Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Viscount Goschen and Lord Russell of Liverpool

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, we covered these matters pretty thoroughly during discussion of a number of amendments in Committee. As we are now on Report, I shall get quickly to the nub of the issue that I should like to discuss, which reflects a lot of what my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Shinkwin have already said. I say at the outset that I am pro-bicycle and pro-cycling, but I am anti-law-breaking. We have a very serious situation at the moment.

I support this broad group of amendments. In particular, we have a problem with the use of illegally powerful e-bikes and those used by professional delivery companies. There are real benefits from e-bikes being used; it is much better for the environment, for all sorts of reasons, that e-bikes or bicycles are used rather than mopeds and two-stroke engines and so forth. It is a big step forward. The debate should not be characterised as anti-cycling—it is pro-cycling—but the technology has moved so fast that the general public perhaps do not always understand what is a legal or an illegal e-bike. The evidence appears to be that the police either do not spend too much time thinking about it or do not see the enforcement of the use of illegal e-bikes as a priority.

Every speech that we heard in Committee and have heard on Report was very supportive of that—very few views were expressed that did not make it feel as if there was a particular problem, apart perhaps from the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Katz, when he summarised the debate on 17 December, saying:

“We of course recognise the concerns about the behaviour of delivery riders, but it is harder to find firm evidence to suggest that their behaviour is so demonstrably worse than that of other groups that it is necessary to single them out for review”.—[Official Report, 17/12/25; col. 748.]


If we took a straw poll around the Chamber right now, I am not sure that he would find a huge amount of support. If he came out with me and the noble Lords, Lord Shinkwin, Lord Blencathra, Lord Lucas, and others one evening to have a look, we might be able to provide him with evidence in person pretty quickly.

The law is being ignored. If these were mopeds without number plates, I feel that the police would intervene quickly. The vehicles used have the performance of mopeds but are not regulated in the same way—they do not carry registration—and they are used to ride the wrong way up one-way streets, for example, in a way that I fell motorcycles are not. The general public see the law being flouted, and that is being normalised, which is a difficult and dangerous situation. These riders are agents or contractors of large delivery companies, which need to take responsibility for the fact that people operating under their flag or banner and doing their business for their commercial gain are routinely breaking the law; that is being ignored by delivery companies and not pursued with vigour by the police. When we had this discussion in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Katz, was generally sympathetic but reluctant to take action.

A number of different approaches have been suggested by noble Lords, but the theme seems to be the same. Members of the House who have spoken are not saying that their particular solution is the be-all and end-all, but they recognise that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. The status quo is not working, so when the Minister comes to respond, the House would be very much in his debt if he were to give a clear indication of the degree to which he feels there is a significant problem. If he does not like the approaches being put forward in these amendments, he needs to be able to suggest what is going to change in order to give the House some comfort that the Government are actually taking this seriously.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I declare that I am a cyclist. I came in this morning and, as noble Lords can see, survived in one piece, miraculously. Secondly, I have to declare that the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, saw me dismounting from my e-bike as I arrived, as he put it, prosaically, in front of our “prison gates” the other day. I actually dismounted when I was on the pavement, because I thought it was safer than doing it in the road, and he came towards me at considerable speed. I sometimes wonder if his own electric chariot is within the prescribed speed limit. One often thinks, “Is it a bird? Is it a plane?” and it is actually the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, going down one of our corridors at great speed.

I hate to interrupt this discussion because, from observation, your Lordships are most happy when discussing three particular issues: ourselves, which we enjoy enormously, and we go on at great length; potholes, which really gets your Lordships going; and dangerous cycling. At the root of this is behavioural psychology. The law is there. In repeated statements over the last 10 years, I have heard different Ministers—usually the junior ones, not the senior ones, because they get the short end of the stick—responding by saying, “Well, this is illegal; this is illegal; this is illegal”, which, of course, is a huge comfort to us all, particularly since it is clearly not actually being enforced.

I think back just a few days to the, I thought, rather good victory speech of the new Green MP, Hannah Spencer. She described the feelings of the people in the constituency that has elected her, and their experience of day-to-day life and how that made them feel, and there is an echo of that as one walks or cycles around London and sees open illegality happening everywhere we look. In large part, that is because we do not have a joined-up approach. I support the intent of all these amendments; however, we are never going to actually tackle this unless we have a joined-up approach.

I gently point out to the noble Lords who have put forward these amendments, of which there are a great many, that they might have had more power had they got together prior to Report, put their names together and tried to get some support from across the House to demonstrate the breadth and depth of feeling. When it comes to a joined-up approach, I am really saying that I hope the Government will acknowledge that there are ways of dealing with this, particularly if they look at international experience.

