Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Berkeley]

94A: Schedule 9, page 182, line 12, at end insert “or the driver of a vehicle”

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[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendments 94B, 94C and 94D. These are basically probing amendments. I apologise for not bringing them forward in Committee, but I think that the Bill was changed in the other place to add these amendments. Some of the amendments that were brought in in the other place are very good, but I am concerned about the resulting balance between what PCSOs can do to cyclists and what they can do to motorists. I am sure the Minister will agree that there has to be some balance in what they can do and the way they go about it. I speak as a cyclist. I hope that I am a law-abiding cyclist. I am also secretary of the All-Party Group on Cycling.

In general, I welcome the ability of PCSOs to hand out fixed penalty notices. It is a good idea but if they can do it to cyclists, they should be able to do it to motorists as well. My amendments are, frankly, just examples, because when one digs into the legislation—the various pieces of primary legislation and the regulations—it is a bit of a can of worms, as I am sure the Minister will agree, and it has been like that for many years. I hope that we can, at least, have a little debate about this tonight and maybe see what happens after that.

I was particularly concerned when I discovered that the Metropolitan Police has been targeting cyclists in a really rather unpleasant way. There is a memo that one of my cycling colleagues has seen which gave Metropolitan Police officers a target of putting penalties on 10 cyclists each in London. That is a very bad way of going about it. Was there a similar target of 10 motorists? I do not know, but we can see where that goes. Amendment 94A would make offences under Section 35 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, which concerns failure to comply with a traffic direction, apply to motorists as well as cycle riders. The Bill says it should apply to cycle riders and I am suggesting that, if a PCSO is capable of stopping a cyclist, he should be able to stop the driver of a vehicle.

We must all accept that there are fewer policemen around now than there used to be and that PCSOs add to their presence in the streets and encourage cyclists and motorists to obey the law. This allows PCSOs to stop cyclists and, I hope, vehicles. I think it is mainly to do with a survey, which may be important. I do not think it is the most important thing we are talking about in the Bill but, clearly, if a cyclist needs to take part in a survey, he should stop and do so.

Amendment 94B is very much more important. This is to do with advanced stop lines. I fear that this needs a longer explanation. I thought for many years that the first advanced stop line that you come to is advisory, if there are two with a box in between, the box being for cyclists. I discover that it is not advisory; it has the same force of law for motorists as the second one does. I shall say a little more about that in a minute. There is also a rather odd piece of legislation about the box between the first and second advanced stop lines. There is often an entry for cyclists on the left of the box as they go into it. Apparently examples have come up in London when a cyclist wants to make use of the box—which, after all, is there to provide visibility for cyclists.

It has been the case for many years that visibility is the most important thing and lack of visibility has probably contributed to much of the sharp rise in cycling fatalities in London this year. A lot of good work has been done to try to make cyclists more visible, but one of the most important things is the box, whereby drivers can see the cyclist in the box. However, apparently there is an anomaly if one is at a stop line and a cyclist wants to turn right. Normally, the cyclist might have got into the right hand lane of the traffic before he reached the stop line, would then stop until the lights turned green, and then go forward and turn right when it was safe to do so. Apparently, the only legal way of entering this box is up that little lane on the left, which means that the cyclist has not crossed the full line—he crosses the dotted line to get into the box, then he has to go across one, two or occasionally three lanes of, one hopes, stopped traffic, to get into the right-hand side to turn right. I hope that I am not confusing your Lordships too much. It is a problem when cars do not stop at the first line. Then the cyclist wants to go further ahead to be seen, and then he is crossing the second line, maybe, and he gets stopped by the police and fined—and he will get stopped by the PCSOs in future.

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[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Rosser for his support and to the Minister for his very helpful reply. I did not really expect the amendments to be accepted as they are today at this comparatively late stage. It is good that the Department for Transport is looking at these things and it would be useful to have a meeting with the Roads Minister. I hope that the Minister has an assurance from the Department for Transport that the amendments which were put in at a previous stage are also part of this integrated policy, because if not, there could be some trouble in the future. But I am sure he has and I am grateful for what he said. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 94A withdrawn.