Pedal Cyclists: Insurance

Lord Birt Excerpts

Thursday 23rd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

As I alluded to earlier, this Government have done more than any other to promote walking and cycling. Over £3 billion is projected to be invested in active travel up to 2025, including around £1 billion in dedicated capital and revenue investment by the department and Active Travel England in the four years up to 2023-24.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, this is a serious issue of growing salience. Cyclists of every kind now make the pedestrian experience in busy urban areas nerve-wracking and hazardous. As the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, said, they bike the wrong way up one-way streets and they take shortcuts across crowded pavements. This week, a Deliveroo rider ploughed through a dense knot of pedestrians, of which I was one crossing on a pedestrian green light. Most worrying of all, some souped-up electric bikes power along city roads at speeds approaching 40 miles per hour. All this has to stop. Does the Minister agree that bikers, like other road users, should be required to display identifiers and be held responsible for their unlawful and unsocial actions?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right, but I will not expand on what I have said in terms of the registration of cycles and licensing of riders. However, I agree that we need to look at how these things are enforced. It is a matter for the Home Office and for policing. Perhaps his efforts should be directed there.