There are five elements, proven by international experience, to a joined-up approach to deal with the problems we are discussing. The first is clarity and adequate coverage of the rules. At the moment, we have a mixture of rules dating back many years in a variety of different laws, so it is not completely clear. The second is that detection and effective enforcement beats severity. Trying to put more rules and penalties in is not going to work if they are not enforced: it is the blind leading the blind. The third element is creating infrastructure in the right way. There is the phrase, “enforcement by design”. If you design roads, pavements, et cetera, cleverly—and some countries are rather better at that than us—you avoid a lot of this, because there is no need for it to happen; but it does require a joined-up approach.

The fourth element is operator and retailer controls. We have heard quite a lot about the operators, whether they are hire companies or food delivery companies. Again, that is not adequately covered by the hotchpotch of different laws we have. Indeed, in debate on a previous Bill, many of the Government’s own Back-Benchers, particularly those with a strong union background, were somewhat horrified to hear of the ways in which these delivery companies are able to avoid the law—by a designated driver, who is the employee or the contractor, actually asking somebody else who is not employed by the company or contracted to drive for them. If that driver is caught doing something bad, the company is not liable, because that individual is not connected to the company. That is done by most of these companies, which is clearly crazy.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Viscount Goschen and Lord Russell of Liverpool

Committee stage
Monday 15th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I support the thrust of a number of the amendments that appear in this very broad group. Undoubtedly, as the noble Lord, Lord Russell, told us, we have a significant problem, particularly in London. My own anecdotal experience is of cyclists and e-cyclists totally flouting the law, riding on the pavement and riding the wrong way down one-way streets. This is particularly prevalent among delivery riders.

I tend to walk around London—probably a couple of miles a day; most days around the West End and to and fro your Lordships’ House—and I can confidently say that I have never once seen a cyclist or an e-cyclist stopped for any very overt offences. The noble Lord suggests that he has been stopped.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

I thought the noble Viscount was going to say “red light”.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

Perhaps so. It is not a question of having ineffective enforcement; I would say that we have no enforcement whatever—at least none that I have ever seen. If you have a law that is not enforced at all and is defined by people ignoring it, you have a serious problem. We should not be making additional laws on the subject if we do not have a high degree of confidence that they will be enforced, or else we are wasting everybody’s time here.

I invite the Minister, in the context of all the amendments in this big group, to give us a broad overview of what the Government are going to do about enforcement. I know there are other amendments later also talking about enforcement, but unless he can convince us about that, I suggest that there is not much point to many of the provisions in this part of the Bill.

I note that the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, with whom I agree on many aspects of this and other Bills, knocks the ball into the Government’s court to come up with a registration scheme for cycles. This causes me some reflection. I think it would be extremely difficult to do and would be a very large step indeed, so my preference would be for more enforcement—in essence, people being stopped for those offences—rather than the amount of complication that such a scheme would generate. Children riding cycles on their way to school, for example, cannot have points because they do not have licences. I can imagine any number of unintended consequences. However, we need to do something, and if it is a licensing scheme for the heavier, faster e-bikes, maybe that is what has to happen, and I think the Government need to grasp that.

I was very taken with my noble friend Lord Blencathra’s Amendment 337E. Stating for the avoidance of doubt that if you cycle on a pavement, you are by definition cycling without due care and attention seems eminently sensible, just to make the law a bit clearer. Amendment 346B on e-bikes in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, is very important. I should declare an interest in that I have a mountain bike and an e-bike. I have two, as it happens, and I use them occasionally—not at the same time, I have to say; that would be too difficult.

People who want to move around London quickly have a choice. Either they buy a motorcycle and pass a complicated series of tests to get that motorcycle licence—if they go for the full licence; it is a lesser standard for smaller machines. They need to tax the vehicle; they need to insure it; and they need an MoT if it is of that age. Or they could ignore all that and get an illegal electric cycle with comparable performance to a moped, and no one seems to be stopping them, as far as I can see. They have no insurance, no tax, no registration and, happy days, no one is stopping them for any offences whatever.

There are, of course, proper electric motorbikes where you have to wear a helmet, have a registration and so forth—indeed, I think there are a few Peers who come to your Lordships’ House on such machines. We have a very broad spectrum, but at the moment a lot of people, particularly delivery drivers, are riding vehicles that are not being pedalled; they are just pushing an electric throttle, in essence. These are obviously illegal: even as an amateur, I can see that a policeman would have every right to stop them and impound that vehicle, so I think we have to make that clearer. I think by 15.5 miles an hour, we mean a maximum powered speed, because of course if you head downhill, you will go much faster, as with a conventional cycle. However, I think we have to say, for the avoidance of doubt, “That is a motorcycle”, if it does not meet the criteria, “and if you ride that without tax, registration, insurance and so forth, you are committing a series of significant offences, and you will be arrested and prosecuted for such”.