Mopeds, Motorcycles and Powered Light Vehicle Industry

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to be able to contribute to this short debate and congratulate the noble Baroness on achieving it. We seem to spend a lot of time talking about this subject in the round at the moment. The noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, also expanded on the complexity and the different types. There is the generic type, which is probably “a wheeled vehicle”, although I am not sure about that. However, there are more and more of them; we had a very interesting debate on pedicabs last night, and some of us thought that that legislation should be extended to scooters for various reasons that I will not get into now.

The important thing is that the Government, when looking at all these different types of transport and the regulations that inevitably go with them, do so on a consistent basis. As the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said, some of that is to do with net zero, but some of it is also to do with things such as safety, which is in the title of the debate, and sustainability. You could add things such as parking, the electric power, regulation and what these vehicles are used for. We have talked about different types of motorbike today: there are big ones and small ones, and some noble Lords will say that some of them are hated by people and others are loved. However, they may also be hauling trailers taking kids to school. They may be doing all kinds of different things. The legislation must somehow cover all that.

One issue has not come up so far, which is the question of lithium-ion battery fires. I have been studying quite a lot of them in relation to fires on ships, which are a much bigger problem because obviously the vehicles are bigger. They have a habit of setting themselves on fire. That can apply to motorbikes or whatever we are going to call them, and to electric bikes, cars and everything else. All that needs looking at because it is a terribly important safety element.

The other issue which the noble Baroness mentioned was the consultation that has been going on for these L-category vehicles. I hope that when the Minister responds he will be able to tell us when we are likely to get some answers on that because we need them. I was, frankly, surprised at the Prime Minister’s statement on the delay in phasing out petrol and diesel cars. It is interesting that the Financial Times reports today that the Office for Budget Responsibility says that the take-up of EV cars has slowed, which it appears is the result of that delay, although we know that they are expensive. Clearly, the Prime Minister does not really mind too much about where they are manufactured and how many are manufactured, but he cares about people who want to go around in 4x4s emitting a maximum amount of pollution. We need to look at all these things in the round.

I remember, probably before most noble Lords were even in this House, moving an amendment to some Bill suggesting that 4x4s were the most unsafe vehicle if you were to hit a child outside. They are very safe inside for little Johnny but if you are going to hit somebody outside, they are very unsafe. Therefore I suggested that 4x4s should be banned for one mile around schools during the school-run period. Of course, the Government did not like that. Is that surprising? We love the cars and nothing else.

It is important to take into consideration the special circumstances of the motorcycle industry—it is a very wide industry; my electric bike could well have been built within it—and for the Government to get the staging of net zero and any other regulation that goes along with it into a proper sequence. We will talk about automatic vehicles next week, and there is the same problem there. Given the whole-life effect, as the noble Baroness said, and the involvement of cars, vans, trailers and everything, there needs to be a consistent and comprehensive policy. Does the Minister agree? If so, when will the Government produce one?