challenge – and some people quite enjoy and rise to that – but for others it can very quickly become a burden and therefore all too easy to quit.
Across most of the UK we have successfully removed active transport from our lives, and now we’re reaping the results of that in terms of widespread obesity and related ill-health (not to mention environmental pollution and damage).
In some circumstances and places reintroducing active transport can be done relatively easily. Years ago in London for instance I switched from using public transport to cycling for most of my transport needs.
The benefits were obvious and immediate – savings of £1,500 a year on public transport, savings of 1-2 hours a day commuting time, and an extra 60 minutes a day of relatively gentle exercise that also meant I didn’t need to compensate for a sedentary lifestyle with gym fees and the extra time that requires.
OK – most of my London friends wouldn’t dream of cycling around London, and I had a couple of relatively minor spills that would have put many others off, but the current swell in demand for safe paths on which to cycle could be the start of a wider incentive toward active transport and better levels of health. Currently, outside of some cities, active transport between UK towns or villages is not catered for at all. Few people cycle regularly to school, to work or for everyday needs because it just doesn’t feel safe. A network of roadside paths for cycling on would go a long way to change that.
The Netherlands, which has far lower levels of childhood and adult obesity than the UK, recognised this years ago and has made active transport possible for everyone aged 8-80. Half of schoolchildren there cycle to their classrooms. Here’s it’s less than 2 per cent. That’s something we need to address, and if we don’t want our kids to become the fatties of the future we need to start immediately.
ambrosio2 wrote:Funnily
I know what you mean, it’s taken ages to get my wife to where she is now. We pay membership for the most expensive gym in the area, because it’s the only one where she didn’t feel looked down on by the gym bunnies and footballers wives. The others just turned out to be a slightly less expensive mistake – at least she uses this one. She would still complain that she didn’t want to be there though. I’ve been trying to find something that she *wanted* to do, in order to distract from the fact that it’s still exercise, but to no avail. However, we *might* have found the solution. She needed some medication that meant she finally had to eliminate the small remaining dose of antidepressants due to a conflict. This in turn could make her a little fragile, but she realised recently that this only happens if we have a really busy week where she doesn’t get to the gym – another session and whoosh- her endorphins are back up and she feels great. She’s halfway-ish to her target weight, only another stone to go. Try and encourage her to keep at it.
It’s pretty obvious that the
It’s pretty obvious that the scheme would be prone to abuse. Vast majority of it users would use it to fund their existing hobby or just flog the bike on Ebay, exactly as it’s happening with C2W scheme. As other posters suggested, prices of bikes are not what prevent people from cycling.
It’s pretty obvious that the
It’s pretty obvious that the scheme would be prone to abuse. Vast majority of it users would use it to fund their existing hobby or just flog the bike on Ebay, exactly as it’s happening with C2W scheme. As other posters suggested, prices of bikes are not what prevent people from cycling.
I do wonder if this is an
I do wonder if this is an intentional overstep by CB so that some of his more rational ideas seem palatable and politicians start offering to take them on to get him out of their face.
Having said that I think it would be a poor tactic as it actually pushes more towards my belief that he has become such an extremist that he now starts to believe that every possible cycling idea is a good one. And people are going to stop listening to some of the better ideas just because they come from an extremist.
Is a great idea & I sure
Is a great idea & I sure would have loved this idea in action some yrs ago when I was in physio learning to walk again. A loan bike could’ve made the physio treatment go so much quicker. =D>
What chance have we got as
What chance have we got as cyclist to get more people on bikes when my local hospital has no provision for me to go to regular appointments on my bike, because I’ve nowhere safe to lock it up! My wife works at the same hospital and there is no provision for nurses to cycle in and store their bike securely and shower & change before starting shifts. Useless!
cw42 wrote:What chance have
My local hospital’s website has a page on how to get there, with options including travel by car, bus and train (the local train station is 3 miles away), but no mention of arriving by bike, or where to park your bike if you do. Hardly surprising given that the hospital is on the far edge from town of a multi-lane dual carriageway interchange that is a real barrier to cycling and walking.
