E-scooters: Trials

Debate between Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill and Baroness Brinton

Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My noble friend makes a really good point. That is one of the subjects which the Employment Rights Bill seeks to remedy. I do not think that we cannot do it directly through road traffic regulation, although when there are rules for these things, it will be incumbent on the employers of the people who ride them to comply with the rules as well as the people who ride them.

[Baroness Brinton]

My Lords—

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I am very glad that the Minister raised the issue of poor parking of hire e-scooters and e-bikes. At Aldwych Kingsway, it is now almost impossible to get access to the bus stop, not just if you are in a wheelchair or with a guide dog but for a passenger as well, because there are sometimes as many as 100 of those vehicles parked around them. What powers do the police have to corral—perhaps that is the wrong word—these bikes and scooters and make sure that access to buses continues?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes an excellent point. I strongly sympathise, as she knows, with the difficulties that people with any sort of disability have boarding and alighting buses and using pavements. The intention is that local authorities correctly control hire schemes so that the people who run them are obliged to make sure that the bicycles or scooters they hire are properly parked, collected and moved on.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill and Baroness Brinton

Report stage
Wednesday 26th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I turn to a series of four government amendments which place requirements on franchising authorities relating to accessibility. The first of these amendments, Amendment 11, requires that where an authority gives notice of its intent to make a franchising scheme and begins a consultation, the people and organisations with which it must consult includes disabled people and organisations that represent them.

The remaining three amendments require that, when a franchising scheme is varied, local transport authorities must consult with disabled people or with organisations representing them. The only difference between them is the type of franchising scheme they relate to. Amendment 62 applies the consultation requirement where schemes are varied to add to the existing area that they cover; Amendment 63 applies it to variations affecting the extent of the franchising scheme but not resulting in the addition of new areas; and Amendment 64 applies it to all other forms of variation. For all three categories of franchising scheme variation, the Bill already proposes that organisations representing passengers must be consulted, as the authority sees fit, but Amendment 11 requires specifically that disabled people and organisations representing them be included.

Together, these measures will help to ensure that the voice of disabled people is heard by local transport authorities when franchising schemes are varied, with the aim of ensuring that plans take proper account of the needs of those people. With that in mind, I hope that noble Lords will support this amendment, as well as the wider package of accessibility amendments that I have tabled in my name. Once again, I thank your Lordships for making the interventions that have helped shape the Government’s approach.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am grateful to the Minister for his Amendments 11, 62, 63 and 64, all of which add to the Bill a duty to consult local disabled people and disabled people’s organisations. Will that cover not just the geographic area of the local transport authority but the range of disabilities? In particular, will it ensure that a range of local disabled people’s organisations are consulted. There is a real frustration when, for example, only one particular disabled organisation is talked to.

On my train this morning, I talked to a woman with vision impairment who said that she has real frustrations in this regard. She is on the co-production committee in Hertfordshire, and she said that too often, one organisation for disabled people is gone to, and it is assumed that it understands all the different needs of, say, blind people, deaf people, people in wheelchairs, people with autism—I could go on. I would be grateful for an answer to that question, but on balance I am grateful that these measures are here. They are helpful, but they are not what I was seeking in my earlier amendment, which I shall not go over again.

Amendment 18 covers enhanced partnership schemes requirements enabling travel by persons with disabilities. I note that new subsections (1) and (2), relating to the enhanced partnership schemes, use the word “may”, not “must”. If an enhanced partnership does not specify, for example, how safe a bus stop area is, or that bus stop areas must be safe, will it still have that responsibility, given that Section 174(1)(a) of the Equality Act states:

“The Secretary of State may make regulations … for securing that it is possible for disabled persons … to get on to and off regulated public service vehicles in safety and without unreasonable difficulty”?


It says, “may make regulations”, but the point is that there is a duty to ensure that disabled people can get on and off buses easily. If one of the enhanced partnerships decided not to check in a rural area, for example, whether there was street lighting or a pavement wide enough for a wheelchair to 2get off, would that be regarded as acceptable by the Government? There is no compulsion on the enhanced partnership to consult on that.

Amendment 19 says that local transport authorities in England must make a bus network accessibility plan. We on these Benches think that is helpful. It is a shame, though, that there is no common framework. It also means that the background behind a plan, who they consulted and what the details were, can continue to remain private.

My Amendment 37 is slightly different, in that it proposes an annual report with a common framework, according to which all LTAs would have to compile that report, using certain types of data and looking at certain types of accessibility issues. I said in Committee and I say again now that sometimes, there is nothing like an authority being required to consult, create and publish a plan with its results every year, in order to make the change we were talking about in group 1. We have heard from the House of Commons Transport Select Committee that there is much to do in practice, not just on buses themselves but on LTAs enforcing proper accessibility. I wonder whether the Minister could comment on that.

