Electric Scooter Trials and Traffic Signs (Coronavirus) Regulations and General Directions 2020

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Tuesday 29th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, we come to the second debate this afternoon on dangerous goods. It is unusual for me to find myself in complete agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. I have already apologised to my noble friend the Minister for being thoroughly unhelpful to her on this subject.

After four months of staying inside and on my first afternoon back in London two weeks ago, in the short journey from my flat to this House, I was nearly hit by a big e-scooter on the pavement outside the Department for Transport in Marsham Street. A few minutes later, another thug on one of these almost ran me down on Millbank, on the pavement just by Black Rod’s Garden.

When I used to go to Paris last year with the Council of Europe, I had first-hand experience of these things. Most Parisians do not ride them on the pavement but a large minority do, and everyone abandons them all over the pavements in their tens of thousands. Some 20,000 of these things are now causing what the Mayor of Paris described as “complete anarchy”. Even the French Financial Times said:

“An electric scooter scourge is stalking Paris”


and the French Transport Minister said that Paris was experiencing the “law of the jungle”, although that is unfair on nature behaving properly in its habitat.

That is what is coming to every city in this country. These scooters weigh up to 55 kilograms, and with an average male of another 83 kilograms, that is 28 stone of solid mass hitting pedestrians at 15 miles an hour. The Department for Transport’s road death research shows that a pedestrian hit at 15 miles per hour stands a 3% risk of death and a much larger chance of serious injury.

To those who say, “That’s all overseas; it’s the French and it won’t happen here”: it already has. Just five days after starting a trial in Coventry, the company Voi had to stop all operations because its managing director said:

“I think we have a British antisocial behaviour issue across the country … We haven’t seen this level of antisocial behaviour in any other market. We have had great experience of it but the volume of it in the UK was quite surprising.”


He said that people were riding the scooters on the pavement and had a disregard for the law. If the company trying to get us to use these killing machines says that, we should stop this experiment until we have proper control of them.

If the Government are determined to push ahead, these regulations must be changed to reduce the weight to no more than 25 kilos and the speed limited to 10 miles per hour. Even then, these scooters are still silent killing machines when driven on the pavement. Therefore, the Government must copy Voi and insist on number plates, or some sort of numbering system, so that cameras can identify them. There is then a slight chance of enforcement.

We see cyclists blatantly riding over zebra crossings with pedestrians on them and through red lights, and there is no enforcement. There must be strict enforcement for these e-scooters. People will dump hired machines anywhere but will safely park their own dearly bought scooter. The policy there is wrong, too.

I do not know how Paris has got it so wrong with scooters, given that it and Strasbourg—which I also visit regularly—are so civilised about cycling. There is not a single helmet or bit of Lycra in sight. People ride upright with the handlebars higher than the seats. They can ride on the pavements and I feel perfectly safe among them. What a contrast with London, where you can see nothing but Lycra-clad bums in the air as wannabe Bradley Wigginses mow you down on the crossing at 1 Millbank.

If the Government persist with introducing this measure, I hope that an instruction is given to every police force in this country to enforce the law. There should be none of this nonsense of engage, explain, encourage, pat on the head, sympathise or bend the knee. If the police turn a blind eye to enforcement, I hope that they will ignore me when I use my stick to get one of the scooters off the pavement or when I chuck an abandoned one from the pavement under the wheels of a 30-tonne lorry. I say to the police: do your duty and enforce the law, or the law will be brought into disrepute with every other law. They should do their duty or we will see the same anarchy as in Paris.