Earlier this week a documentary on telly showed how another local hospital is struggling to cope with the numbers of patients. Not only were most of the patients quite obviously affected by weight problems, the staff were also all very tubby. I suspect it’s a problem in many of our local hospitals.
cw42 wrote:What chance have
That really highlights how far we have fallen.
At one time the use of bikes by nurses was so prevalent that they even had a type of bike lock named after them.
Ah, progress.
I have recently had a health
I have recently had a health problem involving stays in three hospitals. They were all well supplied with vending machines in the corridors, selling sweets, chocolates and coke drinks.
felixcat wrote:I have
Oi, they’re for the nurses.
no tax on sporting equipment
no tax on sporting equipment would be a start.
surreyxc wrote:no tax on
So what like shotguns, archery equipment, and fishing rods and dartboards, and high protein shakes, energy drinks, what about towels, sunglasses, shower gel, stop watches, GPSs, trainers, flip flops. And that’s not even getting into motorsport gear.
Your problem there is the definition of sporting equipment and why some rich fellah buying a new drive shaft for their Ginetta race car should get a tax break because a fat bloke somewhere has made excuses that he can’t afford a pair of trainers whist eating enough food for 4 people.
Unfortunately the headline of
Unfortunately the headline of this story is as misleading as the daily wail’s – the quotes are what Boardman said and the headline is extrapolation. Two very different things sadly
+1 on no VAT on bikes by the way, although it would probably only go into retailers’ profit margins….
I’m a massive fan of Boardman
I’m a massive fan of Boardman but i have to say i disagree with what he’s quoted as saying.
The bikes wont cut down on the overall cost the NHS pays for obesity related illnesses. They will add to it becuase getting a bike for free wont stop people getting fat. The whole lifestyle of these people needs to be sorted with crap being sold in shops which is cheaper than eating healthy.
We pander far to much to people in this country and its about time it stopped. Make the NHS free for kids and pensioners only. Far to often we see people going into A&E with complaints that are superficial at best and can be easily sorted at walk in centres and their own gp.
As for smokers, ban it completely. A report by the Policy Exchange in 2010 estimated the total cost of smoking to be £13.74 billion, whereas in 2010 the govt brought in approx £11 billion in tax revenue. There’s 2.7 billion saved already.
Whilst I usually agree
Whilst I usually agree wholeheartedly with CB about most things and even agree with getting people on bikes for health reasons, I can’t really support this idea.
The trouble in the UK is that the NHS is seen as being a magical money tree. And yes you can say that spending this or that will save this or that amount of money sometime possibly in the future. But you still have to spend the money.
And frankly this is also not going to work on the obese. All evidence of succesful weight reduction shows that the first thing necessary is that people need to be motivated. If they aren’t motivated you can give them a gym membership or send them to weight watchers or buy them a bike and it still won’t work. They have to want to lose weight. And if they want to lose weight they can. They don’t need a bike or a gym membership. But even if they did, if they were motivated them most of them could and would get their own. The fact that they aren’t in weight watchers, or don’t exercise, have a gym membership, ride a bike, walk to the shops or to work is because they don’t want to. They don’t want to because they aren’t motivated to.
Buying them stuff or funding opportunities is unnecessary in most cases. if people are motivated to lose weight they will probably be motivated to do some exercise, buy a gym membership of a bike or just go walking. And if they aren’t motovated to lose weight then providing those things is pointless because they won’t use them. Either way it’s a waste of public money.
Being overweight is not an access to exercise, issue. It’s a mental issue along the lines of addiction and compulsion and the cure is not buying them a bike. It’s sorting out their head so they want to lose weight and if you do that some of them may want to go buy their own bike because they want to ride it.
So it’s a no on this one for me Chris.
oozaveared wrote:The trouble
But its seen as a bottomless money pit for treating obesity, smoking, alcohol issues, and their related illnesses.