On balance, I am grateful for these amendments, but they are not the legislative sureties that I was looking for in the earlier group.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill and Baroness Brinton

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th February 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

To correct the record, Amendment 41 was in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, not in my name.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am so sorry to both noble Baronesses. That is my error.

Amendment 42 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, seeks to protect access to local transport services by requiring the statutory guidance to recommend the use of demand-responsive transport, or DRT, where other options are not viable. As I said on the previous day in Committee, DRT has the potential to improve the local transport offer. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, that demand-responsive transport is not mutually exclusive from accessibility. Accessibility must be part of that offer, where it is part of the local transport offer. I agree that authorities should consider a range of transport options when reviewing the future of services, but I am not convinced that the stopping places statutory guidance is the right place for this recommendation.

Clause 22 is principally about ensuring that stopping places provide a safe and accessible environment. There may well be times when it is appropriate to consider the role of DRT when planning such work; however, it is more appropriate when considering service provision generally, which is beyond the scope of the statutory guidance about stopping places. I reassure noble Lords that the Government have a strong interest in DRT for areas without regular fixed-route connections, many of which—though not all—might be rural. The department is currently undertaking a monitoring and evaluation exercise on the DRT rural mobility fund pilots and will produce best practice guidance to support local transport authorities interested in setting up DRT services in their areas.

Amendment 56 seeks to require relevant authorities to publish a report on the accessibility standards of bus services within their boundaries, including an assessment of how satisfactory they consider them to be. I fully support the spirit of this amendment, which is designed to incentivise local authorities to take responsibility for driving up accessibility standards in their areas. It is precisely because of the need for greater focus and consistency in the provision of safe and accessible infrastructure that the Government are requiring authorities to have regard to the statutory guidance on safety and accessibility at stopping places.

However, throughout the process of developing Clause 22, the Government have been clear that the clause and subsequent guidance need to consider a variety of factors. That is why the requirement has been designed to be both proportionate and flexible. In contrast, this amendment as drafted would place an unreasonably high reporting burden on local authorities. It would also introduce significant duplication, with authorities with overlapping jurisdictions required to report on the same matters. For instance, both Eastbourne Borough Council and East Sussex County Council would be required to report independently on the accessibility of bus services in Eastbourne.

Achieving compliance could entail a lot of work with little benefit for authorities, which would be asked to report on services for which they are not responsible. For instance, a district council with no responsibility for bus services would still be required to report on the accessibility of services in its area. While I recognise the accountability and positive change that noble Lords seek to encourage, I am not convinced that this is a sufficiently proportionate way to achieve it. As I have indicated, I will think about it further and talk to noble Lords to identify how we can help authorities take decisions on local transport provision with a sufficient understanding of the impact of services on disabled people.

Amendment 57 seeks to bring bus operators explicitly within the remit of the public sector equality duty under the Equality Act 2010. The amendment proposes to achieve this by adding bus operators providing services to the list of public authorities in Schedule 19. Local transport authorities are already subject to the public sector equality duty as listed public authorities in Schedule 19, and this would include franchising authorities. The duty must also be met by an entity that exercises a public function, even if it is not explicitly listed in Schedule 19. This would include any bus company that exercises such functions, such as a local authority bus company.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I would like to ask a brief question about the Minister’s Amendments 44 and 45. They refer to automated vehicles. Those of us who worked on the Automated Vehicles Act 2024 will remember that Section 83 disapplies taxis, private hire vehicles and buses in their entirety because of the issues about driver versus non-driver vehicles. I am not asking the Minister for a reply now, but could he write to me in light of Section 83 and say how that would sit with this Bill?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention, and I will certainly write to her on that basis.

Electric Scooters and Electric Bicycles: Pedestrian Safety

Debate between Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill and Baroness Brinton

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My noble friend is right: there are plenty of imports and plenty of illegal sales of these in this country. It is a trading standards matter and there has been some action. If I leaf through these pages fast enough, I will be able to find the statistics for what we know about what has happened so far. But, of course, that is a local authority matter. In the end, we need legislation. It is a shame that it did not start with e-scooters. The Government are committed to doing something. The subject of the original Question—the effect on disabled people—is clearly of great concern and we will seek to address it.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I am really grateful that the Minister just referred to disabled people. Many people in wheelchairs are finding that dockless bikes being dumped all over the pavements means that they do not just have a problem but cannot go down the street. Just before Christmas, the RNIB’s most recent survey of its members said that 47% of respondents had said that they felt unsafe on the pavements. Will the Government consider ensuring that e-scooters and e-bikes are more visually and audibly detectable? Whether or not they are illegal, they are on the pavements and causing problems. Will they also please ban dockless bikes?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I certainly recognise the passion with which the noble Baroness speaks. Before Christmas, the Government published the English devolution White Paper, which has in it a provision for local transport authorities to be empowered to regulate on street micromobility—that is, e-bikes and e-cycle schemes—so that local areas can shape these schemes and tackle the scourge of badly parked e-cycles and e-scooters.