Pedal Cycles

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, on securing this debate. It is indeed telling that a former Met Police commissioner has chosen to raise this important issue. I speak as someone who is a pedestrian and a car driver who has dogs and rides horses, but others in my family are very keen cyclists. I know that there are many noble Lords who cycle and, I am sure, who do so safely. While we can all acknowledge the health and climate benefits of cycling, the present situation with bicycles has become a serious hazard for pedestrians and other road users.

I should perhaps start by declaring an interest: I was knocked over by a cyclist while on the pedestrian crossing outside Parliament in 2019, when I had the right of way. It was by an eminent lawyer who did not apologise and did not even ask whether I was okay. The police would do nothing about it. Also, an elderly friend of mine was knocked over by a Deliveroo cyclist at a crossing and ended up injured in hospital for several weeks. The bicyclist gave a false telephone number and could not be traced. I am afraid that I do not subscribe to the argument put forward by Cycling UK that, because more people are injured by cars, we should not be concerned about holding cyclists to account. We need to address causes of injury however they occur.

Despite the words of Queen’s bicycle song,

“I want to ride it where I like”,


it is important that whoever uses the roads does so with care and consideration towards other road users. If anyone is in doubt about whether many cyclists flout the law, just go and stand by the crossing outside the Lords: cyclists not wanting to slow down or unclip their feet, jumping the lights with impunity. Last December, at a junction of High Street Kensington and Earls Court Road, over 50 cyclists were caught in just a three-hour window. The problem is not just ignoring red lights; it is not giving way to pedestrian crossings, going up on the pavement, squeezing through gaps, and undertaking, to name a few. It shows the darker side of Mario Cipollini’s oft-misused cycling quotation:

“If you brake, you don’t win”.


Such is the aggressive approach that has crept in with some that I know cycle users who will not go in the cycle lanes because they suffer such abuse if they do not go fast enough.

Respect needs to be observed for other road users. No car driver wants to hit a bicyclist; the mental health repercussions for them would be absolutely terrible. So often, however, bicyclists just stick their arms out and ride across cars without ever looking or observing the Highway Code. Those who regularly flout the law are more likely to cause accidents. Surely cyclists should have to obey the rules of the road like everyone else and, where they do not, they should be held to account. Yet in 2023 only 39 people were convicted for careless or inconsiderate cycling.

There is, of course, no mandatory training and testing for bicyclists, but ignorance of the law of the road is not a defence. I welcome initiatives such as the Bikeability Trust, the DfT’s national schoolchildren cycling programme, which has helped about 4 million children get on bikes since its inception. Safe cycling has enormous benefits for everyone.

It is not just in towns and cities where there is a problem from cyclists. On A roads and country lanes there can be cyclists, sometimes in clumps holding up all the traffic—are they not meant to pull over? While I know that we are primarily addressing cycles on the roads today, there is also a huge issue with off-road cyclists who are dangerous to walkers, dogs and horses. Last weekend, I went to walk in Surrey on common land where I have been walking all my life; I used to ride down there too. I must have seen over 40 off-road bikes, but I saw hardly any other dog walkers and no horses. I have since been told that no horse rider can now go out there at the weekend, except terribly early in the morning, and hardly anyone walks their dogs, because it is simply too dangerous. The cyclists go at a rate of knots, do not give way to anybody and many are very inconsiderate. It just is not right that these off-road bicyclists should be able to drive away other people who want to enjoy the countryside. Perhaps the Minister could address this aspect too.

I very much support the idea of registration for bikes. It would enable the regulations to be more easily implemented and cyclists who offend to be identified. It would probably be a deterrent to bike theft as well. I do not accept the argument that there are too many to do so—we manage to get everyone to pay tax and we get cars licensed, so why not bikes?

There is no doubt that there is a real problem. I hope that the Government will commit to taking action after today’s debate.

Highway Code

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, there is hot air and misinformation around this change to the Highway Code; I am not going to lie—that is absolutely true. There are also situations that have existed for decades—as I have pointed out, these are quite minor changes. Where the Highway Code says “should”, that does not mean that you are required to do anything, but, if it says “must”, you are required to it. There has always been a question, since the start of the Highway Code earlier in the last century, I believe, whereby different people will sometimes have to agree who will go first—that is just life.

The noble Lord will know that we have had quite a lot of coverage on non-paid-for communications channels, which is what we are focusing on at the moment. THINK!, a paid-for £500,000 campaign, will start very shortly, and we will continue over the summer, as various different modes tick up in their usage.

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, what are the Government doing to make it safer for pedestrians? In particular, how are the Government going to enforce stopping at red lights for all road users, particularly cyclists?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend: some cyclists are absolutely outrageous when they look at red lights and assume that they are not compulsory. The Government are of course doing the roads policing review, which we will publish in due course. But the whole point about these changes to the Highway Code is that they make things safer for pedestrians. As I have pointed out, they already had priority if they had started to cross the road—there was no change there—but there have been some other minor changes that will make things clearer and safer for pedestrians.

Draft Revision of the Highway Code

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, as a former Secretary of State for Transport and a keen cyclist, I very much welcome the new Highway Code and congratulate my noble friend and her colleagues in the department on producing it. It makes a very sensible adjustment in terms of the trade-off between pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders on the one hand and those driving cars and motor vehicles on the other. As such, it goes with the grain of the Government’s overall transport policy of promoting sustainable forms of transport. My only reservation, which has already been touched on, is not about the measures themselves but about the information vacuum that has been filled by some inaccurate press reporting, which I will come to in a moment.

Four years ago the Government committed to revising the Highway Code to improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists. Cycling UK, along with Living Streets and others, put forward proposals that were then refined by the snappily named Highway Code review stakeholder focus group. These went out to consultation, and what is before us basically reflects those proposals.

I welcome the principle that those using the roads in vehicles with a greater potential to endanger others have a greater responsibility to avoid doing so, which seems to me to be self-evident. I welcome the advice to cyclists to stay away from the edge of the road and from potholes and parked cars. This has actually been the advice given to cyclists for the past 16 years in the government-backed Bikeability training scheme, but it has only just made it into the Highway Code. It does not advise cyclists to pedal in the middle of the road or to ride two abreast all the time, but it does say that that can happen in certain situations when it is safer to do so.

On cycle lanes, which I welcome—indeed, I successfully campaigned for the first one in Hyde Park in the 1970s—perhaps cyclists should be encouraged to use them where we have them. I know that car users are irritated to find cyclists on the road when there is a parallel cycle lane. The relevant rule 140 says:

“Bear in mind that cyclists are not obliged to use cycle lanes or cycle tracks.”


Perhaps an additional few words could have been added, saying, “But they are strongly advised to do so, not least for their own safety.” Related to that, could my noble friend alert local authorities to the opportunity to redesign junctions crossed by cycle tracks, giving them priority over vehicles turning across them?

My concern, shared by others, is that so far there has been an inadequate public awareness campaign to publicise these changes. We have seen stories that drivers will be fined £1,000 for opening a door with the wrong hand, which simply are not true. I welcome the proposed factual awareness campaign. I would be grateful if my noble friend could perhaps concede that there could have been more publicity before the scheme came into effect—as happened, for example, with the publicity before the Covid regulations were passed, so there are precedents. Can she say a little more about the timing and the budget for phases 1 and 2 of the public awareness campaign?

Against that background, I very much welcome the new Highway Code.

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for securing this debate. As has been mentioned, this statutory instrument enables the proposed revision of the Highway Code aimed to improve safety for cyclists, pedestrians and horse riders when using the highway, but 71% of the members of IAM RoadSmart, the UK’s largest road safety charity, feel that it will increase conflict.