Yes, you still have to spend the money but you dont have to keep spending it on repeat treatments.
I’m not taking what CB has said as a final definitive solution but as more of a “it would be better spending the money on this than on that”.
A better solution would be to massively increase tax on processed foods and reduce it on fresh produce. Make it ridiculously cheap to eat healthily. Use the revenue raised on processed food tax to fund obesity treatments. You want to eat shit? Then pay ‘fat tax’.
Really? I’m sure that for people to accomplish ANYTHING in life they first need motivation (or is it as Roy Castle said “dedication”?)
Most people I know wont cycle because they perceive it to be too dangerous. They wont walk because its too convenient to drive.
Remove/Change those obstacles and you alter the culture
A simple thing to do is close down the centre of London (and other towns & cities) every Sunday (or huge swathes of them) in a ”Ciclovia” style event and run dance and exercise classes. Make it a weekly sociable event to exercise and have fun, while changing the face of where we live.
Prohibition does not work. We are far beyond that one to try that in any shape or form.
Instead, raise taxes on tobacco products to pay for the cost to the NHS of smoking related illnesses. Make it illegal to smoke walking down the street. Only allow smoking in fully enclosed bus stop style booths in public. Create huge FPNs for cigarette littering. Make it such a PITA to smoke that people will give up because of it.
This country is hostile to
This country is hostile to cyclists and we are treated as second class citizens on the road. We all know it.
The beverage industry has the politicians in their pockets. Same can be said of the food industry that uses sugar as the second or third most widely used ingredient in everything in makes. They stand to lose money so it is in their interests to keep the population fat and addicted to sugar.
It is going to take more than just bikes to get this nation off of scales.
Sidi 700c wrote:This country
Really?
There are lots of knob-heads on the road, we all know that. They come in/on all types of transport, we all know that. The idea that ‘the country’ is hostile to cyclists is stretching things… a lot
Ok we are one step closer to
Ok we are one step closer to Mr Boardman becoming Prime Minister. #HAPPYDAYS.
Hi Folks,
I’m afraid my
Hi Folks,
I’m afraid my comments weren’t as radical as portrayed.
If you look at the original article, remove the headline and everything not in “” marks, you’ll see what I actually said.
37000 people die each year from obesity related conditions at a cost of 5 billion to the NHS and rising. I said cycling could be a part of the solution. Which it could.
I might have had my words twisted but in Birmingham they do plan to make 5000 bikes freely available as part of their Cycling Revolution plans…..
Chris B
Chris_boardman wrote:Hi
Maybe you should be saying ‘free bikes on the NHS’ – absolutely correct that transportation cycling has a much better chance of ‘sticking’ as exercise than almost anything else we’ve tried funding in the past 10 years for this problem.
Chris_boardman wrote:I’m
Thanks for the clarification, Chris. Thought it was rather out of character.
I think his points are at
I think his points are at least raising the issue a lot more that current methods and behaviours really don’t work. Yes just giving people a bike won’t necessarily make them use it, but as an alternative to gym memberships this is a good idea.
Reducing VAT on bikes and certain other equipment and healthy lifestyle choices like food, offset by higher taxes on other items might be the only way to push people into a healthier lifestyle, giving people a choice without an incentive really doesn’t seem to work for a large amount of the population.
I’ve long thought that a good
I’ve long thought that a good treatment for obesity would be a pescribed diet and excercise plan. Your GP would provide you with a diet plan and a specified amount of activity and the plan could easily be adapted to specific dietary needs or preferences and the activity could be designed in a similar way to appeal to the individials preferences.
Perhaps I’m looking at it too simplistically but it seems very straightforward to me. If people were given very specific direction on what to eat and what excerise to do (which could be designed in such a way to include active travel) I can’t see any reason that good results shouldn’t be possible.
Anyone who is so addicted to problem foods that they can’t stick to a pescribed diet should be treated as addicts via rehab.