Pedal Cycles

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe, for initiating this important debate. I am a cyclist in London, my children cycle to school and my wife cycles to work. We all agree on the benefits, and obviously more people should be encouraged to take up cycling.

Life has got better for us cyclists. Low-traffic zones; new cycle paths and superhighways; we can buy our bikes tax-free on the bike to work scheme. E-bike hire has given us another option for one-way trips. But there is a problem. There is anarchy in London—and other cities, I suspect—as my noble friend Lord Birt so graphically described. We have got to a stage where, on a cycle journey, it is more unusual to see someone stopping at a light than jumping it. Red lights have become optional. People go the wrong way, as we have heard, down one-way systems, regularly riding on the pavement. Untidily parked rental e-bikes and scooters are causing problems for those with visual impairments and mobility problems.

The author Douglas Adams described one of his characters as stepping off the pavement and being shouted at

“from a moral high ground that cyclists alone seem able to inhabit”,

and this attitude seems to pervade all cyclists, whether on Lime or in Lycra. There seems to be an attitude that cyclists are above the law, and there seems to be no way of enforcing it, as my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe so powerfully showed.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger, pointed out, Cycling UK says that if you introduce measures, cycling rates could drop by 36%. How do we balance the rule of law with encouraging people to use a bike?

Over the past 10 years in London, about two cyclists were killed or seriously injured in bus crashes every month. In London, in 2022, TfL buses accounted for less than 1% of road traffic, but 40% of cyclists’ deaths were caused by them. We still do not know enough about the causes. I join my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe in his plea for better data. Can the Minister comment on that? Cycle deaths in rural areas are also a real problem—I wonder whether this is more to do with the heady cocktail of V8 engines and an ageing population. The good news is that, in the UK, there was a 23% drop in cyclist fatalities between 2013 and 2023, but I wonder whether this trend will be reversed.

It is hard to argue for better education for motorists if cyclists are not going to behave better. What is the solution? As ever, it is education—but I would say that because I am a teacher. Bike helmets are a really good idea, and we need to campaign for them to be worn regularly. We need to persuade cyclists to ride defensively to minimise risk. We need more cycle lanes, more cycle zones at lights and more cycle traffic lights, which give cyclists a head start—sometimes it is safer to jump the lights than do a Formula 1 start at junctions. We need to separate motor traffic from cycles as much as possible, especially in rural areas, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and my noble friend Lord Burns said. Can the Minister update us on the progress of cycle lanes?

As we talked about this week at Questions, road surfaces need to be much better. My wife was cycling home recently and her front wheel went into a pothole. She went over the handlebars and did quite a lot of damage to her face—it was very lucky that there was not a car behind her. I thought that electronic chips on bikes might be a solution—it works for my cat. I had a conversation with a friend who was involved in the setting up of the congestion zone, and she convinced me that that was expensive and unworkable—although it works for cats.

As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, we need to use common sense and to encourage more people to cycle, but in a way that promotes safe and legal cycling, so that those of us who enjoy it so much can welcome a new breed with a clear conscience.