Pedicabs (London) Bill [HL]

Debate between Viscount Goschen and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 11th December 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, this is the first chance I have had to speak in this debate as I was involved in other business in another part of the House. I am delighted to be here at all since I was meant to travel yesterday; I think I must have reached a record in that three trains I was booked on were cancelled. I am just delighted to be here to discuss pedicabs—if I had taken a pedicab from the north of England, it might have been quicker to get here, but then I would not have been insured.

I welcome this Bill but, as the debates on earlier groups of amendments have shown, it does not go far enough in its current form. I will speak to Amendments 32, 35 and 36 in my name. I believe that these amendments are necessary because, on a reading of the Bill—in particular Clause 3(2)(a)—the penalties are simply not strong enough to reflect the gravity of a casualty that could occur through the use of a pedicab.

I may be raising points made earlier; I apologise that I could not be here for debates on earlier groups. When I did arrive, I listened very carefully to my noble friend, whom I congratulate on his new position, which is a very welcome role for him. He stated that existing legislation applies to e-scooters. I put it to him that the existing legislation is not being applied to e-scooters, e-bikes and regular bikes. I pray in aid the tragic case of Kim Briggs, the wife of Matt Briggs, who was simply crossing the road when an illegal bike with no brakes fitted at all knocked her down and killed her. At the moment, there are insufficient penalties. The offender was successfully prosecuted for her death, which was a direct result of the injuries that she sustained, but he could not be put away for anything other than the current minuscule offences in the Road Traffic Act.

Avid readers of the Order Paper will have noted that in the last three parliamentary Sessions I have tried to bring forward a Private Member’s Bill to plug that gap. The closest I came, sadly, was in the year when we were dealing with so many regulations relating to Covid that, as noble Lords will recall, no Private Members’ Bills were covered at all. Is my noble friend really satisfied that the existing regulations that apply to e-scooters, e-bikes and bikes are being applied? Why is it that on a daily basis in London, which is the remit of this Bill, and other parts of the country, people are being knocked down, sustaining serious injuries and in some cases being killed on pavements—which is strictly illegal for e-bikes, e-scooters and regular bikes?

The regulations are not being respected. If we stick with these pitiful, woeful enforcement measures in Clause 2, can my noble friend tell the Committee—I pay tribute to his years of service in the police force—who will monitor this? Will TfL have agents on the street to ensure that, for pedicabs, which are covered by this Bill, the measures that will be covered by these woeful, small penalties will be enforced? Who will it be? If it is not TfL—I hazard a guess that it will not be; it will be the British Transport Police or the Met Police—and they will not apply the regulations that already apply to e-bikes, e-scooters and regular bikes, who on earth imagines that they will apply them to pedicabs? Who is telling them to do this? I know this was mentioned earlier and I regret that I was not here to participate in that debate, but why are the Government not taking charge for this Bill, as I understand they did for other aspects of road traffic Acts in the past?

Clearly, the regulations that currently apply to e-bikes, e-scooters and bikes are not working. My noble friend said that there was no legislative time to bring in the next raft of regulations that will apply to them. Here we have it; we have a Bill before us today that is going through the House very quickly, with one day in Committee. Why, pray God, can we not attach it to this Bill, to prevent any further accidents and casualties on our pavements and other parts of the road?

My noble friend pointed out that you have to be licensed and insured to drive an e-scooter on private land, as is currently the case. I understand the level of casualties to be high—unfortunately I was not organised enough to bring the reply from my noble friend Lord Sharpe in this regard—but the Government do not keep the figures, so we simply do not know how many fines or penalties have been issued for that category.

I welcome the fact that pedicabs will be licensed; that will make a big difference. Can my noble friend tell me what the case is for Deliveroo drivers? They seem to be the bane of my life in London, particularly those who drive regular scooters for months, if not years, with L-plates on. Is there not a category of time beyond which you have to pass a test? Who is monitoring whether they are not actually learner drivers but simply have no intention of passing a test? Who is checking whether they are legally able to work here and to drive said scooters? Has anybody asked whether they have even read the Highway Code and are they tested on it?

With those few remarks, I praise the Government for bringing forward the Bill, but I hope that my amendments show what is required to make sure the Road Traffic Act brings in these changes, which I tried but failed to do through my Private Member’s Bill. I hope my noble friend will look kindly on those suggestions.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, clearly the enforcement of the provisions of the Bill and the consequent regulations, however they are drafted by TfL, will be critical. My noble friend has made some pertinent points about the current enforcement of other forms of bicycles, e-bikes, scooters and so forth. My question to him is: what message can he send and what confidence can he give the Committee that the enforcement of whatever regulations eventually emerge will be taken seriously?

I quite agree with my noble friend that there seems to have been an abandonment, certainly in central London, of enforcement for contraventions of the Highway Code and traffic regulations by bicycles, e-scooters and the like. I guarantee that, if I were to walk to central London from your Lordships’ House, I would see vehicles without lights cycling the wrong way up streets. In fact, this morning as I was walking here, a delivery rider parked their e-scooter on the pavement of Jermyn Street at 90 degrees to the direction of flow of pedestrians, locked it like that and went in to deliver their goods.

That is wide of what we are talking about on the Bill today, but there is no point making regulations if they are not going to be enforced. Any law that is not enforced brings the Government, governance and law into disrepute. Perhaps my noble friend can say a word or two about how he sees this likely to be enforced in practice and say something a bit more broadly about the enforcement of motoring other than by camera, which is the default setting. We have seen the withdrawal of the police from enforcing what they may see as trivial road traffic regulations in central London in favour of things that are easier to do, such as putting up cameras, yellow box junctions, generating fines and so forth.

I appreciate that this might go slightly wide of the question under specific consideration today, but the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and his amendments on enforcement raised very important considerations on the seizure of these vehicles. Nobody will take a blind bit of notice unless enforcement is taken seriously.