E-scooters and E-bikes

Debate between Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill and Lord Hogan-Howe

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I absolutely recognise the risk to pedestrians from e-scooters and, for that matter, e-bikes and ordinary cycles on the footway. I can assure the right reverend Prelate that we will consider fully the needs of disabled, partially sighted and blind people in bringing forward the appropriate legislation. We want people to feel safe walking around our towns, cities and countryside; riding bikes too fast or riding e-scooters on the pavements is completely unsatisfactory for those people.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the recent meeting on the potential regulation of cyclists in the future. On the issue of e-bikes, scooters and cyclists, one of the things that none of them has is insurance, which means that they cannot compensate victims. Insurance could play the positive role of modifying human behaviour. The premiums reflect the risk; the higher the risk, the higher the premium. Can the Minister explain the argument against these people having insurance?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The dialogue with the noble Lord continues. As he said, we had a very fruitful meeting recently, following the earlier debate in the autumn on the whole question of cycling. The practical difficulty of insurance is simply that clearly people do not need a licence for these things, and a requirement for insurance would itself need enforcement—on which he is better qualified to opine than I am. There is a real difficulty with some of the propositions around licensing and insurance, which we will have to fully consider. He is right that, in the absence of insurance, if there is an accident and people are injured or worse then there is a real problem, but we have to crack this in a practical manner.