Contribution
My Lords, in speaking to Amendment 346C, I welcome the other amendments in this group in the names of my noble friends, Lord Blencathra and Lord McColl of Dulwich.
Amendment 346C is a modest and reasonable amendment, which would do exactly what it says on the tin. It would require the Home Secretary to institute
“a review assessing the effectiveness with which operators of bicycle courier services ensure that their employees and contractors conduct themselves on the roads in such a way as to avoid committing the offences in section 106”.
The review, which must be published within a year of that section coming into force, would recommend any changes to the law which the review determines may be necessary. The rationale for this amendment is similarly simple: it seeks to probe how the law could be changed to ensure that companies which contract for the services of delivery cyclists bear some responsibility for the conduct of those cyclists on the road.
Noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that I approach this issue from the perspective of a severely disabled person, whose condition makes me extremely vulnerable to the impact—and I use the term advisedly to mean the actual physical impact—of being hit by an individual riding one of these e-bikes in, to use the legislative terminology, a “dangerous, careless or inconsiderate” way. To put it bluntly, the impact would be catastrophic; I would not expect to survive. So I completely agree with my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, who said on day six of Committee that you take your life in your hands when you cross some roads in central London. I do so, quite literally, every day, on my way to and from your Lordships’ House.
Now I entirely appreciate that whether I live or die is neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things. It would be a shame if I were killed, but the earth would continue to turn. I know that. Equally, I know that I am just one person. I think of all those people with visual impairments, for example, who literally risk life and limb just stepping outside their front door. So the review should consider the impact on them as well, and not just in terms of their independence, mental health and well-being, all of which will of course bring associated costs for the NHS and social care services, but of their employment prospects. For why would anyone want to risk going to work, given they could end up in hospital before they have even got to the office as a result of being hit by a courier cyclist on an e-bike while they were walking along the pavement or trying to board a bus from one of those so-called floating bus stops?
I cite this group as just one example—and of course there are people with mobility impairments like mine, or simply older people whose reflexes are not as sharp as they once were—to highlight how the dangers presented by dangerous, careless or inconsiderate cycling on e-bikes, particularly by courier and delivery cyclists, are having a far greater impact on our society than we perhaps realise. I would go so far as to say that the effect has been to airbrush out of the bigger social picture whole swathes of society. So while I am not suggesting that an assessment of impact should be disability-exclusive, I would argue that such an impact alone merits a review.
I say to the Minister that I am not laying the blame at the door of Government per se. The Member’s explanatory statement accompanying the amendment refers to the companies which contract the services of delivery cyclists bearing
“some responsibility for the conduct of these cyclists”—
the point being that the responsibility is shared. But none of us, either in Parliament or the Government, can deny that we also share responsibility for addressing the problem; in our case, by providing the most effective legislative framework to facilitate the change we all want to see—safer streets.
I am reminded of what the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, said on day six in Committee, about us having made a “huge strategic mistake” by not factoring in the need for safety from the outset when these e-bikes were introduced. I agree with him. Sadly, some people, especially those in the Department for Transport, appear not to. They—and I dare say they are non-disabled and a bit slow on the uptake, bless them, so we need to make allowances—still do not seem to have woken up to the fact that this experiment has gone badly wrong.
That needs to be the starting point of the review. There must be a recognition—a fact which I sense the Minister implicitly acknowledges—that there is a significant and growing problem, which cannot simply be dismissed by officialdom’s obtuse obfuscation of, “Well, we are where we are”, because if we do not recognise that where we are is bad then we cannot move on.
Lime, the other e-bike hiring companies and companies such as Just Eat deserve to be in the dock and not in the saddle when it comes to this review. Yes, they will be part of the solution, but right now they are doing very nicely thank you very much from being a big part of the problem. They cannot be allowed to set or influence the review’s terms of reference or to sit on the review panel. That should be done by those most affected by dangerous, careless or inconsiderate cycling, not by those whose irresponsible indifference means they are profiting from putting people’s lives at risk.
In conclusion, I believe that the case for a review is compelling. As my noble friend Lady Stowell said on day six in Committee, courier delivery service e-bike users are “the worst perpetrators”. It is time we reviewed the situation. I beg to move.